Organization's President Recaps 2025, Advises Greater Charleston On The Challenges That Lie Ahead

LCFB Press Release

Every year presents new challenges and opportunities, and this past year was certainly no different! The Feeding America Map the Meal Gap 2025 told us that the number of food insecure neighbors across our ten-county service area continues to increase. Going into 2026, we will see a further increase of 19,680 food insecure neighbors – bringing the total number of food insecure neighbors across our ten-county service area to 204,160 – an increase of 55.6% over a three-year period.

Throughout 2025, the food banking system faced unprecedented challenges and disruptions. Along with the increased need for food assistance, costs continued to rise – especially basic household costs such as groceries, rent, utilities, and medical costs – expenses that every family needs to be able to afford to maintain a secure livelihood. At the same time, ongoing uncertainty around potential funding reductions and consistent access to critical benefit services, particularly in key federal programs, put additional pressure on our food banking system. The November federal government shutdown created additional unprecedented disruptions, especially for SNAP and other related federal food-aid program recipients.

Despite these challenges, you continue to bring our mission to life—uniting our community to ensure equitable, dignified, and consistent access to food—and advancing our vision of a nourished, thriving coastal South Carolina. Because of your generosity, countless neighbors across our ten counties have had access to nutritious food and hope for the future, even during some of their toughest moments. As we look ahead to what is likely to be another challenging year, there will be a number of priorities and opportunities we focus on, some of which include:

• An unrelenting focus on ensuring our neighbors have equitable access to nutritious food, enabling them to lead a nourished and thriving life. We will continue to be laser focused on identifying our neighbors' needs and how this continues to change over time, listening to our neighbors and what they can tell us in terms of their own experience, but most importantly, their ideas and suggestions. We will be completing our first Operational Response Plan as required by Feeding America's Partner Food Bank Agreement. This is a plan that will set out our strategies to provide more proportionate access to food resources in those parts of our service area where food access is disproportionately lower relative to food insecurity across our entire service area.
• We will continue to assess our constantly changing operational context, regularly referring to the risk assessment work conducted in 2025 and ensuring we remain vigilant and able to respond proactively in the face of the inevitable challenges that lay ahead. Most importantly, this includes taking advantage of opportunities and new ways of working that increase efficiency and impact for our neighbors.　
• 2026 marks the third year of our strategic framework. We will conduct a "strategic refresh" process – we will look back over the past three years, capture our progress, reflect on our learning, and incorporate this into the next iteration of our organizational strategy. We will review our Mission, Vision, and Strategic Priorities to ensure they remain relevant, making the necessary adjustments and additions, and formulating a set of revised goals for the next three-year period. Importantly, this work will draw from the suggestions from staff that were provided during the recent "managing through uncertainties" series of staff conversations.
• We will continue to optimize the use of our new Southern Regional Food Center – not just in the southern region but across the whole of our ten coastal county service area.
• Building off of the successful upgrade of our new inventory and financial platform to Ceres 6, we will continue to develop efficiencies around our various inventory processes – seeking ways to streamline processes, and, in doing so, reducing duplication and achieving greater cross-departmental alignment and collaboration in our food procurement, receiving, and shipping processes.
• Evolving our Community Programs with the rolling out of a number of new initiatives with the emphasis on achieving greater impact, especially where we have lost federal funding. This will include revamping some of our current initiatives which, without the restraints of federal funding, will enable us greater flexibility to implement in new ways that best suit our neighbors' specific circumstances – for example, our summer meals program.
• Strengthen our volunteer network in the southern region by leveraging the new facility to offer meaningful, flexible opportunities that deepen community involvement.

Time and again, you meet the moment. You support our neighbors, you push us forward, and you live our mission, beside us and with purpose. Thank you for all you have given and the care you have shown for our community. Your impact is real, and it ripples far beyond what any of us can see.

With much gratitude and appreciation,

Nick Osborne

President & CEO

To learn more about LCFB & their upcoming Chefs' Feast visit the website at https://lowcountryfoodbank.org/

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