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…
Posts published in “Advocacy”
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…
Food banks are keeping calm and carrying on amid uncertainty around directives from the new administration that could threaten federal hunger relief programs. The federal government foots the funding for a host of feeding programs, including TEFAP to provide food to food banks; SNAP, the behemoth nationwide nutrition assistance program;…
There has always been an undercurrent of anxiety among undocumented populations seeking food assistance. Food Bank News noted underground food distributions for the undocumented as far back as 2020, when the pandemic pushed the need for assistance to new heights. Now that anxiety has been ratcheted up, as directives from…
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…
It’s not an easy decision for a food bank to take the lead on a major research project. Such studies can be expensive, drawing resources away from the more immediate goal of distributing food. At D.C.-based Capital Area Food Bank, an investment in research is paying off in big ways,…
Our scan of the top 100 food banks (by revenue) uncovered a number of features food banks are adding to their websites to advance their advocacy efforts, including animated videos, advocacy-action point trackers, and surveys of the general public. These findings are part of our annual look at how food…
Feeding children, making SNAP easier to access, and promoting food as medicine all bubbled up as high priorities for nearly 1,500 adults with lived experience of food insecurity who responded to a Feeding America survey, released earlier this month. At least 90% or more of respondents to the national survey…
When Osvaldo Grimaldo joined Houston Food Bank just over a year ago as its inaugural Civic Engagement Specialist, he had his work cut out for him. In surveying agency partners and community members on their attitudes toward voting, Grimaldo uncovered a general lack of knowledge and resources. Of the more…