Ideally, Food is Medicine initiatives run by food banks would be funded by the government through Medicaid. But with states moving slowly to adopt the waivers that would make that possible, hospitals have become a major source of support for Food is Medicine efforts. “It’s been all about partnerships and…
Food Bank News
Farm-to-food-assistance programs are thriving, according to a report, signaling a new chapter in how communities can address hunger relief. The idea of getting food from local farms to food-insecure people is not necessarily new, but Covid-19 helped to spur additional investment in the practice. Now that the model is taking…
2024 was a big year for Alameda County Community Food Bank. In February, it became one of the first food banks in the country to get paid by an insurer for providing healthy food to patients, marking the start of a Food is Medicine effort that it expects will generate…
Coming out of Covid, many food banks that benefitted from pandemic-era giving and extra government aid directed more funding toward employees, particularly to lift the pay of low-wage workers (see our story here). A few years later, outside aid is now harder to come by, but the work to ensure a…
The CEOs of our Food Bank CEO Roundtable considered how the results of the presidential election might impact charitable and federal food assistance in the coming years. There was concern about the Farm Bill, which continues to be under debate (see our article here) and has important implications for how…
How does a food pantry serve 3,000 more people and distribute 113,000 more pounds of food, yet reduce its overall costs by one-third? For Minneapolis-based NorthPoint Health & Wellness Center’s Community Food Shelf, it started with jelly – and a lot of data. NorthPoint is a choice pantry that regularly…
Many food bank leaders arrive at the position because they have a background in fundraising or sometimes finance or banking. Healthcare and the military also mark the pathways of some leaders. For Andrea Williams, the newly named President of Oregon Food Bank, the throughline is her focus on racial and…
The devastation that befell MANNA FoodBank, whose Asheville, N.C.-based headquarters and warehouse were completely destroyed during Hurricane Helene, unfolded slowly at first, and then suddenly. As the storm was actively raging during the morning of Friday, Sept. 27, CEO Claire Neal was “obsessively” checking an app that tracked river levels.…
Our latest look at the top 300 food banks by revenue shows that 1) the very biggest food banks are getting bigger, and 2) most food banks are relatively small. As in years past, two food banks that operate outside of the Feeding America network emerged as the largest food…