Daily Bread Food Bank
STAR RATINGCi's Star Rating is calculated based on the following independent metrics: |
✔+
FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY
Audited financial statements for current and previous years available on the charity’s website.
A+
RESULTS REPORTING
Grade based on the charity's public reporting of the work it does and the results it achieves.
Good
DEMONSTRATED IMPACT
The demonstrated impact per dollar Ci calculates from available program information.
NEED FOR FUNDING
Charity's cash and investments (funding reserves) relative to how much it spends on programs in most recent year.
85%
CENTS TO THE CAUSE
For a dollar donated, after overhead costs of fundraising and admin/management (excluding surplus) 85 cents are available for programs.
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OVERVIEW
About Daily Bread Food Bank:
Daily Bread Food Bank is a five-star financially transparent charity with a Good demonstrated impact score. It also has a world class A+ results reporting grade, reasonable overhead spending, and a reasonably sized reserve fund. For every dollar donated to the charity, 85 cents are available to go to the cause.
Founded in 1983, Daily Bread Food Bank (Daily Bread) works to eliminate hunger in Toronto. It hopes to accomplish this by distributing 50 million pounds of food each year starting in 2027. Daily Bread operates a food collection, processing, and distribution warehouse which supplies its 129-member agency network. This network is a collection of smaller food banks, schools, and other organizations who deliver food to those in need. Daily Bread also publishes research on food insecurity and actively pushes for policy changes to fight poverty.
Daily Bread runs three programs: food distribution, agency network support, and other programs (kitchen training, research, and advocacy). The charity spent $34.6m cash on its programs (grants and operating spending) and distributed $45.7m worth of donated food in the fiscal year ending in June 2024 (F2024).
A Charity Intelligence 2024 Top 100 Rated Charity
Food distribution was 76% ($26.4m) of the charity’s program spending. During F2024, Daily Bread distributed 38,392,522 lb of food to 256,999 unique clients across 3,388,404 visits to its agency network. It distributed 37% more food but reached 9% fewer clients compared to F2023 in which the charity’s network provided 282,052 unique individuals 27,951,290 lb of food.
Agency support was 19% ($6.5m) of the charity’s program spending. During F2024, Daily Bread provided $6.5m worth of grants to its 129-member agency network. According to the charity, this funded 205 food programs covering school breakfast, prepared meal, and grocery delivery projects.
Other programs were 5% ($1.7m) of the charity’s program spending. Daily Bread operates a volunteer-led kitchen that prepares warm meals for those in need. According to the charity, these volunteers prepared 254,312 meals during F2024. The charity also published four new research reports in F2024, including its latest Who’s Hungry Report which highlights the scope of food insecurity in Toronto. Daily Bread also ran a government advocacy campaign in F2024 aimed at increasing federal disability payments. According to the charity, this campaign reached over 1,430,000 Canadians.
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Results and Impact
Since Daily Bread Food Bank distributed 38,392,522 lb of food to 256,999 people across 3,388,404 visits, each client received an average of 149 lb of food, and clients received an average of 11.3 lb of food during reach visit in F2024. This also means each unique client visited Daily Bread’s agency network an average of 13 times during F2024.
Daily Bread Food Bank spent $26.4m on food distribution, delivering 38,392,522 lb of food to 256,999 unique clients. This means it spent an average of $0.69 / lb distributed and $103 on each client served during F2024.
According to the charity, thanks to its advocacy work, the federal government introduced the Canada Disability Benefit in its 2024 budget. In this plan, the government has pledged to distribute $6.1 billion to 600,000 Canadians from 2024-2029.
While Ci highlights these key results, they may not completely represent Daily Bread’s results and impact.
Ci has given Daily Bread a Good impact rating based on demonstrated social impact per dollar spent.
Impact Rating: Good
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Finances
Daily Bread Food Bank’s audited financial statements follow activity based costing, a financial reporting best practice. This means it clearly discloses its program, administrative, and fundraising costs on its financial statements.
During F2024, the charity received $36.4m worth of cash donations (43% of total revenue) and received $45.7m worth of donated food (54% of total revenue). The charity also received $110k worth of government funding in F2024.
Administrative costs are 2% of total revenue and fundraising costs are 13% of donations. This results in 15% total overhead spending and means that for every dollar donated, 85 cents are available to go to the cause.
Daily Bread spent $28.1m on funding program operations and distributed $6.5m worth of grants to its agency network during F2024. This is a 20% and 85% increase from $23.3m and $3.5m spent on programs and grants during F2023, respectively. For the first time since F2013, Daily Bread is running an operating cash deficit – a deficit of ($2.2m) in F2024.
At the end of F2024, the charity had $30.8m worth of net reserve funds (cash and investments) which covers 89% or around 11 months of its annual program costs.
The charity also paid external fundraisers $164k who raised $124k in F2024.
Profile updated by Julian Dranitsaris on March 27, 2025. Comments and corrections may be forthcoming.
Financial Review
Fiscal year ending June
|
2024 | 2023 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Administrative costs as % of revenues | 1.6% | 1.7% | 1.4% |
| Fundraising costs as % of donations | 13.3% | 13.1% | 13.1% |
| Total overhead spending | 14.8% | 14.8% | 14.6% |
| Program cost coverage (%) | 89.0% | 125.6% | 169.3% |
Summary Financial StatementsAll figures in $000s |
2024 | 2023 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Donations | 36,375 | 31,369 | 25,537 |
| Goods in kind | 45,701 | 34,006 | 34,374 |
| Government funding | 110 | 128 | 119 |
| Fees for service | 58 | 26 | 25 |
| Investment income | 1,621 | 2,029 | (1,736) |
| Other income | 324 | 267 | 161 |
| Total revenues | 84,189 | 67,826 | 58,480 |
| Program costs | 28,097 | 23,319 | 12,282 |
| Grants | 6,501 | 3,511 | 7,568 |
| Donated goods exp | 45,701 | 34,007 | 34,374 |
| Administrative costs | 1,285 | 1,115 | 862 |
| Fundraising costs | 4,828 | 4,104 | 3,351 |
| Total spending | 86,412 | 66,055 | 58,437 |
| Cash flow from operations | (2,223) | 1,771 | 43 |
| Capital spending | 407 | 1,120 | 502 |
| Funding reserves | 30,800 | 33,689 | 33,604 |
Note: 1. CHANGES IN DEFERRED DONATIONS: Since Daily Bread follows deferred accounting, Ci adjusted donations for changes in deferred contributions to show financial information on a consistent basis. Changes in deferred contributions affected revenue by $68k, $87k, and $59k in F2024, F2023, and F2022, respectively. 2. UNREALIZED INVESTMENT GAIN AND LOSS: Ci also adjusted revenue for unrealized investment gain and loss, affecting it by $250k, $1.8m, and ($2.2m) in F2024, F2023, and F2022, respectively.
Salary Information
$350k + |
0 |
$300k - $350k |
0 |
$250k - $300k |
0 |
$200k - $250k |
1 |
$160k - $200k |
3 |
$120k - $160k |
4 |
$80k - $120k |
2 |
$40k - $80k |
0 |
< $40k |
0 |
Information from most recent CRA Charities Directorate filings for F2024
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Comments & Contact
Comments added by the Charity:
Food bank visits in Toronto have almost tripled since 2019, rising from pre-pandemic numbers of 60,000 client visits monthly to 171,631 in June 2022. Daily Bread in consultation with economists, the City of Toronto and internal forecasting team, anticipate that number rising to over 200,000 by the end of this fiscal year.
The Board of Directors, with Management, set an ambitious promise to the city that regardless of the number of people coming to food banks, 3 days’ worth of food weekly would be provided to each client. That promise has been kept through the pandemic despite the extraordinary growth in client visits, and food received by clients increased by 17%. Food purchases increased from $1.9M in 2019 to over $12M budgeted for fiscal 2022-23. In addition, $5.9M in new grants have been distributed to Daily Bread’s member agency network to build supply chain resiliency in community programs. Through these grants, agencies have been able to purchase additional food, appliances and even add storage solutions to their space, to help them better meet the needs in their communities. Over the next year an additional $4M in grants are expected to be distributed.
Our previous experience has shown that we have to prepare for the future, as much as we deal with the needs of today. We need to be strategic about how we utilize the reserve in order to address the expected growing need for our services within a challenging economic climate.
Historically, food bank visits continue to increase for at least two years following the start of a recession. Continuous impacts of the pandemic, the looming recession, rapidly rising inflation, and interest rate increases are combining for an unprecedented storm on top of a difficult situation.
Daily Bread’s Board of Directors monitor and oversee the financial reserves within their governance capacity to balance immediate food distribution and forecasted expenditures. The Board-approved strategic deployment of our reserve funds is forecasted to deplete our surplus reserves over the next 3.5 years.
LEARN MORE: Daily Bread 2023 Annual Report
Charity Contact
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel: 416-203-0050