It’s been over a year after federal funding cuts collapsed the contracts of Mana Nutrition, a Georgia-based, nonprofit battling global malnutrition. Today, their newly relaunched American-forward peanut butter — Good Spread — is flying off the shelves of food banks and local retail stores.
President Trump’s administration has taken an “America First” stance on foreign aid to prioritize national interest. Last March, USAID was dismantled — a department that Mana relied on for funding. According to Mana CEO Mark Moore, about 95% of Mana’s funding comes from government contracts. At the same time, the federal administration began cutting programs that supported American welfare, contributing to an age of rising food insecurity and increased cost-of-living.
Businesses like Mana and its product Good Spread help fill this gap.
“We believe that love overcomes hate, and so that’s what we want,” Alex Walker, Good Spread’s director of operations, said. “That’s a little grandiose for a brand, probably, but that’s how we want to be as people, and so we want the brand to reflect that.”
Buying 2 millions pounds of Georgia peanuts each month, Mana manufactures nutrient-fortified peanut-based Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food Packets (RUTF) and distributes them to aid organizations serving severely malnourished children in communities facing famine, war and other crises.
Last fall, the nonprofit reintroduced Good Spread and partnered with Feeding America — a national network of food banks. Patrons can buy the smooth peanut butter online or in select retail stores. For each jar of peanut butter sold, a packet of RUTF gets made, and additional profits go toward subsidizing costs for food banks.
The timing was right for Mana. Walker said he joined the conversation of bringing back the company in 2024, with talks of partnership with Feeding America starting around 2021.
“Domestic hunger had never really been our main goal, but it allowed us to tell people who want to support us or who are interested in our nonprofit to say, ‘Hey, we don’t just feed kids in Sudan or Nigeria; we feed kids here in Georgia,’ so that was a win-win,” Moore said.
Good Spread initially began in 2012 as a for-profit separate from Mana, still donating a packet of therapeutic food for each jar sold. The company took a pause in 2019 due to a lack of sales and hit the market again in 2025 as a product under Mana. Their mission this time around is twofold: provide a high quality peanut butter for food banks and have a retail component subsidizing food bank distribution.
“We wanted there to be dignity at the food bank,” Walker said. “The idea is that everybody gets maximized, like everyone all around is made good.”
With their USAID funding cut, Moore said from March to September 2025, the business was thinking, “Will we ever get another contract?’”
In the meantime, the timeline to launch Good Spread was accelerated by almost a year. Moore said the motivation to speed-up the production was “both practical and philosophical.” Production facilities still had the labor, machinery and materials to make peanut-based products, and Mana began using their resources to make peanut butter for food banks.
Internally, within the donor world and at Capitol Hill events, Walker said the attention was on Good Spread and helping children domestically.
“The culture of Mana is very, ‘How can we as privileged or blessed people in this world use what we have to help others?’ and that’s just others in general,” Walker said. “When we see an opportunity where that message will speak to someone, we use it.”
Mana has since gotten back on its feet. After lobbying efforts from representatives across the aisle on a pro-Georgia stance, their owed contracts were paid back by the State Department, and the company continues to receive new contracts.
Though USAID had been axed, Moore said Mana was lucky that the budget for foreign food aid still exists. The U.S. government provides food aid through Public Law 480, known as Food for Peace. While USAID previously administered Food for Peace, the program was transferred to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Still, the “America First” ethos continues to shape the current administration’s view on foreign aid.
“Where there was once a rainbow of unidentifiable logos on life-saving aid, there will now be one recognizable symbol: the American flag,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a Substack article. “Recipients deserve to know the assistance provided to them is not a handout from an unknown NGO, but an investment from the American people.”
Shipments of RUTF are now sent out with an American flag on the box, rather than the USAID logo.
Good Spread operations, on the other hand, are not dependent on government contracts. Funding is supported by philanthropic dollars, its partnership with Feeding America and other food banks buying peanut butter.
“The change for us is shifting towards a little bit, maybe 5%, of what we do towards domestic under Good Spread, so that at least, if bad things happen again, we can survive and stay with our mission,” Moore said.
At the end of the day, however, the company is still largely dependent on the U.S. government for funding contracts, as they are the main customer in the therapeutic peanut paste market. Moore said he hopes Good Spread operations can expand with Mana to address more domestic needs.
Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia — a food bank in Savannah within the Feeding America network — currently purchases Good Spread. Good Spread jars are also included in Second Harvest’s BackPack Buddies program, which provides supplemental bags of food to students over the weekend during the school year.
“Peanut butter is golden,” Stephania Brown of Second Harvest said. “Once it’s in, it leaves the property immediately, so we love getting peanut butter and it’s definitely one of the most helpful proteins for disaster relief boxes, for feeding kids.”
Amidst rising costs of foods, David Cool, the procurement and food safety coordinator at Second Harvest, said peanut butter is an affordable protein alternative to meat. Funding cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in March 2025 has significantly decreased funding for food banks. In the Second Harvest warehouse, rows of shelves sit empty. Cool said he’s seen a decrease in about 30% of stock in the past two years.
Walker said Good Spread has since delivered over 2 million pounds of peanut butter to food banks across the U.S. at a subsidized cost. Cool buys Good Spread at just over a dollar a jar.
“Honestly, I’m not using them because they’re local-owned. They’re just better prices too, period,” Cool said. “It just happens to be that the peanut butter is actually really good peanut butter, so it’s like a win-win”
In choosing retail stores, Walker said he prioritizes partnership and collaboration. Goodfortune Market, located in Savannah, is the first retail location to carry Good Spread. Owner Becca Goossen said Goodfortune exists to serve the community’s needs, and “affordable, healthy local food options are front of the line.” Goodfortune hosts the city’s only community fridge for any passerby to use, which Walker said he’ll occasionally stock up with Good Spread.
“It is my mission as a person and as a business to feed and serve my community, and it’s their mission and their personal values as well,” Goossen said. “When you meet these people, it’s just abundantly clear that we’re all on the same page.”
Like Cool at the food bank, Goossen appreciates the affordability of Good Spread, especially for a local product with higher quality ingredients. Selling at $3.50 a jar, she said with the easy price and peanut butter being a household staple, customers love the product.
Walker teased a new retail grocery chain partnership to launch in the fall, with hopes of expanding further to continue providing quality peanut butter to food banks at lower costs as well as become a substantial donor to RUTF operations.
“Anything we do in the private sector, retail sector, is so that we can subsidize how we get it to food banks,” he said. “The internal commitment we really have to food banks is we will never raise the price. We will only drop the price, and so the more we can expand, the more we can have that retail side generating profit.”
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