GRANT GRAPH · the independent grant data index

Who funds food banks in California? Grant data from tax filings and federal listings

Name: food bank grant funding data (Grant Graph)
Creator: Grant Graph
License: public domain sources; compilation freely citable with attribution

From 2025-2026 IRS filings: 2,007 grants totaling $101.1 million went to food banks-related work in California. The largest funders, the typical grant size, and what is open at the federal level right now, all from public records.

The largest private funders of food banks in California, from their own tax filings

Funder	Grants	Total
AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC	79	$19.7 million
Feeding America	24	$19.4 million
DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC	22	$7.8 million
MORGAN STANLEY GLOBAL IMPACT FUNDING TRUST INC	23	$4.1 million
BALAY KO FOUNDATION	4	$2.7 million
CHRONICLE SEASON OF SHARING FUND	9	$2.2 million
CALFOODS LOGISTICS	30	$1.3 million
DELTA DENTAL COMMUNITY CARE FOUNDATION	21	$1.2 million
Means Database Inc	4	$1.2 million
CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA	22	$1.2 million

Across all funders: 2,007 grants, $101.1 million total, median grant $9,500.

Largest recipients in California

Recipient	Grants	Total
LOS ANGELES REGIONAL FOOD BANK	203	$18.1 million
ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK	80	$6.0 million
SF-Marin Food Bank	41	$5.9 million
Central California Food Bank	46	$5.4 million
SAN FRANCISCO FOOD BANK	60	$5.2 million
THE ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK INC	34	$4.5 million
SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK OF SANTA CLARA AND SAN MATEO COUNTIES	8	$4.0 million
SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK OF ORANGE COUNTY	25	$3.0 million
JACOBS & CUSHMAN SAN DIEGO FOOD BANK	51	$2.9 million
REDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK	81	$2.9 million

Open federal opportunities addressing food banks (nonprofit-eligible)

Federal opportunities are listed nationally: a nonprofit in California can apply to any of them, so this table is not filtered by state.

Matched against the full synopsis text of every posted opportunity, not the listing title alone; restricted to opportunities open to nonprofit applicants. Federal programs rarely use the phrase "food bank"; this table also matches the agency vocabulary: food insecurity, emergency food, hunger, food assistance.

Number	Title	Agency	Award range	Closes
USDA-AMS-TM-CCG-G-26-0001	Cold Chain Grants for Emergency Food Assistance	Agricultural Marketing Service	$2.0 million to $7.5 million	10/01/2026

grants.gov's own loose keyword search returns 262 listings mentioning "food banks" anywhere (retrieved 2026-09-18); the table above is our stricter relevance cut.

What these numbers do not say

Private-funder figures come from 990 and 990-PF filings as released by the IRS; filings lag reality by one to two years, and organizations below the e-file thresholds are not represented.
A funder appearing here funded this cause historically. It is not a statement that they are accepting applications.
Filings include corrections: voided checks, returned grants and corpus-distribution adjustments appear as negative amounts and are counted as filed. They are a fraction of a percent of the total.
Cause matching is keyword-based against grant purpose text and recipient names; it undercounts grants described in other words.

Grant Graph is an independent, free index built from public data: IRS Form 990 series e-file releases and the grants.gov API. It is not affiliated with grants.gov or any federal agency. Every figure above is reproducible from the cited public sources.