Great Plains Food Bank Packathon mobilizes 184 volunteers to pack 14,025 meals

Four 90-minute shifts turned 184 employee volunteers into 14,025 meals at Great Plains Food Bank’s 2026 Packathon, a compact model of how corporate volunteerism can produce measurable food access fast.

The four-day event drew 23 corporate teams to warehouse sites in Bismarck and Fargo, where volunteers packed 16,831 pounds of food into one-pound bags. The work centered on basic staples that move easily through the pantry system: black beans, white rice and brown rice. That repackaging mattered as much as the headcount. Bulk food becomes easier to handle, transport and distribute once it is broken down into household-size portions, which is exactly the kind of operational design that makes a short volunteer shift useful instead of symbolic.

Packathon is now in its 14th year, and Great Plains says the first one took place in 2013. The event has settled into a repeatable structure: 90-minute shifts, an eight-member roster cap, two teams per shift and a $2,000 contribution from each participating group to help cover the cost to move the food. Great Plains says that money helps pay for trucking, fuel, vehicle maintenance and distribution, which turns the volunteer event into a broader logistics exercise rather than a one-off packing party.

That structure is the real blueprint for organizations that depend on outside volunteers. Clear tasks, a finite time block and a visible output let businesses send staff for a shift without losing the workday, while the nonprofit gets production it can count, distribute and budget around. Rebecca Knutson, Great Plains Food Bank’s corporate relations officer, called Packathon “a powerful example of what’s possible when businesses come together to support their communities,” adding that the teams are helping ensure children, families and seniors across North Dakota and Clay County, Minnesota, have the meals they need.

The reach behind those shifts is broader than the warehouse floor. Great Plains says its network serves 205 food pantries, shelters and meal sites in more than 100 communities, and that 93% of the food distributed by that network comes from the food bank on average. The organization says it provides 12.6 million meals each year to more than 167,000 people, and its trucks traveled 217,775 miles last year delivering food and essential goods. More than 2,000 volunteers also help each year across Fargo, Bismarck and mobile pantry stops.

Packathon’s scale was slightly lower than in 2025, when 210 volunteers from 27 corporate teams packed 19,744 pounds of food for 16,453 meals, but the 2026 event still showed the same formula working: simple products, short shifts and a clear path from warehouse labor to household meals. With sponsors including Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, Cargill, Bell Insurance and Basin Electric Power Cooperative, and a black-bean donation from Boilingberg Seed Co., Great Plains paired corporate giving with a production system that turns volunteer time into food that moves.