Loaves & Fishes launches $15 million campaign to expand food access

Loaves & Fishes Community Services is putting a dollar figure on scale. Its new $15 million Nourish Together campaign is designed to push the Aurora-based nonprofit beyond a 10,000-person-a-week operation and into a network that can serve two to three times as many neighbors.

The campaign launched April 29 and is built around three priorities: Hub 2.0, Spoke Network 2.0 and CARES 2.0. That matters because the money is not aimed at one-off programming. It is meant to expand the Food Distribution Hub in Aurora, strengthen the 13 community-based distribution sites connected to it, and add the kind of shared resources and co-buying power that can lower costs across the region. The organization says food insecurity in DuPage, Kane, Kendall and Will counties has risen by more than 50 percent since 2019, and that one in five people in its four-county service area are living in poverty or low income.

The operating model already looks more like an infrastructure system than a volunteer pantry network. Loaves & Fishes says its hub-and-spoke structure, anchored by the Aurora facility and including a Grocery Market in Naperville, has lowered its cost to serve by 40 percent. Its annual report says client numbers more than tripled after the hub opened. By April 2025, the organization was distributing 20 tons of food a day and buying four times as much food as it did three years earlier. That is the scale donors are being asked to underwrite: more storage, more handling capacity and more predictable distribution.

The campaign is arriving with public money already attached. On March 24, DuPage County approved $2.5 million for the Aurora expansion as part of a $4.8 million food-insecurity package that also included support for the Northern Illinois Food Bank and The Conservation Foundation’s Farm to Pantry Program. County officials said the Aurora project would grow from 30,000 square feet to 62,000 square feet, nearly quadruple cold storage capacity and nearly double the number of clients served, with total project cost estimated at $8 million.

Endeavor Health also gave the effort a major push in December 2025 with a $5 million Impact Award, the first awarded through its Community Investment Fund. The campaign page says donations under $35,000 will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $500,000 through the Ronald L. McDaniel Foundation, giving smaller gifts an immediate multiplier. For nonprofit leaders watching food-recovery logistics, the message is clear: Loaves & Fishes is not just asking for more money, it is buying the warehouse space, partner capacity and distribution reach needed to move more food through a growing regional system.