About a dozen people lined up outside Trinity Cathedral on Euclid Avenue on a recent Sunday morning.
When Eric Travis opened the doors at noon on the dot, the crowd flowed in to receive a ticket for a meal: a helping of chicken parmesan, salad, bread, a cookie and lemonade. Most showed up alone. But some came in pairs or with their kids. At least one baby got a ticket.
Trinity Cathedral has served a hot meal every Sunday since 1983. But in July, it and more than a dozen other hot meal sites in Cleveland lost funding from the Hunger Network, a nonprofit that coordinates food distribution across the city. The reason? The network’s expected funding from FEMA, a federal agency that responds to emergencies, never showed up. For more than a year, the Hunger Network filled in the gaps. This summer, it told churches it could no longer afford to pay.
Before the funding issues, the group’s network of churches and community centers served more than 40,500 meals a year. Now, those churches are grappling with how to continue offering hot meals to their communities. At Trinity Cathedral, the federal funding paid for about one in four meals a month, said Travis, who leads the hot meal program and works as the church’s associate for congregational ministry. Luckily, they have enough in church reserves to continue but are keeping an eye on portion sizes and grocery purchases, Travis said.
Not every church can keep the same schedule. At least two are considering cutting back on the number of meals they pass out per month. Other volunteers are dipping into their own income to keep the program open, though they’re unsure how long they can do so.
Church and nonprofit leaders worry the cutbacks will impact Cleveland’s vulnerable residents. Hot meal sites often serve those who find it difficult to cook for themselves, like people without housing or with disabilities. Linda Boyd, a trustee and the hot meal leader at Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church, said members of her congregation often take the meals to elderly people recovering from illness or who aren’t mobile.
“For those people, I’m concerned and wish we could do better,” said Boyd, whose church is cutting back from five meals a month to one, for now.
Organizations outside the Hunger Network, like Salvation Army and Catholic Charities, are still offering hot meals throughout the city, according to their websites. And churches who meet certain food safety guidelines can also partner with the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, allowing them to shop for free and reduced price groceries to make meals.
But shrinking hot meals are another chip away at food options for Clevelanders. More than 11,000 people stopped getting SNAP benefits between November and March after a government shutdown and leading up to federal cuts to the program. At the same time, grocery prices across the country are rising: a recent analysis by the Associated Press found buying food to eat at home has gotten 33% more expensive in U.S. cities since 2019.
Federal funding for the hot meals may return. Though FEMA didn’t pass out money last year, the federal government said this May it will resume doing so. But there are no details available yet about when or how much funding will be available, said Julie Johnson, the CEO of the Hunger Network.
Hunger Network sought hot meal solution for over a year
The Hunger Network has received funding from the federal Emergency Food and Shelter Program as far back as 2018, Johnson said. The total amount it receives fluctuates each year. It spiked during COVID and was $109,000 in 2024, the most recent year it got funding. The dollars go to 14 churches and community centers, as well as one kosher food pantry.
In 2025, that funding never came. First, it was paused as part of a broader halt on federal funding when the Trump administration took office. Then, while other federal funding resumed, the emergency food program didn’t.
For more than a year, the Hunger Network found solutions to keep the meal sites operating. After the federal funding paused, the nonprofit used money from its general fund to keep the hot meal sites open for six months. Then, Cuyahoga County chipped in $80,000 of emergency funding last July to keep the program afloat.
After that ran out this March, the Hunger Network once again started paying out of its own budget, thinking their investment would be temporary until federal funding came back.
But no details have emerged about when that will happen or what it will look like, Johnson said. Without solid information, the nonprofit decided to end funding for the hot meal program at the end of June.
The Hunger Network is not the only Cleveland organization that historically received funding from the Emergency Food and Shelter Program. So has the Salvation Army and other nonprofits, according to the United Way of Greater Cleveland, which receives the money and distributes it.
Jennifer Kons, the United Way’s Vice President of Community Impact, said she couldn’t speak to how the funding freeze impacted other nonprofits in Cleveland. Generally, though, she said many don’t rely too heavily on the federal funding source because the amount the federal government gives out changes a lot year-to-year.
“That doesn’t mean that (these funds) don’t have an impact — they do have an impact,” Kons said. “But they’re never meant to be baseline funds.”
How churches are keeping their meal sites open
Many churches and their leaders see the hot meal as a vital part of their duty to the community. But shrinking and aging congregations make it difficult to run the programs, which often rely on volunteers and donations from the church. Second Ebenezer Missionary Baptist church can seat hundreds, but only about 40 people come each week, estimated Linda Waters, a church missionary who leads the hot meal program there.
That makes it tough to run and fund the program. At Second Ebenezer, Waters is the shopper, the chef and the server for the twice-a-month meal. Her goal is to prepare a quality meal. Recently, she brought homemade chicken wings, turkey, candied yams, collard greens, corn on the cob, fresh fruit and strawberry cake.
Even before the funding freeze, there wasn’t enough money for the quality of meals Waters wanted to serve. And the church didn’t have any money to chip in. So she used to spend about $200 a month of her own income to supplement the $200 she got from the Hunger Network.
Without the federal funding, she said, she’s now spending $400 a month to support the entire program. She’ll sometimes get donations from friends or family members.
So Waters committed to providing dinners through September — but no longer than that.
“I don’t have a savings or a pot to fall back on,” Waters said. “So that’s where I’m at.”
At Mount Olive, funds are also limited, Boyd said. The church is now fully supporting the program, but that means they’ll scale back from offering meals five days a month to one. She’s “hoping and praying” to increase that based on contributions from church members.
Meanwhile, at Trinity, Travis said the church has enough in reserves to last a little over a year. But he’s being extra careful with portion sizes: volunteers are serving with a scoop now, instead of a spoon, to ensure everyone gets the same amount. The church is also hyper-vigilant about buying low-cost groceries — most are from Aldi’s, a discount grocery store — and not over-purchasing food.
