Fall Food Drive, Nov 1–30. Host a bin
Donate
Volunteers load paper grocery bags and boxes into an SUV beside a community building

About us

Neighbors feeding neighbors.

Feed Tahoe rescues good food from local businesses and gets it to neighbors who need it. We're a program of The Marcella Foundation.

Join us Our story

Our mission

Rescue food. Feed people. Protect the planet.

We aim to ensure that all surplus, delicious food in our community doesn’t go to landfill, but gets to families in our community that need it most.

We prevent perfectly good food from entering the waste stream by redirecting it to those who are experiencing food insecurity.

Thanks to our volunteer drivers, our Food Rescue Heroes, we are able to recover and redistribute perfectly healthy food directly to people who need it.

We are planning to support food rescue missions in South Lake Tahoe and the surrounding areas.

Feed Tahoe is a direct program of the Marcella Foundation.

Feed Tahoe volunteers carry bags of rescued food into the Red Lodge
straight to people who need it

Why we do it

Too much food, too many hungry.

Feed Tahoe was founded as a direct response to the disconnect between food waste, hunger, and environmental sustainability.

Up to 40% of our food is wasted globally, over 1.3 billion tons a year.

1 in 7people go hungry every day.

According to ReFED, if we recovered about half (46 billion pounds) of the food being wasted, we could feed every hungry person in the United States 3 meals a day, every day.

Not to mention, food waste is an environmental problem. Food production uses 10% of the energy budget, 50% of the land and 80% of all freshwater consumed in the United States. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, over 97% of food waste generated ends up in a landfill.

Black-and-white portrait of Marcella Fannan, smiling, her hair in a bouffant, wearing a beaded necklace
Marcella Fannan

Our story · in honor of Marcella

This story begins with kindness.

From early childhood, I was deeply impacted by the kindness of my grandmother, Marcella.

Marcella Fannan was my grandmother, and not just any grandma: she was the kindest human I ever met. As the daughter of immigrants from Eastern Europe, she faced discrimination not only because of her Jewish heritage, but because she was significantly hearing impaired. Attending school, she was made to wear a headset that allowed her to hear but also brought the accompanying ridicule from classmates. Her life’s challenges were many, including being a single mom, managing a rental property on her own, and many other hardships. She was an avid reader her entire life, and introduced both of her sons to reading very early, reading to them at home before bed and taking them to the Los Angeles Public Library at Fifth and Grand Avenue in downtown L.A. every two weeks. This was a ritual that was never missed and always loved. She was very kind to all the people she met and always had the nicest things to say about everyone.

But through it all, Marcella had a generous heart and kind disposition that made an indelible mark on my entire family.

That’s why, when I had the opportunity to create a foundation, I had to name it after her. Marcella embodied the kindness that I want my foundation to convey.

Growing up in Tahoe, I was like any other Tahoe kid: my parents moved to Tahoe enamored with its beauty. They worked at the casinos, started a family, and my dad went on to become a 5th grade teacher at Bijou Elementary School.

Of course, my family moved to Tahoe for the great outdoors… and like every kid my age, I just wanted to play video games.

So when I got into UC Santa Barbara during some of the most transformative years in tech, I had no idea that I would go on to create one of the biggest mobile advertising businesses in the world. It started with working on everything from the #1 game on the iPhone at the time, Tap Tap Revenge, and culminated with co-founding Chartboost, which we sold to Zynga in 2021.

The mission of the Marcella Foundation is simple: Think Big and Make a Difference in South Lake Tahoe. My hope is that the spirit of entrepreneurship, creativity, and impact comes through in every scholarship, grant, and new program that we support. May Marcella’s kindness touch the lives of many in our community.

Sean Fannan, Founder

Our team

The people behind it.

  • Portrait of Sean Fannan, Founder

    Sean Fannan

    Founder

    As the Founder of the Marcella Foundation, Sean has dedicated the majority of his career to the gaming industry, everything from making one of the most successful iPhone games of all time, Tap Tap Revenge, to starting an advertising company for mobile games that reached hundreds of millions of users. He aspires to leverage his expertise in entrepreneurship and engineering to give back to the community where he grew up, and looks forward to partnering with people to help build a better community in the city of South Lake Tahoe.

  • Portrait of Melissa Uppendahl, Executive Director

    Melissa Uppendahl

    Executive Director

    Melissa serves as the Executive Director of the Marcella Foundation, where she leads the organization’s work in food security, literacy, and youth mentorship. As the founding director, she has shaped the Foundation’s direction from day one by creating FeedTahoe, launching the Imagination Library countywide, and developing the Fannan Fellowship program. Melissa previously founded Lift Literature and worked in financial management of environmental restoration projects across Lake Tahoe. She holds a BA in Business Administration from St. Mary’s College and an MPA from CSU Chico. A mom of three boys, Melissa is passionate about big ideas and building the connections to make them happen, from helping every child learn to read to reducing hunger and inspiring young entrepreneurs.

  • Portrait of Kele Song, Director of Strategy

    Kele Song

    Director of Strategy

    Kele Song serves as the Director of Strategy at the Marcella Foundation, where she spearheads the development of the organization’s strategic initiatives. With a background as a seasoned Product Manager in Silicon Valley, Kele brings a deep-seated passion for innovation and problem-solving to her role. Equipped with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and communications, coupled with a master’s degree in public policy, Kele possesses a formidable skill set in strategic planning. Her expertise ensures that the Foundation remains agile and effective in achieving its mission.

  • Portrait of Lily Summerville, FeedTahoe Coordinator

    Lily Summerville

    FeedTahoe Coordinator

    Lily joins the Foundation with a passion for sustainability and community engagement, and is using that to guide FeedTahoe initiatives. After working as a California Climate Actions Corps Fellow in South Lake Tahoe focused on food waste diversion, she is transitioning to edible food recovery to help feed those in need. She graduated from the University of California, Davis with a BS in Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning, grounding her work approach in stewardship and advocacy. Lily is excited to couple climate expertise with relationship building and planning to help FeedTahoe grow and thrive.

Rescue good food. Feed Tahoe.

It takes a whole town. Pick your way in.

VolunteerGive