Taylor Swift Donated Money To Local Food Banks, They Thought They Were ‘Getting Punked’

The Eras Tour is expected to bring in a record-breaking $1 billion, and singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has already begun to give back to society. Aside from her newsworthy decision to provide $100,000 bonuses to her tour truck drivers, Swift has discreetly made donations to local food banks and groups that fight hunger in the cities she travels to.

Swift's contributions not only enabled these groups to get more funding, but they also raised awareness of the problem of food hunger in the United States. It came as a surprise to many hunger relief groups to get a call from Swift's team, TODAY reported. “We thought, Are we getting punked?” says Michelle Beck, chief development officer of Three Square Food Bank in Southern Nevada.

“They said they wanted to make a gift to help the areas that they were performing in. For us, that was a pretty amazing day,” Beck tells TODAY. When singer Taylor Swift was in Las Vegas for her second Eras Tour concert, her crew called Three Square Food Bank. Swift's contribution quickly became widely known in the news. “Pretty soon news media picked it up,” Beck recalls, “And they were calling us. And then, we were in national news — a little food bank in Las Vegas, Nevada, getting some national coverage.”

One in eight people in Southern Nevada, according to Beck, face food insecurity. She anticipates that coverage of Swift's contribution in the media will increase public understanding of food insecurity. “Everybody should have dignified access to food,” she says. “If you’re in a position to help in any way, take some action.”

Swift's contributions have been a lifeline for food banks dealing with the pandemic's consequences. Food insecurity rates have surpassed food bank contributions, according to Mark Coleman, a spokesman for the Seattle-based group Food Lifeline, which works to end hunger. “Donation streams have gone down post-pandemic and we’re having to purchase more food,” he tells TODAY.

Swift donated to Food Lifeline in July at a concert of her Eras Tour in Seattle. Swift's donation would enable Food Lifeline to give households in Western Washington “hundreds of thousands of pounds” of fresh vegetables, according to the organization. “Cash donations like Taylor’s are really critical right now,” Coleman says.

Second Harvest of Silicon Valley in San Jose, California, to which Swift also gave money, has seen the effects of the epidemic, according to Shobana Gubbi, chief philanthropy officer. “Everything costs more than it did three years ago and donations are not at the same level as they were, but the need is at the same level as it was at the peak of the pandemic,” she tells TODAY. “So all of the food banks are feeling the squeeze. And the clients that we serve are not getting a lot of the government support that they were during the pandemic.”

References:

https://www.today.com/food/news/taylor-swift-food-bank-donations-eras-tour-rcna99288