South Dakota's largest hunger-relief organization, Feeding South Dakota, experienced a sharp increase in the number of people using its services in 2024.
Susanne Gale is the Senior Development Officer at Feeding South Dakota. She says the organization is serving about 20 percent more families than it did in 2023.
"To put that into a few more statistics for people to understand," Gale said. "We see it as about one in nine adults across the state are in need of what we are doing, so have food insecurity. And that relates to about one in six children."
At the same time, Feeding South Dakota experienced a drop in overall donations over the past year.
"So donations of food, monetary donations, all of those things that help support us and our mission to get food to people across the state. We're seeing a decrease in that right now," said Gale.
To help drive up donations, Gale says Feeding South Dakota is running a year end match initiative in which all donations made by Dec. 31 are doubled.
"Don't ever think that just that small donation doesn't make a difference. It really does," said Gale. "Something we like to tell people is that $1 is actually equivalent to about three meals at Feeding South Dakota. So every dollar really has a huge impact on what we're doing."
