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…
Posts published in “Advocacy”
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;…
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…
Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana is expanding a multi-pronged program it developed that aims to lift people out of poverty. A three-year strategic plan, to be initiated this year, will expand the poverty-fighting program into each area of the food bank’s eight-county footprint, one county at a…
Food banking is a bit of an odd duck of the nonprofit world. It involves all the fundraising and programming of most nonprofits, but also encompasses a heavy-duty operational aspect – with warehouses, trucks, inventories, and distribution points to manage. “It’s logistics with a mission,” said Brian Greene, CEO of…
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,…