As food banks prepare for cuts to federal support, community members try to fill the gap.
October brings the first full fiscal year since major cuts to federal food assistance programs were put into effect. Local fundraising efforts bring communities together to try to make up for these losses.
Hunger Vs. Hunger in year five has raised $301,804 for the Bellingham Food Bank — the most it’s raised since its inception five years ago. These funds will cover just over 7.5% of the food bank’s budget and feed approximately 375 families for a year.
The fundraising campaign — created and organized by real estate agent Ethan Hunger — runs from May to August and begins with a series of community events, including benefit concerts, fun runs and pickleball tournaments. The main event is his 12K Calorie Challenge, where he completes a series of intense physical challenges to burn over 12,000 calories in a day. He said he does this each year in an effort to “ruin a day,” reminding people that no matter how hard he tries, what he endures will never be as bad as waking up hungry every morning.
Starting at midnight and finishing just under 20 hours later, Hunger biked to Artist Point and back, took a 55-minute High-Intensity Interval Training class, swam the length of Lake Whatcom, mountain biked on Galbraith for an hour and then ran five miles to Fairhaven. He burned a total of 13,104 calories.
This year, Ethan was awarded the Washington State Volunteer Service Award and chosen as one of Whatcom Young Professionals’ Top 7 Under 40 for his work combating food insecurity.
Stephanie Sisson, the community outreach coordinator for the Bellingham Food Bank, described the success of its summer fundraising campaigns as “excellent.” In addition to Hunger Vs. Hunger, the food bank partnered with the Community Food Co-Op, where customers could add a donation to their total at checkout to support the food bank, which has so far yielded $172,000. The co-op has extended it to October and are hoping to pass $200,000.
The busiest season
The Ferndale Food Bank held its inaugural Summer Food Drive Challenge over the month of June, where 600 employees across three Ferndale-based companies — Samson Rope, Superfeet and the Phillips 66 — raised more than $11,000 and collected over 1,500 pounds of food.
The challenge was created to address the seasonal increase in families relying on its services that occurs when children are out of school and families face higher food expenses, according to a press release.
Skagit Valley Neighbors in Need’s annual Letter Carriers Food Drive brought in about 10.5 tons worth of food to help them get through summer. The food bank partnered with the Northsound Branch 450 post office, asking local residents to leave a bag of nonperishable food items beside their mailboxes, which their letter carriers then collected and delivered to the food bank.
Demand heightened by federal cuts
According to Sierra Crook, Director of the Ferndale Food Bank, the Whatcom County Food Bank Network has lost over $1 million in annual funding from federal cuts. Crook said that one of the biggest losses is the cut to the Emergency Food Assistance Program. According to Sisson, this has been decreased by about one-third, amounting to approximately $800,000 worth of food previously designated for Whatcom County.
While local food banks rely mostly on local government and community support, Crook said the Ferndale Food Bank’s food purchasing would have to be scaled up by about 30% to match the demand this year; something she says wasn’t possible for the first time due to these funding cuts. To fill that gap, the food bank would need to raise $250,000.
Now, recent cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, mean that all of the approximately one million recipients in Washington will see their benefits reduced, and around 130,000 of them may lose their benefits entirely. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the cuts to SNAP to equal approximately $186 billion, or about 20% of its budget, between 2025 and 2034.
These include a decrease in federal funding for administrative staffing, which would leave the state on the hook for $87.8 million dollars in administrative costs, and the elimination of funding for the SNAP Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention Grant Program.
The cuts are part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which quickly enacted a series of budgetary changes to federal spending. While it boasted an expected decrease in federal spending by about $1.7 trillion by cutting programs like SNAP, it also includes changes that increase spending by about $4.5 trillion. Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation research group, explained on the podcast The Deduction that this will result in higher interest rates on our national debt, costing the U.S. more money and reducing the ability to fund important programs, including those related to defense, supporting the elderly, or supporting low-income households, among others.
In addition to funding cuts to SNAP, work requirements and other household eligibility factors — such as having a disabled family member or a child under the age of 18 in the home — have now been adjusted to make it more difficult for individuals and households to qualify for benefits. It also eliminates exemptions of work requirements that had previously been provided to homeless individuals, veterans and foster care individuals and raises age-based exemptions from 55 to 65 years old.
The elimination of SNAP benefits for individuals classified as aliens extends to those who have qualified for conditional entry under asylum and refugee laws or for urgent humanitarian reasons, such as survivors of domestic violence or human trafficking.
Crook said, “As these resources become more limited, the need is not slowing down or going away, so receiving this support sustainably into the future is becoming more needed than ever.”
Additionally, the USDA recently announced it will no longer publish its annual study of hunger.
“I wonder why that’s happening in conjunction with the largest cut to food stamps in the program’s history,” Bellingham Food Bank Executive Director Mike Cohen wrote in a press release.
Increased reliance on food banks
Sisson said the Bellingham Food Bank is preparing for an increase in shoppers’ reliance on their services. The cuts to SNAP benefits could mean more people will rely on them, but staff are mainly expecting those who already utilize food banks to rely on them more.
According to Crook, the Ferndale Food Bank has seen a 25% increase in the number of households served since the last fiscal year. While that increase has been steady, she said the increase in number of times households visit the food banks has jumped from 30% to 57% visiting every week, indicating that people who already use the food bank are relying on it much more often. Additionally, she reported a 4% increase in the number of children they serve and a 3.5% rise in the number of seniors.
Fox said that Skagit Valley Neighbors in need was already averaging about 500 to 550 shoppers per week, but in recent months, he has seen an increase of about 20 to 25 new visitors each week with about 10 of those on average returning the following week. He said this is compounded by an increase in gas prices and that some people have to choose between buying gas and receiving food. The food bank has had people literally “running in to get food before (the food bank) close(s),” he said.
Helping Hands Food Bank and Solution Center in Skagit reported 9,500 households served in 2024 with 250,473 total visits across all locations. The 2025 State of Lopez Report from the Lopez Island Family Resource Center reports a total of 1,528 individuals fed by their Food Share program. That’s nearly 3 times the amount reported in 2021.
Grants become more competitive
Fox said another source of funding that’s keeping Skagit Valley Neighbors in Need afloat is a grant from the Washington State Department of Agriculture, which recently approved the funding that local food banks had been hoping for. He said, “It made everybody breathe a big sigh of relief knowing we weren’t going to run out of food.”
The Ferndale Food Bank’s application for a grant it received two years in a row was denied this year due to the increasingly competitive nature of the grant, said Crook. The termination of federal assistance programs such as the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreements, a federal program that offered funding specifically for purchasing from local, regional and underrepresented producers, has meant that the Whatcom County Food Bank Network has been unable to support local marginalized farms as much as it has in previous years. This is a double blow, reducing the amount of fresh produce available, and curtailing income for local growers who also have families to feed.
However, the Ferndale Food Bank was given a local purchasing grant from the state as well as some private funding that has allowed it to maintain some small farm partnerships. It has also been able to lean on the county for the last two years, through funding from the Healthy Children’s Fund for diapers and formulas, and by including it in the county budget for the next two years, providing $1.5 million for food purchasing.
Community support
Crook said that the Ferndale Food Bank has a strong volunteer base. “I think people really want to feel like they can help right now in the midst of so much challenge,” she said. “Food bank work feels applicable and tangible and people are looking to contribute in that way right now and we are thankful for this support.”
Sisson described Hunger Vs. Hunger as “an absolute joy.”
“Seeing so many walks of life come to participate, support Ethan, and learn about hunger in their community is remarkable … It’s been excellent to see the engagement, and also I think people are starting to get a deeper understanding of our work,” she said.
After his calorie challenge, Hunger said in a speech, “A community that is scared right now (is) one that could use all the help that they can get. I often dream of a day where basic rights are guaranteed, individuals such as myself aren’t needed to make a difference, community support … isn’t relied upon to keep our least fortunate members afloat. Today is not that day.
“Today, I feel scared and I feel stressed; yet I feel proud, I feel hopeful, I feel gratitude, and I feel momentum.”
— By Rebecca Sutch
Also read in Salish Current:
• “On the front line of food insecurity,” May 9, 2025
• “At local food banks, accelerating need exceeds supply,” Nov. 22, 2024
• “Food banks and visitors struggle during food and funding scarcity,” April 7, 2023
• “Empty cupboards, new anxieties increase with rising food insecurity,” April 7, 2023
• “Local food banks have been addressing a hunger crisis — even before COVID,” Feb. 5, 2021