Founded in 1985, Second Harvest rescues fresh food and delivers it to hungry people in Toronto. Second Harvest reports that four million Canadians struggle to access healthy food, including 1.4 million children. However, Canadian households throw away $1,766 worth of food on average annually, and 11.2 million metric tons of unsold excess food goes to landfill across the food industry in Canada each year. Second Harvest currently recovers food from 1,201 food donors and distributes it to 1,080 non-profit organizations that feed people in Toronto.

Through its Food Rescue & Delivery program, Second Harvest gave out 15.6 million lb of food in F2019, which is a 27% increase from 12.3 million lb in F2018. The food was 29% produce, 24% dairy & dairy alternatives, 14% beverages, 12% meat & protein, 8% snacks/baked good, 5% bread/grain, 4% prepared foods, and 4% condiments. 93% of the food was perishable. The program runs seven days a week and supports over 1,080 non-profit organizations. The food distributed by Second Harvest served 519,000 people in F2019.   

Feeding Our Future is an annual 8-week summer program where Second Harvest serves free lunches and snacks to kids attending summer camps. In F2018, the charity provided 40,000 lunches to feed 2,400 children. 

Harvest Kitchens is a training program for adults and youth who want to work in the food preparation industry. Program participants work under the supervision of food service professionals and the food they prepare is then delivered to Second Harvest’s food agency partners. 

After piloting in four Ontario communities in F2019, Second Harvest launched FoodRescue.ca, an online food donation platform. It launched Ontario-wide in October 2018 and later expanded to lower mainland British Columbia in June 2019. In one year, the platform grew from 55 registered donors to 750, the number of registered non-profit organizations grew from 52 to 696, and the amount of food rescued grew from 33,000 lb to 627,000 lb.

With total cash donations and special events fundraising of $16.9m and donated food worth $49.2m in F2019, Second Harvest is one of Canada’s 100 largest charities in terms of donations, making it a Major 100 charity. Administrative costs are 2% of revenues and fundraising costs are 11% of donations and special event revenue. This means overhead costs are 12%. For every dollar donated to the charity, 88 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

Excluding the cost of donated food, funding reserves of $5.9m can cover roughly 14 months of program costs. Including the cost of donated food, the charity can cover roughly one month of program costs.

This report is an update and has been sent to Second Harvest for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on July 14, 2020 by Eric Jose.