A Santa Cruz teen’s lemonade stand fundraiser has helped feed thousands. After 7 years, it’s his final pour.

When life gave Drew Trowbridge lemons, he made an annual lemonade stand fundraiser that has raised more than $16,400 for Second Harvest Food Bank Santa Cruz County since 2018. 

For his last benefit scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 28, on the lawn of Santa Cruz High School, the senior hopes to raise more than $5,001 – the most the fundraiser has brought in in a single year – and lined up a schedule of performances including the Santa Cruz High band, jazz band, choir and dance team. 

Drew’s lemonade stand will be selling more than the many gallons of the refreshing beverage he and his mom are preparing. They’ll also be selling food donated by local businesses such as Pacific Cookie Company and the Beach Hut Deli, as well as home-baked treats from about 15 community members. 

In his seventh and final year of organizing what has now become a cherished community event, Drew, now 17, said he is sad to end this chapter but is also looking forward to finding new ways to do community service after graduating high school next spring. He’s still figuring out what his next steps will look like. 

“I hope that, in some way, this inspires other people to find a way to help others, because we need it,” he said. “There’s no end to how much you can help Second Harvest or help any organization that’s just trying to help people.” 

Drew began his fundraiser in 2018 at the age of 10, when he first came up with the idea to have a lemonade stand. He thought it would be a fun activity to share with his cousin who was visiting from Maryland, since the family had a lemon tree at their home. His father, Todd Trowbridge, told Drew that he needed to donate the profits to a cause. Inspired by his father’s family, who founded Palace Art & Office Supply and regularly donated to Second Harvest Food Bank, Drew decided to also donate the funds to the food bank. More than 70,000 Santa Cruz County residents get food from Second Harvest every month.

That first year, he raised $484, with about 45 people attending the event held at High Street Community Church, where Todd was a longtime youth minister. For the next few years, even during the pandemic, Drew hosted the fundraiser at the church, where it gradually grew larger, with more people attending, more entertainment and more donations coming in. 

“They got bigger and bigger every year,” said Todd. “It became a thing where the community started to get excited about it.” 

In 2022, when Drew was a first-year student and in the school’s band, he invited the Santa Cruz High jazz band to perform at the fundraiser. It returned again in 2023, with about 30 students performing in both years. After taking a break from the fundraiser in 2024, Drew knew he wanted to organize one more for his senior year and make it the biggest one yet. 

Santa Cruz High School’s band director of 27 years, Christy Latham, was happy to help. Latham is bringing not only the Santa Cruz High band to the fundraiser, but she also invited the Mission Hill Middle School, Pajaro Valley High School and Cabrillo College bands to the fundraiser for a mass band performance. If all the musicians from those bands attend, about 260 players could be in the mass band, though Latham said she’s not yet certain how many will participate. 

Latham is bringing these bands together as part of her own service project. She was accepted in the Band Directors Marching Band in the upcoming Rose Parade, the annual New Year’s Day event in Pasadena. The program encouraged its members to organize service projects in their community with a mass band performance, which combines multiple bands in a single event. 

Latham immediately thought about performing at Drew’s lemonade stand fundraiser and reached out to the Trowbridges: “I said, ‘Would you guys want to collaborate on this? Because the more people you have in an event, the more potential you have for the community and for the fundraising.’” 

Todd and Drew said it was a tough choice because they have hosted the event at the upper Westside church every year, but in the end they were excited about bringing more people together and raising more money. 

“Drew and I talked, and it wasn’t an easy decision,” said Todd. “Because there was a lot of history for us up [at the church], but we loved what Christy was doing and wanted to be a part of it. And that’s Drew’s heart to say: ‘How do we do something better and bigger?'”

Drew and Todd said fundraising for Second Harvest Food Bank is more important now as donations don’t go as far as they used to due to inflation and rising food prices. From 2018 to 2022, every $1 donated produced four meals, but now it pays for just three. 

The food bank was also hit hard earlier this year when the federal government abruptly cut more than $700,000 in assistance to the organization. In response, the food bank launched a community fundraising campaign. 

After his sixth year running the fundraiser, in 2023, Second Harvest awarded Drew Trowbridge the “Hunger Fighter of the Year” award – making him the first teen to win the designation. 

Drew said he’s learned a lot in organizing the fundraiser, most importantly that there are many people in the community who want to help others but just don’t know how to or are afraid. He was one of those people, he said, and didn’t know how to start but went for it despite his fears. 

“At first I thought, ‘I’m scared people can make fun of me’ – but I don’t care if they do,” he said. “You can make fun of it, go ahead. I don’t care because it’s helping people. I’m not doing it for myself, not doing it for anyone specifically, I’m just doing it to help those who need it.”

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