Sharing Excess

Sharing Excess (SE) is a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that uses surplus food as a solution to scarcity. While over 40 million people in the US face food insecurity, nearly 40% of the nation's food supply is going to waste. Our mission is to solve the logistical barrier between excess and scarcity by partnering with retailers, wholesalers, and farmers to deliver surplus food to a network of non-profit organizations that alleviate local food insecurity.

Sharing Excess aims to create a more sustainable and equitable food system by providing access to ex

Goal One: Create a more sustainable and equitable food system by providing access to excess for everyone.

Goal Two: De-stigmatize the act of free food distribution through messaging and cultural alignment.

Goal Three: Provide opportunities for human connection, cultural understanding, and education through the sharing of food.

In 2022, our team invested in Beyond Trenches, a DEI nonprofit, to strategically grow our organizational management and practices in a way that best aligns our mission, vision, and values with the communities we are serving.

Sharing Excess has been an adaptable organization since our inception. By the time the pandemic hit in 2020, Sharing Excess was working with about 40 grocery stores and retailers that donated food, but the needs of the community were about to skyrocket. A feature in The Philadelphia Inquirer helped spread the word of the vital work Sharing Excess was doing in the community, and soon we had more retailers and wholesalers reaching out to pitch in with food that would otherwise go to waste while they temporarily closed at the onset of the pandemic. Sharing Excess was able to find a warehouse in West Philadelphia and the 2,500-sqaure-foot warehouse now serves as Sharing Excess’ home base, where we work with approximately 180 grocery stores, wholesalers, farmers and more to distribute excess food to the Philadelphia region with over 300 community organizations. What started as a grassroots effort at Drexel has now grown into a larger movement that has fed over 300,000 community members.