Offering wraparound social services alongside free food has long been viewed as a desirable practice among food banks and pantries. Now, Greater Cleveland Food Bank has raised the bar on how it can be done. Its Community Resource Center, opened earlier this month, provides permanent space to 15 other nonprofit…
Posts published in “Strategy”
There’s no doubt most food banks are spending more money to purchase food these days, though there are a handful outliers that spend virtually nothing on food. During Covid, almost all food banks began purchasing more food when donated goods were tough to come by, and government funding and donated…
In a recent report about food insecurity in its region, Capital Area Food Bank took the additional bold step of identifying four broad fixes to food insecurity, putting forth a viable blueprint for other food banks in the country. As in much of the nation, food insecurity in the capital…
A series of small changes has enabled Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County to whittle away waste in its operations, making it the first food bank in the world to be certified for its sustainability efforts. The food bank has received a TRUE certification for zero waste, signifying that…
For people who live in neighborhoods where supermarkets are scarce, finding food is often more problematic than having money for food. A growing number of food banks are addressing this issue by moving into a new model of food banking. In addition to distributing free food via pantries, they are…
Increasing access to food is a goal of many food banks these days, but few have done so as aggressively as Food Bank Singapore. At its start ten years ago, Food Bank Singapore followed the playbook of establishing its own brick-and-mortar food pantry, as many food banks in the U.S.…
Besides sourcing food, giving it out is arguably the most important thing a food bank does. But there does not seem to be general agreement on how best to do it. Mass drive-through distributions, ushered in by Covid, continue at some food banks, but have been phased out at others.…
School backpack programs have been a mainstay of food banking ever since the first one debuted nearly 30 years ago at the Arkansas Rice Depot (now Arkansas Foodbank). The Feeding America network currently supports backpack programs at more than 10,000 schools and institutions, serving more than 54 million meals in…
For a small but growing number of food banks, distributing food is no longer enough. These food banks, including Feeding Tampa Bay and Greater Cleveland Food Bank, are re-orienting their operations to support a range of services that go beyond providing basic hunger relief. The wider scope is evident in…