The Des Moines Area Hunger Hike is an incorporated, not-for-profit independent entity (501c3). Our board is comprised of 12-15 individuals from a variety of faiths and professions who serve without compensation. Our recruiters, sponsors and hikers are all volunteers.
Over the last twenty years, $824,108 has been given to local and international organizations for food purposes, an average of more than $41,000 per year with a peak of $59,750 in 1990. Read more of our history.
Over 97% of each year's funds is allocated to a wide variety of service agencies for food purposes with less than 3% of funds going for required insurance, printing and postage expense. Forty percent of our receipts go to Church World Service/CROP for food and food-related programs. A wide variety of service agencies apply for and receive the remainder of the money for food purposes.
Our hike coincides with World Hunger Week and the awarding of the World Food Prize.
The Hunger Hike board designates a route for individuals and groups to hike together on the second Sunday afternoon in October as visible witness to their concern about hunger among our fellow humans, having made prior collections from friends and neighbors to give tangible evidence of this concern.
Our purpose:
- to increase community consciousness and concern about local and world-wide hunger and its root causes
- to raise funds to be used by non-profit agencies and programs to help alleviate the problem of hunger
