Healthy Meck Shared Gifting: Redesigning How Resources Move

For years, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Food Policy Council has convened stakeholders across government, agriculture, nonprofit leadership, and community advocacy to strengthen our regional food system.

We understand policy, infrastructure and something else:

The organizations and leaders closest to community are often the furthest from funding.

Healthy Meck Shared Gifting was created to address that imbalance — a partnership between the Healthy Meck coalition, Community Food Strategies, and CMFPC.

Rethinking Who Decides

Traditional funding models tend to concentrate decision-making power in institutions, often unintentionally favoring large, established nonprofits with development teams and long-standing funder relationships.

Meanwhile, smaller, grassroots, community-based organizations are doing critical, intentional, relational work in neighborhoods every day — without the same access to flexible funding.

Participatory grantmaking shifts that dynamic.

It redistributes not just dollars, but decision-making power. It invites community-informed processes. It centers trust, proximity, and lived experience.

Shared Gifting is built on that premise.

A Statewide Model, Rooted Locally

We are proud to partner with the Healthy Meck coalition, powered by the Duke Endowment and chaired by our Board Chair — and Community Food Strategies, a statewide leader in strengthening food policy councils and advancing community-driven food systems across North Carolina.

Through its shared gifting model, Community Food Strategies has supported councils and grassroots leaders in moving from dialogue to coordinated, community-centered action. CMFPC has participated in multiple Community Food Strategies cohorts over the years. Those experiences fundamentally shaped how we think about collaboration, shared accountability, and the role of power in food systems work.

Participating in the inception and growth of the Healthy Meck coalition has also been transformative, as we help facilitate network strengthening and advance improved health and wellness in North Mecklenburg.

Healthy Meck Shared Gifting reflects that philosophy in action.

CMFPC serves as the fiscal and facilitation partner — responsibly stewarding funds while guiding a transparent, peer-informed process. In doing so, we are bringing a proven statewide collaborative model home to Mecklenburg County and adapting it to strengthen our local ecosystem.

Why This Matters Now

Food systems across the country are navigating volatility — federal uncertainty, rising food costs, shifting benefit structures, and increasing strain on local providers.

Grassroots organizations absorb that pressure first.

Shared Gifting is one way we strengthen resilience before crisis becomes collapse.

By investing in small, grassroots organizations, we:

• Expand neighborhood-level capacity

• Strengthen community member participation within neighborhoods

• Increase relational infrastructure between community leaders

• Keep resources circulating locally

• Support strategic community investment

We are choosing to invest in proximity.

We are choosing to trust lived experience.

We are choosing to strengthen the organizations doing the daily, relational work that holds neighborhoods together.

This is about building durable, community infrastructure that can withstand volatility and grow with intention.

At CMFPC, we believe regional resilience is built from the ground up — not through extraction, but through strategic investment in local leadership.

Healthy Meck Shared Gifting is one step in that direction.

And it will not be the last.