Food Share Ventura County received $8.5 million for its new $50 million Oxnard facility from billionaire Jeff Green.
DataPhilanthropy, a branch of the Jeff T. Green Family Foundation, made the donation, which brings the regional food bank within less than $5 million of its goal for its Feeding our Future capital campaign, which launched earlier this year.
The Food Share facility will be 85,000 square feet, more than twice the size of its three current facilities combined, and centralize the Oxnard nonprofit’s operations at 1425 Mariner Drive. Food Share has struggled with limited capacity, which forced the organization to turn away nearly 8 million pounds of food in 2025, according to a news release.
According to Food Share’s website, 1 in 4 people
in Ventura County are food insecure, and in 2024, the food bank, alongside its 160 pantry partners, served 261,713 people. The organization distributed 23 million pounds of food last year, according to President and CEO Monica White. She said Food Share aims to raise that number to 40 million pounds by 2040.
The facility project will include expanded storage space, refrigeration and freezer capacity, six loading docks and dedicated spaces for volunteers and Food Share’s partners.
As the food bank’s capacity grows, White said they plan to gradually hire more staff. She added that the larger space will also accommodate more volunteers.
DataPhilanthropy President Richard Yao said that the donation is a way to give back to the community that shaped Green’s life and company. Green, whose net worth is estimated at around $6 billion, founded The Trade Desk, a digital advertising company, in 2009 in Ventura County where the company’s headquarters remain today.
The philanthropic group previously donated $5.2 million to CSU Channel Islands for scholarships and $8 million to the Mount Sinai Health System for research.
According to Yao, the group consults data to find operational bottlenecks to solve and maximize the impact of its donations. He added that the group continues to work with organizations it donates to in order to learn and increase effectiveness.
“We're not working in a laboratory here. We're working in the real world, and so we're not looking for perfect proof or methodology,” Yao said. “But we want to be able to learn whether, you know, the philanthropic investment, philanthropic capital, is helping create change, you know, that matters.”
Food Share recently announced its groundbreaking celebration for Sept. 11. White said she expects to begin construction as soon as Oxnard approves the project, which she hopes will be before year’s end. Construction will likely last between 18 and 24 months and finish in 2028 or 2029.
Food Share is still raising funds. One way it hopes to close the gap is by selling personalized pavers that will be placed at the facility’s entrance, White said.
Levi Kauffman is a summer intern for the Ventura County Star. He can be reached at lkauffman@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Food Share receives $8.5M toward facility from local philanthropist
