Welcome to a very brief overview of the UCSC Holiday Food & Fund Drive!
Check out and share this link to our 2025-2026 Holiday Food and Fund Drive Info Deck. You can share it with your whole department and anyone else!
What We Do
We uplift and support the work of the Second Harvest Food Bank (SHFB) of Santa Cruz:
- Each winter, we organize and run UCSC’s Holiday Food & Fund Drive, raising tens of thousands of dollars!
- If you would like your own sub-team within the unified UCSC team, please contact Nathan McCall – nmccall@ucsc.edu.
- All year round, we have service volunteers who are willing to visit your department to:
- Educate your team about the food needs of the UCSC community and how they can direct people to get the food they need.
- Facilitate a hands-on experience for your team, wherein they will receive a tour of the food distribution center in Watsonville and participate in food preparation or distribution activities.
Why we support Second Harvest Food Bank
As you can read in this report, from the Center for Economic Justice and Action, Santa Cruz County: “Experiences of food insecurity … have been found to negatively impact health and well-being, child development, and academic performance. … Second Harvest Food Bank and its network of nonprofit and community partners … play an invaluable role in alleviating food insecurity in Santa Cruz County and must be fully supported.“
- In FY 2025, SHFB distributed food to our UCSC population via UCSC Redwood Free Market/Slug Support & Family Student Housing. There were 6,106 individuals served within 4,723 households for a total of 90,250 pounds of food.
- It is as simple as this: Second Harvest Food Bank can help more people, using the same amount of money, than other organizations or individuals. They can provide 3 meals for every $1 donated, due to their extensive relationships with farmers, retailers, food bank networks, and dedicated volunteers.
- SHFB sources over 10 million pounds of food each year from farms, grocery stores, food manufacturers, distributors, and individuals. They distribute this food to 100 food pantries, schools, soup kitchens, group homes, and youth centers… plus another 100 Second Harvest program sites!
- More than 60% of the food they distribute is fresh produce, making SHFB the Healthiest Food Bank in the nation.
- SHFB reaches over 65,000 people each month since COVID hit. Typically, these are children, seniors, veterans, homeless, working poor, and others who need some help from their neighbors to make it through a tough time.
That is why the purpose of the UCSC Holiday Food & Fund Drive community is to funnel resources to the Second Harvest Food Bank and educate the campus about how they are meeting the food needs of our UCSC community.
Who we are
The UCSC Staff Advisory Board stewards the Holiday Food and Fund Drive effort, as we have done for decades. You are welcome to reach out to our current SAB stewards for this effort if you would like to help organize, sponsor an event, or request assistance with anything related to the Holiday Food and Fund Drive:
- Campus Partners
- UCSC Dining, as they host the student portion of the HFFD for UCSC
- Student Volunteer Center, as they table and flyer to spread the word among their fellow students
- PPDO Sign Shop, as they sponsor posting banners and signage around campus
- SAB HFFD stewards
- Nathan McCall – nmccall@ucsc.edu
- Michelle Sohnlein – msohnlei@ucsc.edu