Raley\u2019s Food For Families, the charity arm of the West Sacramento-based grocery chain, has grown into a multimillion-dollar annual effort, funding a dozen food agencies and paying for forklifts, refrigerators and shelves that local sites need to accept more donations.<\/p>\n
The program began as a holiday canned food drive in 1986 that later transformed into a year-round effort. Still, today the program is largely funded by donations ranging from $1 to $10, made by customers at the register at Raley\u2019s, Bel Air and Nob Hill stores in California and Nevada.<\/p>\n
Last year, shoppers collectively gave $4.3 million to Raley\u2019s Food for Families.<\/p>\n
The in-store donations are used by local food banks to buy food from Raley\u2019s, at the same price that the grocery chain spent to buy it, with no markup. Raley\u2019s delivers the food in its trucks, free of charge.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur job is to run Food for Families as we run the company,\u201d said Julie Teel, who joined the board in 2017 and was appointed president in 2020, during a recent interview at the grocery chain\u2019s West Sacramento headquarters. \u201cEverybody still wants to donate\u2026 But I think we make it possible for them to give and be confident that it\u2019s going to help other people\u2019s money go further.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teel\u2019s mother-in-law, Joyce Raley Teel, daughter of Raley\u2019s founder Tom Raley, founded the effort along with former company president Chuck Collings.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe just felt that no one should ever give up,\u201d Julie Teel said. \u201cWhen she met people, she saw that potential, but that they just needed a hand up, and not a handout.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1989, the holiday food drive became a year-round program, and in 1990 the company\u2019s stores began accepting cash donations at the register.<\/p>\n
That continued until 2018, when Raley\u2019s made it possible for customers to contribute digitally, allowing for more \u201cspontaneity at the register,\u201d Teel said. Annual collections soared from to nearly $5 million that year, from around $1.5 million.<\/p>\n
![\"Julie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SAC_025_262608_JV_JULIE_TEEL.JPG\" "\\"SAC_025_262608_JV_JULIE_TEEL.JPG\\"")
Julie Teel, president of Raley’s Food For Families, poses for a portrait at the Raley’s Cos. headquarters in West Sacramento on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026 JOS\u00c9 LUIS VILLEGAS jvillegas@sacbee.com <\/p>\n
In 2018, the nonprofit also streamlined its donations from around 100 food banks and food pantries to 12 central agencies \u2014 like Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services, Yolo Food Bank and Feeding the Foothills, said Operations Manager Zoe Edwards. That allowed the nonprofit to make more efficient and impactful donations to a smaller number of sites, Edwards said, which those agencies could then allocate as needed among their networks of 2,400 other distribution sites, like churches and food closets.<\/p>\n
Then, in early 2025, the nonprofit began using some of the funds it raises through annual dinner and golf tournament events \u2014 which, unlike the customer donations, aren\u2019t restricted solely for stocking local food banks \u2014 to make it easier for food banks to accept larger numbers of donations.<\/p>\n
In 2025 it launched more than $340,000 of infrastructure grants, and in a second round earlier this year awarded $246,000. Together, the grants paid for 34 refrigeration devices, six food distribution vehicles, a dozen pallet jacks or forklifts, plus shelving and storage materials and hand trucks.<\/p>\n
Another round, of around $249,000, was awarded in late August.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the opportunity to provide all this food to our food bank partners \u2014 and then the partner agencies that receive support from them,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cBut if they don\u2019t have the infrastructure to safely store and distribute the food, are we really, fully helping them?\u201d<\/p>\n
The grocery chain covers the nonprofit\u2019s overhead costs: The Raley\u2019s finance team does the nonprofit\u2019s accounting work, and Teel and the nonprofit\u2019s other board members are volunteers.<\/p>\n
The donations made at the register remain in the communities in which they were given, and are distributed to an area food agency. That aspect, Teel said, appealed to her as a customer, before she joined the nonprofit\u2019s board, because she felt she could trust where her donation was going.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to be successful, you can\u2019t just be passionate about your mission,\u201d Teel said, \u201cYou have to be transparent, authentic \u2014 and you have to run it like a business.\u201d<\/p>\n
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