After a rainstorm washed out attendance at a church event in the Washington, D.C., suburbs last year, Tierney Screen found herself in a room filled with unclaimed paper lunch bags, each containing a sandwich, fruit, chips, and cookies. Had there been a few dozen extra lunches, she could have handed them out to families she knew personally who needed them. But there were 3,600 – far more than she could distribute herself. The thought of having to toss them in the garbage pained her. Then she remembered an enthusiastic student she had met at an event a few months earlier. The young woman had spoken about a website she and some other university students had built through which restaurants and community groups could donate excess food to organizations that feed the hungry. So Screen called the woman, Maria Rose Belding, who explained how to post the lunches on the site. Four hours later, a nearby food pantry claimed them. The bags would be handed out to homeless people in Washington.