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100+ Food Banks are Using HER Nutrition Guidelines
In 2020, when Healthy Eating Research introduced nutrition guidelines designed to be easy for food banks to adopt and use, it hoped that Feeding America members would move toward the new framework over the next five years. That wish appears to be coming true. So far, 101 food banks across...
How One Pantry is Redefining Charitable Food
Remote lockers are the latest way in which a Wash.-based nonprofit is shedding the usual trappings of a traditional charitable food organization. Its Fresh Lockers are part of an ongoing effort to make the experience of getting free food feel more normalized and dignified. The lockers expand upon the organization’s free grocery outlet, introduced in late 2020 and known simply as The Market, which offers shoppers the look and feel of a high-end, boutique country store.
Food Pantries are Evolving. This One’s in a Museum.
The site of the Queens Museum in New York City has been many things over the years. It hosted the New York World’s Fair in 1939, and again in 1964. From 1946 to 1950, it was the headquarters of the United Nations. In 1972, the site became home to...
WIC Says “Hello”
In 2020, roughly six million women, infants, and children eligible for WIC were not participating in the program. Now, the WIC Community Innovation and Outreach Project (WIC CIAO) is looking for innovative ways to say “hello” to new participants. Funded by a $44 million USDA grant to the...
The Offbeat Backgrounds of Some Food Bank CEOs
It’s fair to say that most food bank CEOs reach their positions after working at other food banks or non-profit social service organizations. But some CEOs have taken other, more circuitous routes to the top spot. A handful have spent years in the U.S. military (see chart). Other unusual pathways include the aerospace industry, university athletics and finance. Here’s a look at four distinct career paths and how they are helping to shape the CEO spot.
Wide-Ranging Tactics Address Senior Hunger
The level of food insecurity among seniors has barely budged in recent years, giving greater motivation to food banks that are making targeted efforts to serve this population. Out of the 78 million people in the U.S. who are 60 or older, 5.5 million of them were food insecure in...
Iowa Org Pioneers Online Auctions for Fundraising
A hunger relief organization in Des Moines, Iowa, is helping to pioneer a new method of fundraising developed by a tech startup. In April, Eat Greater Des Moines held an online auction of certificates representing food rescue and hunger relief actions it had taken in the recent past. The certificates, known as Regenerative Authentication Credits, or RACs, can be purchased by donors, offering another way for individuals or organizations to support hunger relief work.
Why Some Food Banks Charge for Low-Cost Groceries
For people who live in neighborhoods where supermarkets are scarce, finding food is often more problematic than having money for food. A growing number of food banks are addressing this issue by moving into a new model of food banking. In addition to distributing free food via pantries, they are making grocery-store style shopping available – an approach that requires food banks to charge at least modest fees to clients.
How FarmboxRx Got Insurers to Pay for Healthy Food
Three years ago, Ashley Tyrner (pictured above) persuaded a single health plan provider to allow her company, FarmboxRx, to provide the plan’s members with boxes of produce as a way to proactively improve their overall health. Today, FarmboxRx is a profitable company partnering with 87 health plans to deliver healthy food boxes to 2.7 million people in all 50 states, at no cost to consumers.
Poets Join the Fight Against Food Insecurity
At first glance, there does not seem to be a lot of connection between food insecurity and poetry. Food insecurity is a practical problem that demands practical solutions, be they charitable food distributions or funding from state and federal governments. Within that paradigm, the role of poetry may not be immediately clear.
Big Ambitions for Feeding America’s MealConnect Food Rescue App
In 2019, when Food Bank News first reported on Feeding America’s MealConnect, the app was being used by 22 food banks and had helped rescue 1.5 billion pounds of food over five years. Now, virtually all of Feeding America’s 200 food banks are using the app, and it helped rescue 1.2 billion pounds in 2022 alone.
Gleaners Joins List of Food Banks Paying Living Wages
Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana has joined the growing number of food banks that are lifting pay, ensuring everyone in the organization is earning a living wage. Gleaners announced in May that it has been certified as providing a minimum starting wage of at least $18 an hour, the designated living minimum wage in Indianapolis, as well as health insurance to all its employees. EmployIndy, a local organization that seeks to promote equity in the workforce, awarded the certification, naming Gleaners a “Good Wages Initiative” employer.
Food Bank’s Intense Commitment Gives BIPOC Farmers a Lift
When Eloise’s Cooking Pot started a program to purchase produce from local BIPOC farmers and producers, it didn’t take long to identify a slew of challenges in those working relationships. While the farms produced food that was unparalleled in quality and rich in cultural relevance, they often struggled...
How Food Banks Can Boost Summer Meals
The USDA is hoping food banks will help it advance new methods of distributing summer meals to kids. A new ruling, made permanent when President Biden signed the huge omnibus spending bill at the end of 2022, lets food banks and pantries be federally reimbursed for summer meals distributed in non-group settings.
How Pantries Are Overcoming Obstacles to Client Choice
Letting food pantry clients choose their own food is widely accepted as a dignified way to distribute charitable food. But for pantries that have always packed up bags, moving to that “client choice” model can be an intimidating prospect. The dilemma is aptly summed up in a survey...
2H Heartland Unearths SNAP Myths Among Latinos
When Second Harvest Heartland of Minn. sponsored a study to better understand SNAP usage among Latinos, it was not much of a surprise to discover that the community had numerous misconceptions about the program. A few specific misperceptions did surprise though, such as the belief that SNAP applicants’ children would...
Partner Insight: Key Tech Partnership Results in Feeding More People in Need
A critical tech partnership between Golden and Feeding San Diego has transformed the charitable giant’s ability to allocate resources toward reducing hunger in San Diego County, both with direct services and through a network of 160 partner organizations. Integrating technology can be a timesaver for a charity – but...
How Bank Cards, Vending Machines Are Accelerating Food Access
Increasing access to food is a goal of many food banks these days, but few have done so as aggressively as Food Bank Singapore. At its start ten years ago, Food Bank Singapore followed the playbook of establishing its own brick-and-mortar food pantry, as many food banks in the U.S. have recently done. But it has since pulled back from that approach. Now it is well into what it calls Food Pantry 2.0, a strategy that combines vending machines, bank cards, and partnerships with fast-food restaurant chains to make access to food as frictionless as possible.
How to Make TEFAP Stronger
The Capital Area Food Bank is one of only six food banks in the Feeding America network to serve three states, giving it a front-row seat into the multitude of ways the federal TEFAP program is administered across state lines. The 40-year-old program, which distributes commodities grown on U.S. farms...
Boosting Farmworker Wages to Cut the Food Line
It’s widely acknowledged in the hunger relief community that the people who grow the nation’s food also tend to be among the most food-insecure. The estimated 2.4 million people in the U.S. who work on farms, many of them southern border immigrants, earned an average of $20,000 to $25,000 in 2020, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, putting them at poverty level wages. At the same time, only 13% accessed SNAP, said the report, likely because of language or knowledge barriers.
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