Year in and year out, McGuinness is the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma’s largest school food drive. In 2024, the community donated:
- 40,062 pounds of food
- $18,590.25 in cash
Early projections from Student Council adviser Laura Castrop project this year’s numbers to be behind those of last year, but no numbers are final.
“Looking at last years’ numbers, I think we will be just short,” Castrop said. “We will not know the exact number of meals until the food bank weighs the cans and sends us the information for this year.”
Coming out of the U.S. federal government’s longest shutdown, NPR reports that “the U.S. Department of Agriculture posted on its website that it would not pay the full $8 billion in SNAP benefits due for November.”
Like most food banks across the country, RFBO receives a large sum of money from the federal government to fulfill its services to the community. The shutdown, though now ended, disrupted a large part of the process for organizations like RFBO to receive those dollars.
“This year’s food & fund drive comes at a critical time as many of our neighbors are recovering from delayed federal assistance and paychecks. The food donated goes directly to families and individuals who visit food pantries and distribution sites in our network of over 1,300 partners,” the RFBO said in a statement.
The number of donations will be announced later this year after once released by the RFBO.
