Freeze Out Hunger
Giving Pantries Room to Grow
When a new food pantry opens its doors, every donation can make a difference. But without a freezer, there are limits to what they can accept—including the protein families need most. So we help give rural Iowa pantries the space to say yes to more good food.
Building the Infrastructure Behind Food Access
When a new food pantry opens its doors, it takes more than food to keep those doors open. Pantries need a place to safely store donations that come their way, and a freezer can make all the difference.
Freeze Out Hunger, a program of the Deb and Jeff Hansen Foundation and Iowa Select Farms, provides freezers to new food pantries in rural Iowa, helping them welcome more nutritious food and serve more families in their communities.
A freezer gives a pantry the ability to say yes to more. Yes to pork and other proteins. Yes to dairy, breads, fruits, vegetables, and other frozen foods. And yes to more opportunities to put good, nutritious food on the tables of families who need it.
A New Pantry, A New Opportunity
Our first Freeze Out Hunger freezer was delivered to the Humeston-Garden Grove Food Pantry in Garden Grove, Iowa. Since opening in March 2026, the pantry has already grown to serve approximately 70 families each month.
The new freezer gives the pantry the ability to safely store and distribute more frozen foods, expanding the variety of nutritious options available to local families—and providing a stronger foundation for the pantry to grow.
