The Greater Chicago Food Depository is redefining itself. The nation’s 12th-largest food bank is in the beginning stages of a multi-year, multi-tiered strategy aimed at building connections with community groups that have deep roots in the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. The goal is to transfer power and resources to grassroots…
Posts published in “Strategy”
Fundraising is a big part of any nonprofit’s work. But what happens when the relentless drive to get money and please donors comes at the expense of an organization’s core values? That’s the question C. Nathan Harris posed to the Oregon Food Bank two years ago when he was interviewing…
The healthcare system may be vast and complicated, but finding a way to work within it can supercharge a food bank’s ability to ease food insecurity. Second Harvest Heartland, the country’s seventh-largest food bank (by revenue) and the largest in Minnesota, has succeeded in integrating itself into the state’s healthcare…
To achieve its goal of ending food insecurity in Maine, Good Shepherd Food Bank is enlisting the help of broccoli. The food bank, Maine’s largest, is starting a produce-processing company called Harvesting Good that will offer frozen produce year round to retail and institutional customers. The goal of the company…
Food banking may never be the same again. After more than a year of being in crisis mode, food banks are settling into a new normal — meeting still-elevated need, but doing it more effectively than ever before thanks to 14 months of intense, pandemic-pressurized learning. Among the Covid-inspired innovations…
Over the past year or so, a growing number of food banks have experimented with opening one or two of their own food pantries as a way of expanding capacity. It’s a strategy that Long Island Cares has been pursuing with success for more than a decade. This month, the…
Add two more food banks to the list of those opening their own model food pantries. Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado and East Texas Food Bank both recently opened distribution outlets that incorporate food-pantry best practices. The pantries operate in a supermarket style, allowing clients to pick…
In keeping with food banks across the country that are experimenting with new ways of reaching out to clients, Redwood Empire Food Bank is expanding offerings at its one-of-a-kind grocery store for low-income people. Its Food Connections Market, located next to Redwood Empire’s warehouse, is not a food pantry, a…
As the head of Vermont’s only food bank, John Sayles was used to getting the occasional call from a big donor. But when he learned that the billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott wanted to hand over $9 million, he was stunned. The unprecedented gift was more than the Vermont Foodbank’s entire…