Feeding Frenzy
6th May 2022
Feeding Our Future and a related nonprofit, Partners in Nutrition (d/b/a Partners in Quality Care), were both founded in Minnesota in 2016 to help local organizations gain access to two lucrative federal free-food programs, the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). Both were created to supplement the better-known federal school lunch program by filling the gaps during those hours (and months) that school is out of session. In Minnesota, the programs are overseen by the state Department of Education (MDE). It was the department, suspecting fraud in the programs, that alerted the FBI who then started the year-long investigation.
The lead nonprofits, known as sponsors, were just middlemen. For a 10 percent fee, they stitched together networks of hundreds of sites, dozens of subsidiary nonprofits, and private food vendors to distribute meals to hungry children. Many of these sites are believed to be completely legitimate, while others have been placed under suspicion. It is the private food vendors who are believed by the FBI to be the culprits in the fraud, taking tens of millions of dollars from the program, without feeding children.