The national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization operates through ongoing, grassroots food collection and hunger awareness programs throughout the United States, primarily by organizing food drives at concerts and music events. Donations to Conscious Alliance benefit America’s local food pantries and economically isolated Native American reservations.
Over the years, Conscious Alliance has hosted hundreds of food drives at music festivals including Bonnaroo, Power to the Peaceful, and Wakarusa, and at concerts by artists such as The String Cheese Incident, STS9, Jack Johnson, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Dave Matthews, Phil Lesh, and many others.
As sustainability inherently has environmental, economic, and social considerations, Conscious Alliance has been addressing the social aspect of sustainability since it was founded in 2002. By collecting food from generous and fortunate festival and concert attendees and distributing it throughout the United States to those who need it most (especially on impoverished Native American reservations and at food pantries), Conscious Alliances seeks to perform the two-fold social mission of feeding the hungry and raising awareness about the extreme economic poverty that still exists on many reservations today.
In 2005, they successfully built a much needed food storage and distribution facility on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, one of the poorest communities in the country. The unit is used to store and distribute emergency food supplies to more than 100 families at the end of each month when bills are due and emergency food is critical in making it to the next month.
