Great Plains Food Bank honors partners for major hunger relief support
Great Plains Food Bank honored partners that delivered cash, labor and emergency logistics, including $915,000 in shutdown aid that helped move 450,000 pounds of food.
Great Plains Food Bank used its 2025 Hunger Relief Champion awards to put a number on partnership: money, labor and logistics that moved food when demand surged. The honorees announced May 20, 2026, were Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota Caring Foundation, Fargo Cass Public Health, House Of Prayer Lutheran Church and Gov. Kelly Armstrong, each recognized for support that went beyond goodwill and into the mechanics of food distribution.
The clearest example came during the 2025 government shutdown, when Great Plains Food Bank activated an emergency response plan to bring in and distribute an additional 1 million pounds of food. State contingency funds of $915,000 from Armstrong and the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services helped the food bank purchase and distribute more than 450,000 pounds of food and support an estimated 24,000 additional households. The food bank said the shutdown response was expected to push nearly 3.5 million pounds through the system across November and December, far above its typical pace of about 1 million pounds a month.
Fargo Cass Public Health earned recognition for the kind of operational help that often gets overlooked in nonprofit awards: staffing support, backpack deliveries, fleet vehicle assistance and a large pop-up distribution that served 400 households. That mix mattered because it did not just supply food, it helped Great Plains Food Bank move product, reach families quickly and keep the distribution network from slowing down under pressure.
House Of Prayer Lutheran Church was honored for more than 1,600 volunteer hours since 2023, along with financial support and regular hands-on work in the warehouse and at community distributions. Church volunteers first started serving in 2022 and became a familiar presence in the food bank’s operations, a reminder that retention matters as much as recruitment when a nonprofit depends on steady labor for sorting, packing and distribution-site work.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota Caring Foundation was recognized for a longstanding commitment that has topped $94,000 since 2017, funding Cultural Food Pop-Ups, Giving Hearts Day initiatives, disaster response support and Packathon partnerships. Great Plains Food Bank says it is North Dakota’s only food bank and the state’s largest hunger-relief organization, serving North Dakota and Clay County, Minnesota through 205 pantries, shelters, soup kitchens and feeding programs. Its 2025 annual report said 167,163 neighbors turned to the food bank and its partner network, up 11% from the year before, while more than 14.8 million pounds of food were distributed.
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