We only post major updates on this website a couple times per year. To see much more regular updates including pictures from food rescue routes, posts about new partnerships, & events we’re a part of that YOU can attend please scroll to the bottom of this page & follow our social media accounts linked to the little symbols for each platform. Facebook is the most regular one for updates & news, followed by Instagram. Twitter has been neglected but hopefully one of our board members will be taking that over soon.

If you see something that is glaringly out of date on this website, please feel free to email us at communitydrivenmn(at)gmail(dot)com & we’ll fix it.

Our mission:

“To help ensure that all people deserve and have all of their basic needs met from education, housing, food, and long-term stability through public education and direct charitable support.”

You can now make one-time or RECURRING tax-deductible donations here on our website:

This is a fresh start to organizing solutions to the age-old problems in our society of inequality & quality of life for all of us.

Our flagship Foodshare Program has been rescuing large amounts of surplus food from local groceries & restaurants and delivering that food to local food shelves & soup kitchens since May 1, 2019. Feel free to read more about our Foodshare Program by clicking “foodshare” on the website menu. This work is funded 100% by caring community members like you, so please consider donating to help with this work!

Feel free to read more about our ideas, organizing, and vision on this website & don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or to get involved.

2023 was a blur of a year, with many growing pains. We’ll have a big spring 2024 update posted here soon, in the meantime we’ll leave the below 2022 year-end message up as a snapshot of where we’ve been. Thank you all for the amazing support & I look forward to more growth in 2024!

-shugE Mississippi (AKA Christopher Allison)
Executive Director & co-founder

2022 Year-end message from our Executive Director:

(Feel free to access an online version of this message you can share on social media HERE)

It’s been quite a ride here at Community Driven, building programs that rescue food from going to waste & partnering with food shelves & soup kitchens in the Twin Cities.

Thank you for joining us on this journey!

As some of you know (& can read more about in this recent article: link here), I’ve personally been on this journey for quite some time. This journey started for me in the 1990’s cooking free community meals with several local chapters of “Food Not Bombs” & continued as I worked full-time for several other local food rescue nonprofits, until finally finding my true niche at Community Driven.

Since May of 2019 we’ve been building Community Driven’s food rescue & distribution operation…each year rescuing surplus food from more & more businesses. During this process we’ve always intentionally focused on rescuing food that no other organization will rescue. We’re not in the business of competing with other good nonprofits & inflating our numbers by rescuing food that someone else would gladly deal with. Instead we would rather rescue less food sometimes, if it better allows us to identify sources of food that would truly go to waste if we did not do our work.

Small neighborhood businesses are the bread & butter of this vision. Many of our food rescue partners are inconsistent in volume & frequency, which sometimes means more work in juggling routes & schedules, but we’re rewarded with the knowledge that we are truly doing work that no one else will.

When you support the work of Community Driven you are supporting a unique approach to food rescue that does not compete with other good causes. No one is doing exactly what we are doing & no one is building exactly what we are building.

In 2023 Community Drive will turn 4 years old, & I will have been doing this work myself for over 25 years. Some of you have been supporting my efforts longer than Community Driven has existed & recognize that this work is bigger than any one nonprofit, or any one person (including me).

Some of you also know our Board Chair Craig Drehmel, who also has worked side by side with me building our food rescue routes, driving our food rescue vehicle (“Laura”), & lifting countless boxes of food with me. This chapter of my food rescue journey in the Twin Cities would not be as successful as it is right now without the hard work & dedication of Craig, & I want to end 2022 by openly thanking him. Thank you so very much, Craig!

In 2023 we will continue to grow & expand our work. Our food rescue vehicle (“Laura”) is not going to last much longer, & frankly our volume of rescued food is outgrowing her size. We need to purchase a larger vehicle soon. We also feel that as we still push through the realities of COVID’s effects on our work, we’ll soon need to resume our search for more public space to run our operation out of. During the worst of COVID it worked perfectly to run this operation out of my home & keep our safety bubble small. We’ve already brought on board a new staff member (hello Leah!) who has joined myself & Craig in regular food rescue routes, and as we grow we expect we’ll have more people joining in this work, which means we need to move this operation to a public office soon.

A new food rescue vehicle & a new public-facing office are just two obvious things we need to raise funds for in 2023 as we grow. We also need to be prepared for unexpected challenges (hopefully nothing as intense as the global pandemic that started before Community Driven turned one year old), & we need to continue to think creatively and approach this work in ways that no one else has. Of course this all means we need to raise more funding.

As Community Driven gets older we are slowly getting approved for more grant funding, but we expect most of our funding will continue to come from individual small donors like you.

Thank you for reading this far, & thank you for joining us this far in this journey. We are making a difference in people’s lives & we hope you’ll continue to be a part of this work in 2023.

Here’s a few very specific things you can do this week to help:

- Please consider sharing this message on your social media & tell your friends & family about our work. If you want a facebook friendly version of this email to share there, you can find it on Community Driven's Facebook page HERE.

- If you have friends in a local business that deals with food (restaurant, grocery, cafe, bakery, caterer, etcetera), please ask them if they’ve heard of Community Driven & please encourage them to reach out & start working with us. Feel free to remind them that as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt charity we can help their bottom line by giving them tax-deduction receipts for the value of food we rescue from them.

- Please consider signing up for a recurring donation on our website (HERE). You can choose any amount at whatever frequency works for you! Regular recurring donations are the best way to help us budget for expanding our work.

- If you cannot afford to sign up for a recurring donation yet that’s OK! You can make a one-time donation anytime…AND you can host a fundraiser at your home at no cost to you. Feel free to reach out to us & we will gladly help you host a meet & greet where we’ll give a presentation to your neighbors, friends, & family in the comfort of your home or yard.


Once again thank you for all the past, present, & future support. We ARE making a difference in people’s lives!



Sincerely in solidarity & community,

Shuge Mississippi (AKA Christopher Allison)
Executive Director & Co-Founder
Community Driven

APRIL 2022 UPDATE! (left on our website for now as a neat snapshot into where we were with this work in April of 2022) :

Hello & happy spring top all of our wonderful friends & supporters!
We’re just going to cut to the chase & announce some raw numbers:

In 2021 we rescued & distributed $232,674.48 worth (estimated value) of food that would have otherwise gone to waste.

During the first quarter of 2022 (Jan-Mar) we rescued & distributed $43,091.42 worth (estimated value).

Right now we are doing regularly scheduled pickups two days per week, but we are on the verge of huge growth. We are ready to launch new days & new routes as part of our food rescue & distribution work, the only thing that is holding us back is raising the funds to make everything happen. Please consider signing up for a recurring donation here on our website to help us expand in 2022!

April 2021 UPDATE!: (left on our website for now as a neat snapshot into where we were with this work in April of 2021)

Hello to all of our wonderful friends & supporters!

It's spring in the Twin Cities and we have an exciting update including:

1. -A breakdown of how amazing our Food Rescue & Food Distribution work has been growing. 2. -A fantastic documentary film about our work produced by local film group Northern Spotlight (it's less than 5 minutes long).
3. -An invitation to the "Community Driven Country Cavalcade" fundraiser & socially-distanced outdoor live music fundraiser at Hook & Ladder theater as part of their "Under the Canopy" series on May 14.

4. -A recap of the "Cardboardo" affordable art show we recently curated at Saint Paul Bagelry, connecting our food rescue work with promoting local art. 5. -An invitation to our newest art installation as a Grocery Gallery event at our food rescue partner Widmer's Super Market in Saint Paul. 6. -An invitation to a socially-distanced outdoor FUNdraiser in Minneapolis' Prospect Park neighborhood on April 24.

1. Growing our food rescue operation:

We've been working hard since our incorporation as an official nonprofit on May 1, 2019 focusing our food rescue work on surplus food that would truly go to waste if we were not doing this work.

We work hard to find the food waste that slips through the cracks and would not be rescued by any other organization....currently working with many local restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, and distribution warehouses to prevent healthy food from going to landfills, and instead partnering with local food shelves, & free meal programs to get this food to our neighbors who are in most need.

During our first calendar year (from incorporation on May 1 through the end of 2019) we rescued & distributed over $50,000 worth of food that would have otherwise gone to waste.

During our first fiscal year (May 2019 through April 2020) we rescued over $100,000 worth of food. This was done with less than $1 spent for every $15 worth of food our Food Rescue program saved!

During 2020 we rescued over $220,000 worth of food.

You're probably noticing a pattern with our food rescue volume…
...currently we are on pace to finish our current fiscal year (May 2020 through May 2021) having rescued well over $250,000 worth of surplus food!

2. Amazing short documentary film about Community Driven:

Local film magazine Northern Spotlight featured our work in a fantastic & short documentary film (takes less than 5 minutes to watch) you can watch & feel free to share with friends on your social media. Follow this link to watch Northern Spotlight’s short documentary film about Community Driven:
ht520682739tps://vimeo.com/

3. Community Driven “Country Cavalcade” FUNdraiser & show May 14: TICKETS ON-SALE NOW! Community Driven Country Cavalcade on Friday, May 14 'Under The Canopy' at The Hook and Ladder Theater. ~ A Fundraiser for Community Driven ~

Live Performances by Cole Diamond, Pleasure Horse, Jake Duda Band, Tyler Haag, DJ Truckstache + a special appearance by Jeff Larson with Cole Diamond band.
A free sandwich box meal provided by our food rescue program partners Widmer’s Market, Saint Paul Bagelry, Coopers Supervalu, & Chow Girls Catering!

BUY TICKETS (pods) -> https://utc-communitydriven.eventbrite.com

4. “CARDBOARDO”, our first pop-up art gallery event connecting art and our food justice work, was a huge success.

A huge thank you goes out to local Artist Cardbordo & our food rescue partners at Saint Paul Bagelry. In February we invaded the Roseville location of Saint Paul Bagelry and displayed Cardbordo’s affordable art in a pop-up gallery, facilitating a little extra joy and art in our lives. More can be read on our facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/CommunityDrivenMN/

5. Grocery Gallery NOW up at Widmer’s Market in St Paul! Our 2nd gallery show is up now! Community Driven is proud to partner with Widmer's Super Market & Rogue Citizen to present our first #GroceryGallery . Next time you stop in at Widmer's, look up! There's art there from Rogue Citizen's - MG All the art was created on used pizza pans from the now defunct Muddy Waters. It is up for your enjoyment and if you decide to purchase one you will be helping our Food Rescue and Art and Music Support Mission! Big thank you to Lizardman for the install assist!

6. FUNdraiser Saturday, April 24

We’re having a small socially distanced, outdoor fundraiser in the front yard of one of our supporters on Saturday, April 24. Please keep in mind that this FUNdraiser is primarily intended for residents of Minneapolis’ Prospect Park neighborhood, all covid precautions will be observed (including masks & socially distanced...even if you have been fully vaccinated).

We strongly urge supporters who do not live in the Prospect Park neighborhood to donate on our website and allow space for neighbors in Prospect Park to attend, although if you’ve really seriously been craving meeting the people behind the work of Community Driven & promise to make a donation at the event, feel free to email us at communitydrivenmn@gmail.com for details for attending the event.


From everyone at Community Driven, we would like to remind you that you can donate any time on our website at www.community-driven.org (including recurring donations), thank you for all of your wonderful support so far, and wish everyone a fantastic spring!