Will Minnesota’s summer food program avoid another Feeding Our Future?

Minnesota is once again administering a summer meal program that was exploited in the biggest fraud case connected to federal child nutrition programs.

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) recently announced it will again run the federally funded Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) program that reimburses approved organizations for providing free meals to eligible kids over the summer. As administrator, MDE approves and monitors the Minnesota organizations that provide the meals. In fiscal year 2024, the program served 159 million meals and snacks nationwide at a cost of about $677 million.

SFSP is one of the two federal programs — along with the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) — that prosecutors say were exploited through the $250 million Feeding Our Future scheme during COVID-19.

The question facing Minnesota is whether the state has fixed what let that scheme happen.

A 2024 review by Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor concluded that MDE’s oversight “created opportunities for fraud,” finding the department failed to adequately respond to warning signs, complaints, and compliance issues before and during the fraud.

MDE says it has implemented changes to “strengthen” oversight, including establishing an Office of Inspector General (which is now being folded into a new, independent statewide office), adding a General Counsel’s Office, providing training to staff on the department’s updated fraud-reporting policy, and contracting with a firm to conduct financial reviews of certain sponsors.

Organizations applying to sponsor food sites must now prove financial viability. This includes showing they’ve operated at least a year and providing a recent tax return, a profit-and-loss statement, a balance sheet, and evidence that at least 10 percent of their operating revenue comes from non-USDA sources. MDE also can’t approve a new summer food site within a half-mile of an existing one unless certain criteria are met. The state has also added anti-kickback provisions.

Those changes address some of what auditors identified as weaknesses. But the bigger failure was that repeated warning signs and complaints weren’t acted on.

And the key vulnerability remains the same — reimbursement still depends on organizations accurately reporting how many meals they served. That’s exactly what prosecutors say Feeding Our Future pulled off, from false claims to inflated meal counts to fraudulent sites invented to collect federal money.

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Interested in learning more about Minnesota’s fraud problem? Check out our 2026 summer tour, “Minnesota Fraud: Follow the Money, Connect the Dots,” coming to a city near you.