Quarter One Impact · The Tepper Foundation
Rescuing food,
feeding New Jersey.
With The Tepper Foundation's two-year, $600,000 investment, Sharing Excess is building New Jersey's most efficient food rescue network — and it's already moving.
Sharing Excess · Lifetime Impact
Our Impact to Date
A snapshot of Sharing Excess in our lifetime. Real food, real meals, real people, and real emissions kept out of the atmosphere.
Pounds of food rescued
Meals served
People reached
Lbs of greenhouse gas diverted
Live Rescue Network
Loading live rescue locations.
How It Works
We have three interconnected programs that move food from field to table. They are strategically positioned to rescue surplus early in the supply chain, where large volumes go to waste and can be cost-effectively rescued.
For Farms
Direct Link
We move agricultural surplus straight from growers into our hubs in major cities, turning what would have been left in the field into millions of meals for communities that need consistent, fresh, healthy food.
For Wholesalers
Wholesale Rescue
Inside the produce terminals that supply America's cities, we rescue truckload volumes of fresh food daily and route them to food banks and pantries before they can be dumped.
For Grocers
Retail Rescue
Once a city hub is online, smaller format vehicles fan out to local grocers, layering in retail recovery and community engagement so every part of the supply chain is connected.
How Food Moves to New Jersey
Three rescue pipelines, one network.
Every pound that reaches a New Jersey neighbor moves through one of three rescue channels — each one tuned to a different point in the food supply chain.
Channel 01
Direct Link from Farms
Field-level rescue partnerships with regional growers, catching surplus before it's plowed under.
Channel 02
Philly Wholesale Market
Daily pickups from the largest wholesale produce hub on the East Coast — pallet-scale volume, sorted and routed same-day.
Channel 03
Retail Rescue
Recurring pickups from grocery and retail partners, including Trader Joe's, keeping high-quality surplus out of dumpsters.
Grant Goals · Two-Year Investment
Building New Jersey's most efficient food rescue network — and making it last.
Scale statewide rescue infrastructure
Expand pickup and distribution capacity across North and South Jersey, building a network that can reliably move high volumes of surplus food from source to community.
Rescue millions of pounds for NJ families
Set the operational foundation to divert massive volumes of fresh, nutritious food from waste — translating directly into meals for communities that need them most.
Develop a sustainable, lasting model
Invest in the systems, partnerships, and operational discipline needed to ensure this network keeps delivering long after the grant period ends.
Quarter One Impact · New Jersey
Progress against the goals, in the first three months.
of fresh food rescued and redistributed across New Jersey this quarter.
equivalent put on the tables of families who need them most.
in retail food value moved from waste to community.
estimated to have been served through partner distributions.
average delivery cadence — meeting partners where they are, with frequencies ranging from weekly to monthly based on partner needs.
engaged from Camden-based chapters powering local distributions.
On the ground
5 pop-up distributions hosted in Q1 of the grant period, creating accessible food distribution points.
Reach
A network that covers New Jersey — north to south.
28 NJ Zip Codes Served
Q1 · 2026
31 recipient partners. 28 zip codes.
From Newark and Jersey City to Camden and Trenton, the network now reaches communities across both halves of the state. On average we serve each partner biweekly, with cadences ranging from weekly to monthly depending on what each partner can absorb and distribute.
Grant Progress · Partnerships
Building relationships with the partners who can move the most food.
These are a few of the partners our distribution team has been coordinating food rescue partnerships with, and a major goal of ours over the next 2 years is to deepen partnerships with NJ partners.
Food Bank of South Jersey
Jefferson Health New Jersey
NJ Agricultural Society
Community Engagement
Meeting neighbors in the languages they speak.
Two multilingual outreach campaigns launched this quarter to make sure rescued food reaches the families most often left out of traditional aid pipelines.
Multilingual outreach campaigns launched
Pop-up distributions at accessible community access points
Volunteers engaged from Camden-based chapters
Flyering in other languages
Outreach designed for the blocks around each pop-up.
We used multilingual flyering at bus stops and high-traffic neighborhood corners so community members could hear about distributions in formats and languages that felt familiar — making each pop-up more visible, more accessible, and more rooted in the communities we were serving.
- Placed at transit stops and street-level community touchpoints
- Designed to signal that distributions were open and easy to access
- Used multiple languages to reach neighbors often missed by default outreach
- Paired with on-the-ground volunteer engagement at each site
Org-Wide Infrastructure
Building the backbone that makes scale possible.
Technology · Surplus
We launched Surplus.
Our new technology platform — purpose-built to match excess food with the partners and routes that can move it fastest. Surplus is what lets us serve partners on the cadence that works for them, from weekly to monthly, at scale.
- Dynamic inventory built for rescued food — variable unit weights, pack sizes, gleaning, repacking, and composting
- Real-time routing for in-house drivers and 3PL partners, extending reach beyond our hub cities
- Every pound tracked donor-to-recipient, powering tax credit reports and live impact dashboards for partners
- Transparent cost-sharing built in, so growth doesn't depend on philanthropy alone
What sets Surplus apart
Food rescue, rethought from the ground up.
Off-the-shelf ERPs choke on marginal and combined inventories. Surplus is purpose-built for the messy realities of rescued food — and it's what lets us scale into new markets like New Jersey without reinventing the wheel.
Inventory
Variable weights, down to the pound.
Lot-level tracking with dynamic unit weights, pack sizes, and quality grades — plus native support for gleaning, repacking, and composting.
Routing
Last-mile and long-haul, one system.
Optimized dispatch for in-house drivers in hub cities, with built-in 3PL partner routing that extends reach across North America.
Analytics
Every pound, donor to recipient.
End-to-end visibility through routes, warehouses, transfers, and distributions — so we can optimize transit cost and prove impact in real time.
Partner tools
Tax credits and dashboards, automated.
Donors get comprehensive donation reports, receipts, and interactive impact dashboards — turning each rescue into a win-win flywheel.
Network
2,400+ recipients, beyond the big food banks.
Our hub-based model moves food into and out of cities affordably, reaching mutual aid and community organizations the major banks can't.
Sustainability
Cost sharing, built in.
Transparent cost-sharing agreements bring partners into the work, so growth scales beyond pure philanthropic funding.
Strategy & Leadership
Building a stronger core capacity.
As we scale in New Jersey, we're investing in the organizational backbone — strategy and leadership — that makes sustained impact possible.
5-Year Strategic Plan
We're working with The Bridgespan Group to develop a five-year business plan focused on creating a more sustainable model as we scale — and we're excited to apply those learnings directly to our New Jersey expansion.
Chief Development Officer Search
We're actively conducting our CDO search to bring on a strategic fundraising leader who will help us diversify revenue, deepen donor relationships, and ensure the New Jersey program has the resources it needs for the long term.
Major Opportunity · Sourcing Directly from Farms
There's 20 billion pounds of unharvested produce on American farms. We know how to access it.
For each of these pounds, we know the grower, the region, and the crop. Based on planting cycles and historical patterns, this surplus shows up every year. These are the farms where we already have the relationships to move product.
West
- California · 1.43B
- Washington · 130M
- Montana · 101M
- Idaho · 72.5M
- Arizona · 17M
- Oregon · 5M
South
- Arkansas · 100M
- Mississippi · 100M
- Texas · 47M
- Florida · 26M
- Virginia · 15M
- West Virginia · 15M
Midwest
- Michigan · 120M
- Wisconsin · 61M
Northeast
- New York · 80M
- New Jersey · 45M
- Pennsylvania · 28M
National logistics network
A network that reaches all 50 states.
We use a network of 3PL providers and move product through our Direct Link program, which lets us reach any food bank in the United States with truckloads of fresh produce — all connected through our app and technology.
What a rescue looks like
A single truckload moves roughly 40,000 pounds of fresh produce — enough to feed thousands of families in a single delivery from farm to community.
Major Opportunity · Agricultural Mega Rescues
6 million pounds of NJ surplus, coming our way this fall.
Fall is New Jersey's biggest agricultural surplus window. We're forecasting roughly six million pounds of rescuable produce across the region — and we'll be ready.
Bell peppers
Peaches
Squash
Cucumbers
Tomatoes
What's Next · Q2 Follow-Ups
Where we're focused before our next check-in.
Grow high-volume recipient partners
Build relationships with more NJ recipients who can absorb large donations, so we can expand Direct Link from Farms straight into the state.
Expand the retail rescue program
Deepen and broaden recurring pickups from grocery and retail partners across New Jersey.
Refine the project budget
Continue making targeted investments in food rescue transportation and community engagement.
Strengthen core capacity
Continue building org infrastructure, with focused sourcing of new NJ funders to support the long-term program.
An Ask
Two introductions that could move the needle.
Recipient partners
Can you introduce us to any New Jersey recipient partners who could absorb large volumes of fresh produce? These relationships are what unlock Direct Link rescues straight into the state.
Funders
Are there NJ-focused funders you think we should be connecting with? In New York, introductions from Robin Hood have been instrumental to our fundraising progress — we'd love to build a similar base of support around the New Jersey program.
Thank You
This is what your first quarter built.
The Tepper Foundation's commitment isn't funding a program — it's funding the infrastructure that lets fresh food reach 168,000 neighbors in a single quarter. We can't wait to show you what year one looks like in full.
2-Year Commitment
For New Jersey expansion