Published: November 24, 2025
Three weeks into the “SNAP Into Action” community food drive, it’s time to put some numbers to the contributions folks have made. USM’s various teams and individuals have kept food pantry staff busy with their outpouring of support, and with less than a week until the end of the official competition at the time of writing, some teams are pulling ahead on the leaderboard.
As of Thursday, November 20th, total donations have tallied up to 2,198 pounds of food. This includes food donated to the pantries directly, as well as items purchased from the pantries’ Amazon lists by the community. Additionally, a total of $7,995 in monetary donations was raised through the USM Foundation for the campus food pantries. In the wake of the instability, confusion, and concerns over the future of food assistance programs, it’s been inspiring to see this community lock in to support the people most affected by recent events.
Speaking of the folks that locked in, some teams have been working extra hard this month. The top five teams on the leaderboard at the time of writing are the following: the Glickman Family Library with 225.5 points, the Breadwinners (at the Adult Student Success Center) with 205 points, Nursing with 175 points, the USM Gorham Library with 161 points, and USM Public Safety with 149 points. These aren’t the final scores, as there are still four days of donations that need to be tallied, but these scores and the overall donations paint a picture of this community’s generosity and willingness to mobilize in the face of crisis.
A common refrain in meetings and casual discussions is how isolated or siloed USM’s many communities and departments can feel from each other, but events like this suggest that it doesn’t take much to break down those barriers and engage in collective action. Food instability is a year-round problem that was affecting people well before November 1st. Hopefully, USM’s enthusiastic response to this call to action is a sign that this event is not just a one-off, and many community members have expressed a wish for this to become a regular tradition. “SNAP Into Action” would be a perfectly extraordinary origin story for such a tradition, using a moment of unprecedented instability to inspire such a swift and positive response.
