Full Plates Full Potential

We’re working to end child hunger in Maine by partnering with schools and communities to create sustainable systems change through investment and advocacy. We strive to respond to the urgency of childhood food insecurity today, while preventing childhood food insecurity tomorrow by changing the conditions that hold the problem in place.

We envision a healthy and thriving Maine with plentiful food for all.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: We break down existing structural barriers within key child nutrition programs to eliminate red tape, expand their reach, and get more meals to more youth.

Goal Type: Focus on core programs to achieve mission and scale back on programs not seen as core.

Goal Two: We strengthen the system that exists to administer child nutrition programs, ensuring it can someday operate sustainably, effectively, and efficiently without us.

Goal Type: Focus on core programs to achieve mission and scale back on programs not seen as core.

Goal Three: We share resources, expertise, and capacity in support of broader anti-hunger organizations and initiatives, most notably Maine's Ending Hunger by 2030 plan.

Goal Type: This goal reflects our commitment to further our advocacy work for our organization and or cause area.

Describe an investment in leadership

We offer all staff professional development stipends and paid time to take advantage of professional development opportunities. We work with each team member to develop individualized growth and development goals and their manager is responsible for actively supporting them in working towards these goals.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

• Policy Advocacy

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

Ending childhood food insecurity takes more than the efforts of any one organization. We strive to lift up the issue, not our organization, adapting as needed to meet the needs of our community, and aligning our work within and alongside that of other initiatives and organizations. Our team members represent Full Plates in dozens of local, state, and national partnerships, networks, and collaboratives, sharing our knowledge and expertise and bringing back equally valuable insights that allow us to better contextualize our work and strengthen our impact. We are fierce advocates for the potential of the child nutrition programs on which we work and regularly lead and support various legislative and policy implement efforts. As part of our implementation efforts, we provide financial and technical support directly to meal providers, fostering quicker adoption of best practices and leading to more and better meals getting to more kids.

During the early days of the pandemic, the US Department of Agriculture issued waivers that allowed for significant expansion and streamlining of the child nutrition programs we work on (school breakfast, school lunch, afterschool meals, and summer meals). These waivers led to big increases in the number of meals served and reductions in the number of children experiencing food insecurity. Sadly, these waivers expired at the end of the 2021-22 school year. We took both a proactive and reactive approach to this change. Proactively, we seized upon the clear benefit of the waivers to successfully pass legislation here in Maine to provide breakfast and lunch to all students free of charge, permanently enshrining a key waiver provision and ensuring that we don't revert back to less effective systems now that the federal waiver is gone. The timing of the waiver expirations was particularly challenging, coming right before the critical summertime period when childhood food insecurity is at its peak and combined with historically high food costs and ongoing staffing and supply chain challenges. Recognizing that summer meal providers were going to experience increased need, we launched a fundraising campaign and leveraged our networks and resources, successfully allowing us to increase our summer meals grantmaking by 50%, ultimately awarding nearly $375,000 to programs across the state to prevent critical cuts to meal programs.