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…
Posts published in “Strategy”
There’s no doubt that food banks have been getting bigger in recent years, with every quarter bringing news of more food banks opening new, larger warehouses. Partly behind the surge in growth has been a powerful federally-funded financing tool called the New Markets Tax Credit program. Although the program is…
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;…
Every food bank leader brings their own set of experiences and perspectives to the role. That is especially true for Cathy Kanefsky who came on as CEO of Food Bank of Delaware nearly four years ago, while raising twin sons with autism. “I walked into this place with eyes that…
During the pandemic, the Minn.-based hunger relief organization Open Cupboard gained two key insights that helped guide the opening of its newest free-food market. The first was that people don’t want to have to answer a lot of questions to gain access to food. The second was that a community’s…
What if you could tell your donors that your efforts in food rescue removed the same amount of greenhouse gas as emitted annually by 900 cars? Or restored the same amount of carbon as 63,000 tree seedlings grown for a decade? Six food banks in Mexico and Ecuador are in…
Food banks are getting increasingly creative about where they put new distribution outlets. In a bid to expand their reach, especially into underserved areas, food banks are making use of farms, libraries, county clerk offices, shopping malls, and even horse racetracks as food distribution points. This attempt to meet people…
The Global FoodBanking Network may have less reach than the Feeding America network. But its members face challenges that have caused some to start to pull even with their U.S. counterparts along certain measures. Data from 54 GFN members, most of which operate in emerging or developing countries, show that…
Feeding Tampa Bay’s new $60 million facility has all the things a food bank needs to be able to meet increasing demand for food – like excess capacity in its dry warehouse, extra dock doors, and additional flooring around its cooler and freezer for possible expansion. Despite all its preparations…