Help Jonathan raise money

Founded in 1988, Food For Thought is a nonprofit organization committed to the principle that nutritious food provides fundamental healing support to people with medical conditions. The organization, which the New York Times called perhaps “the hippest” food bank around, operates out of a facility in the Northern California town of Forestville.

Food For Thought was born in response to the AIDS crisis of the late 1980s and 1990s. At that time, many Sonoma County residents living with HIV or AIDS—who were mostly members of our LGBTQ community—were not getting enough to eat. A concerned group of Sonoma County AIDS activists, led by Betsy Van Dyke, decided to solve this critical problem by founding an organization to feed people living with HIV/AIDS.

This grassroots group began meeting around a kitchen table once a week for six months. They developed what would become Food For Thought’s HIV Nutrition Program, and they created an organizational structure and fundraising plan to support it.

Once Food For Thought became an official nonprofit, it was operated entirely with volunteer support for many years. In 1999, the organization moved to our Forestville site, surrounded by organic gardens, in a functional solar-powered facility with a welcoming client service area, a walk-in cooler and freezer, a grocery store-style set-up, and room for offices and meetings.

Over the years, Food For Thought has adapted to meet the changing needs of our clients, moving from offering basic palliative support to providing comprehensive nutrition services as improved drugs enabled those living with HIV to live longer. In 2014, Food For Thought realized a long-held dream of expanding our mission: to provide the same life-sustaining nutrition services to neighbors dealing with other medical illnesses as well as HIV.

From the beginning, the organization has enjoyed tremendous support from the community in the form of food, money and volunteers. The success of Food For Thought speaks greatly to the goodwill of the people of Sonoma County.