Grantee Feature: Health

Open Cupboard is a Twin Cities based nonprofit providing nourishing food for neighbors experiencing hunger while engaging the full community in the broader fight for increased food access. Open Cupboard operates multiple food distribution programs from drive-up and delivery food service to mobile food shelves and a free market model, ensuring that fresh, quality food is available and accessible to everyone.

The Constellation Fund provides targeted support for Today’s Harvest, Open Cupboard’s free market model offering fresh grocery items that are “rescued” daily from grocery stores, farms, and farmers markets—food that would otherwise go to waste—then redistributed through the market at no cost to shoppers. This food is sorted by volunteers and offered in a welcoming, market-style setting.

Minnesota is experiencing its most severe hunger crisis on record—and food shelf visits continue to rise. Today, one in ten families struggles to afford food. In 2024, there were a record-breaking 8.9 million visits to Minnesota food shelves—up a staggering 1.3 million from the year before. 

For many families, food insecurity rarely stands alone. Struggles to access food often exacerbate the effects of poverty: food insecurity and hunger are closely linked to higher rates of chronic illness, lower school performance, and diminished lifetime earnings. Minnesota’s rising food shelf visits reflect more than just steep grocery prices—they reveal the thin margin many households are living on, where a job loss, medical diagnosis or bill, and even a home or car repair can push a family into crisis.

Why Constellation Invests

Constellation’s evaluation of Open Cupboard found a model that is not only compassionate, but remarkably cost-effective. Alongside the tremendous economic and health benefits of increasing food access for families, the retail value alone of the food distributed by Open Cupboard’s Today’s Harvest markets is nearly six times greater than its operating costs. That efficiency comes from a web of innovative logistical feats many food access organizations don’t have the infrastructure to maintain, including sourcing, transporting, and distributing large volumes of perishable food every day.

Open Cupboard is proving that smart investments toward innovative solutions can help fight poverty and increase access to nourishing foods with speed, dignity, and scale.