GRANT GRAPH · the independent grant data index

Who funds food pantries in Wisconsin? Grant data from tax filings and federal listings

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

From 2025-2026 IRS filings: 704 grants totaling $6.6 million went to food pantries-related work in Wisconsin. 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 pantries in Wisconsin, from their own tax filings

Funder	Grants	Total
UNITED WAY OF GREATER MILWAUKEE &	4	$533,536
DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC	4	$444,659
THE OSCAR RENNEBOHM FOUNDATION INC	4	$350,000
AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC	12	$338,031
OTTO BREMER TRUST	4	$312,000
HUGH J ANDERSEN FOUNDATION	32	$307,000
THE ROOTS AND WINGS FOUNDATION INC	2	$300,000
SUB-ZERO GROUP FOUNDATION INC	2	$275,000
GOOD SHEPHERD LUTHERAN CHURCH	2	$222,736
EDWARD AND HANNAH M RUTLEDGE CHARITIES	11	$175,851

Across all funders: 704 grants, $6.6 million total, median grant $1,500.

Largest recipients in Wisconsin

Recipient	Grants	Total
RIVER FOOD PANTRY	14	$850,169
THE RIVER FOOD PANTRY	27	$735,460
River Food Pantry Inc	3	$432,309
VIVENT HEALTH	2	$264,791
MADISON AREA FOOD PANTRY GARDENS	9	$244,616
BADGER PRAIRIE NEEDS NETWORK INC	2	$225,000
GOOD SHEPHERD LUTHERAN CHURCH	2	$222,736
FOOD PANTRY OF WAUKESHA COUNTY INC	11	$206,651
MILWAUKEE CHRISTIAN CENTER INC	1	$173,534
THE RIVER FOOD PANTRY INC	6	$159,456

Open federal opportunities addressing food pantries (nonprofit-eligible)

Federal opportunities are listed nationally: a nonprofit in Wisconsin 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 pantry"; this table also matches the agency vocabulary: food insecurity, emergency food.

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 221 listings mentioning "food pantries" anywhere (retrieved 2026-09-17); 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.