Morgan Stanley Foundation grants $32,000 to Atlanta food bank
A $32,000 grant will stock school pantry partners in June and July, when Atlanta families lose the school-day meal safety net and summer hunger peaks.
A $32,000 grant from the Morgan Stanley Foundation will buy food for school pantry partners across Atlanta and north Georgia as summer break leaves families with children facing a harder stretch for groceries.
The Atlanta Community Food Bank said the money will support food distribution in June and July, when school-based programs often become one of the few reliable sources of help for parents trying to keep meals on the table. Its school pantry partner network serves early learning centers, elementary, middle and high schools where at least 50% of students are enrolled in the Free or Reduced Lunch Program, and families typically pick up food during school events or other scheduled times.
That matters in a region where the food bank estimates 820,010 people are food insecure. Atlanta Community Food Bank works with more than 700 community-based nonprofit partners and distributes more than 9 million meals each month, a scale that makes the summer gap especially operational. The grant is small compared with a major capital award, but in practice it goes straight into food purchases for a specific distribution channel that can move quickly when school cafeterias close and family budgets tighten.
Georgia’s summer meal programs exist for the same reason: many children depend on school meals during the academic year and face a sharper risk of hunger when classes are out. The school pantry model helps bridge that break by putting food at the places families already know and trust, instead of asking them to travel farther or wait for a general pantry line. For staff and volunteers who manage pickup windows, route coordination and school-site distribution, that kind of targeted funding can mean steadier shelves and fewer last-minute scrambles.
The Atlanta grant is one of 33 food banks receiving Morgan Stanley Foundation funding this year through the Feeding America network. Morgan Stanley said it has partnered with Feeding America since 2009 and that its support has topped $50 million over that period. In 2024, the company announced an $8 million grant over four years to expand child and family feeding programs, showing that the Atlanta award fits into a broader push to back child hunger interventions rather than one-off relief.
Atlanta Community Food Bank marked another milestone in 2023 when it distributed its one billionth meal. This latest grant will not move the scale of the network by itself, but it is aimed at one of the most vulnerable stretches of the year, when school-based feeding systems can no longer cover the need on their own.
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