Food banks and other distributors are coming up with creative answers to the problem of reaching the food-insecure in rural areas. Solutions have ranged from using the U.S. mail in Montana, to employing tractor-trailers to resupply dozens of local agencies in Tennessee, to morphing ad-hoc firewood deliveries into a full-fledged…
Posts published in “Strategy”
As it seeks to generate $250 million to end hunger in Maine by 2025, Good Shepherd Food Bank is pushing new frontiers in how food banks raise funds. The campaign, announced during the last week of January, stands out for both its size and scope. The goal is flat-out huge…
The clients and agencies of the combined Connecticut Food Bank and Foodshare are already benefiting from the week-old merger of the two organizations. The January 30th agreement brings together Foodshare, with $14 million in 2019 revenue and operations in two counties, with the much larger Connecticut Food Bank, with $48…
The announcement last week that the USDA would continue to support food banks by purchasing massive amounts of produce, meat and dairy from the nation’s farmers was welcome relief to food bank CEOs, though they still expect a difficult 2021. The $1.5 billion extension of the Farmers to Families Food…
Some of the nation’s largest food banks are setting new standards for the food pantries of the future. Food banks among the top 20 on Food Bank News’ list of the largest 100 have recently designed and introduced food distribution outlets that differ sharply from traditional pantries. Like other emerging…
The most crucial ingredient in Our Neighbors Table’s plan to bring food security to its region by 2029 is not food — it’s community involvement via an advisory group of local organizations. Its Food Security Advisory Group, which includes local town officials, health care providers, schools and councils on aging,…
As the biggest news story of 2020, Covid-19 played a role in the conversation at Food Bank News’ CEO roundtable discussion, held online in early November. But more prominent were perennial questions about ways in which the problem of hunger should be framed and solved. There were unexpectedly positive outcomes…
A food bank in Missouri has shown in a pilot that it can improve health outcomes by giving people nutritious food. Now it wants to conduct a more formal test that would prove it to insurers. Operation Food Search of St. Louis is about to embark on a three-year randomized,…
Julie Yurko, the President and CEO of Northern Illinois Food Bank, was on vacation reading a book called “Delivering Happiness” about the online shoe seller Zappos when it occurred to her that the concept of online ordering with a focus on customer service did not exist in the charitable food…