The government of Montgomery County refuses to support the hunger relief efforts of So What Else despite our desperate pleas.

Since 2020, our nonprofit has recovered over 42,000,000 pounds of food, preventing 35 million meals from needlessly going to waste in landfills. This food has not only been recovered but then redistributed to underserved communities across Montgomery County and beyond. 

After our hunger relief work attracted attention in 2021, we were approached by county officials and asked to scale up our operations to support the County HUBS, a partnership of eight community based organizations and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). DHHS needed a more affordable way to source food for their clients in order for their operation to be sustainable long term, so our organization stepped up to the plate to ensure no one in our county would go without.

Scaling up our operations to accommodate these partners was a considerable expense, and an undertaking we could not take on without financial support. We took on the task to serve these HUBS, despite lacking the funding, because of future financial promises made to us by the Montgomery County Government. But, due to a technical error, the money that was promised to us by county officials never materialized forcing our organization to operate at a deficit. 

We have made repeated appeals to the government to support our work, and they have repeatedly refused. This year alone So What Else has rescued 9 million pounds of food, a record for any Montgomery County organization, yet the county still refuses to support our efforts to feed their residents.

We cannot continue to operate without government backing. Thousands of our clients will go hungry without their support… thousands of parents, grandparents, infants, toddlers, and children who do not deserve to face preventable food insecurity will struggle without the necessary support. Please join us in urging the County Council and the County Executive, Mark Elrich, to financially support So What Else, the largest food provider in Montgomery County by signing and sharing this petition. Thank you.