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Get to know Sharing Excess and learn how they’re helping fight food scarcity in Philadelphia.
— Nourhan Ibrahim, Development Director
Sharing Excess is a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that uses surplus food as a solution to
scarcity. Our mission is to bridge the gap between excess and scarcity by partnering with
retailers, wholesalers, and farmers to deliver surplus food to a network of nonprofits, food
banks, and community organizations to alleviate local food insecurity. Over 85% of the food we
distribute is fresh produce, and we prioritize providing people with fresh, nutritious food free of
charge. Our food rescue programs have had tremendous impact on the Philadelphia community,
redistributing over 15 million pounds of fresh food that would otherwise have gone to waste.
In 2020, we were awarded $5,000 from the Spruce Foundation, at a time when our organization
was undergoing rapid growth. In the wake of the pandemic, food insecurity in Philadelphia was
an even more urgent issue, and this grant from the Spruce Foundation allowed us to deliver
100,000 pounds of food (equivalent to over 80,000 meals) to Philadelphians in need. Every
pound of food rescued diverts 73.2 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from landfills, so this
grant also empowered a large environmental impact – 7,320,000 lbs. of GHG emissions diverted!
Thanks to the Spruce Foundation, we were able to support renovations to our warehouse space
in West Philadelphia, allowing us to maximize storage space and capacity for rescuing larger
volumes of food.
Our organization specializes in the rescue, capture, and redistribution of perishable surplus
food. The niche field of food rescue is highly logistical, labor intensive, and requires a multi-
pronged coordinated effort daily. As a startup entering its fifth year, we have built our entire
operations around being agile, flexible, and innovative to changing environments. Our custom-
built Food Rescue App helps us be a good disruptor in the food ecosystem – allowing us to
streamline operations, track data, and engage partners and volunteers. Our volunteer network
has a massive reach to younger audiences, especially college students, and has proven
instrumental in getting the youth of the city involved in their own communities. Our network of
volunteers has grown from 100 volunteers to nearly 800 over the past three years, and we now
work with more than 300 community partners throughout the region.
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Want to support the Spruce Foundation in our efforts to provide grants to youth-serving nonprofits?