With federal funding becoming scarce, food banks are turning more attention to a source of food that has long been a mainstay – food donations from local grocers. Whether they are relatively new to the practice or have been at it for a while, food banks are recognizing that retail…
Food Bank News
Partnership for a Healthier America is not a food bank, but it has a goal that many can relate to: building sustainable access to fresh produce. Especially since the pandemic, the 15-year old organization has been in a perpetual cycle of seeking to make communities healthier through nutritious food. Under…
Coming out of Covid, many food banks phased out their drive-through distributions. Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana is taking the opposite approach by leaning into its drive-through. There are good reasons to move away from drive-through distributions, as they generally don’t let clients choose their own food, nor access wrap-around…
The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts has a few things going for it when it comes to Food is Medicine. First, it has long championed building relationships with area hospitals, giving it valuable exposure to the healthcare world. Second, it operates in a state that is actively pursuing solutions and…
One of the most difficult aspects of advocacy for nonprofits is figuring out where to focus the most energy and attention. Boston-based Project Bread, which promotes food security and food access throughout Massachusetts, recently met this challenge head on. To determine its eight-point legislative agenda for the state’s upcoming 2025-2026…
March was not a good month for food banks. Early in March, food banks found out that $500 million for LFPA, a popular federal program that gives them money to buy food from local farms and ranchers, would go away. Toward the end of the month, they learned that another…
Seven years ago, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, published what it called a “groundbreaking” report on food bank nutrition policies. It found that food banks with formal nutrition policies distributed more fresh fruits and vegetables than those without, while also distributing much less unhealthy food. (See our article on…
INDIANAPOLIS, IN. – One of the best things a food bank can do to get started in Food is Medicine is to lobby their state food-bank leadership to get involved. That’s because the managed care organizations seeking to use nutritious food to improve public health generally operate statewide and even…
Candice Griego is on the hunt for mutton. As the Director of Tribal Relations at Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, N.M., Griego has identified mutton as highly desired among members of the Navajo Nation. Tracking it down is one part of her five-months-in role, which is entirely new to the…