San Francisco Marin Food Bank is asking its state government for a very small amount of money that it expects will have a very big impact. It introduced a bill late last month that would restore California’s ability to measure statewide food insecurity. Previously, the data was collected as part…
Posts published in “Advocacy”
The idea that people have a “right to food” in the U.S. is starting to gain some footing. Perhaps the biggest sign is a resolution passed last month in New Jersey declaring that residents in the state have a fundamental right to adequate food. The ruling comes after nine states…
Houston Food Bank is intent on getting out the vote. In what appears to be a first, the nation’s third-largest food bank is building a network of “civic hubs,” aimed at educating people about the power they have to direct government activities via their right to vote. The initiative advances…
Our annual scan of the website advocacy efforts of the top 100 food banks (by revenue) uncovered a noticeable trend toward food banks seeking to engage visitors in activities related to voting. Their efforts ran the gamut, from passing along basic information on how the government works, to nudging people…
Daily Bread Food Bank of Toronto scored such a big win for the disabled community recently, that now it’s doubling down on its efforts. In July, monthly checks for $200 began showing up in the mailboxes of Canadians with disabilities, thanks largely to the efforts of the food bank, which…
When Second Harvest Heartland of Minneapolis gave itself the goal of cutting hunger in half by 2030, it struggled mightily with defining exactly what success would look like. Would it succeed when people could get the food they needed by going to a pantry or using SNAP? Or would it…
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…
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;…