Mobile food rescue in elite eight percent of nonprofits to receive four consecutive 4-star ratings

OAK PARK, Mich. – Charity Navigator named Forgotten Harvest to its national “10 Slam-Dunk Charities” list. The list includes only the nonprofit organizations across the country that have best demonstrated a focus on fiscal health – best managing and growing its finances – while also providing clear parameters respecting the rights of its donors.

Charity Navigator, founded in 2001, is the nation’s largest and most-utilized evaluator of nonprofit organizations across the country. Charity Navigator’s team of professional analysts examine the tens of thousands of nonprofit financial documents demonstrating the financial health of more than 5,000 of America’s best-known charities to develop an unbiased, objective, numbers-based rating for each. The rating is based on two broad areas of a charity’s financial health: how responsibly it functions day-to-day and how well positioned it is to sustain programs over time.

Forgotten Harvest is the only mobile food rescue operation in the metropolitan area providing prepared and perishable foods and is ranked the second leading food rescue operation in the nation.

With 25 refrigerated trucks, operating six days per week, Forgotten Harvest picks up approximately 75,000 pounds of food per day from more than 455 donors. The food is then delivered to soup kitchens, pantries and shelters throughout Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties, amounting to a more than 2,000 square-mile area. Donors include large grocers, restaurants, public venues, commercial farms, dairies, food brokers and a variety of other resources meeting all quality and labeling standards imposed by federal, state and local laws and regulations.

About Forgotten Harvest

Forgotten Harvest was formed in 1990 to fight two problems: hunger and waste. Forgotten Harvest “rescued” 19.3 million pounds of food last year by collecting surplus prepared and perishable food from 455 sources, including grocery stores, fruit and vegetable markets, restaurants, caterers, dairies, farmers, wholesale food distributors and other Health Department-approved sources. This donated food, which would otherwise go to waste, is delivered free-of-charge to 165 emergency food providers in the Metro Detroit area.