Gates Foundation grant boosts Edmonds Food Bank’s new home campaign

A $500,000 grant from the Gates Foundation pushed Edmonds Food Bank’s capital campaign past $3.3 million and moved the long-running push for a permanent home closer to a site that can actually handle the work. The food bank is now looking for land for a building that would replace its cramped base in the basement of Edmonds United Methodist Church.

That space has become too small for the scale of the operation. Edmonds Food Bank recently served groceries for 1,670 households in a single week, a snapshot of the pressure on staff, volunteers and pickup routes as demand keeps climbing. The organization also offers home delivery for seniors and people with disabilities, pop-up food distributions and grocery rescue pickups, services that depend on enough room to sort, store and move food without bottlenecks.

The new building is meant to change that daily workflow. Plans call for more food storage, more distribution hours, a community garden and a commercial teaching kitchen. It would also create dedicated space for partner groups that offer nutrition education, financial literacy, legal help, health care access and workforce support, turning the food bank into a fuller service hub rather than just a place where groceries change hands.

For the people working the floor, that shift matters. Better circulation for loading and sorting, more secure storage and room for partners would make the operation less reactive and more predictable, especially as the food bank tries to serve more households without sacrificing dignity or speed. Earlier reporting put Edmonds Food Bank at more than 350 families a week and about 47,000 to 50,000 meals a month, and other materials describe weekly service reaching about 1,000 households across on-site distributions, delivery, mobile market stops and partner sites.

The campaign also reflects how far the food bank has come since Peggy Kennedy and Gretchen Dixon founded it in 1981 in a closet at Edmonds United Methodist Church, with no refrigerator or freezer space. It later moved to a classroom and then to Kennedy Hall. The organization says its capital campaign is about creating a welcoming space for food access, connection, education and support during times of crisis.

The need is not abstract. The United States Department of Agriculture says 13.5% of U.S. households, or 18.0 million households, experienced food insecurity in 2023. Edmonds Food Bank launched a $12 million capital campaign in 2024, demand rose 30% that year, and the City of Edmonds secured $850,000 in federal funding in February for the new building, backed by U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen and Sen. Maria Cantwell. The Gates Foundation toured the food bank in March during a distribution, and its latest grant adds momentum to a campaign that is now about land, layout and whether the next building can finally match the need.