In an odd coincidence, there are about as many people in America who garden (42 million) as are food-insecure (37.2 million). That works out well for AmpleHarvest.org, a website that seeks to match the abundance of produce grown by home gardeners with local food pantries that could use it. So…
Posts published in “Technology”
As more food banks make progress in identifying the nutritional quality of the food they distribute, they are running into the same problem that Foodshare of Conn. did: big piles of mixed, donated foods that are not easily ranked. Sometimes known as salvage, these miscellaneous items usually come from retail…
Working with community partners like hospitals and government agencies has become increasingly standard for food banks as they seek to address the many causes of hunger. Now there’s a tool to help them turbo-charge those collaborative efforts. The Urban Institute last month released an interactive map of the United States…
Data and automation are not exactly dirty words at food pantries, but they are far from commonplace. A Des Moines food pantry network, however, is embracing both to help it nudge clients toward healthier options and also energize its advocacy efforts. Like many food pantries, the Des Moines Area Religious…
How often do food banks roll out programs in which 95% of the targeted clients participate? It’s happening in Florida, with nearly all of the 2,055 seniors signed up for a fruit and vegetable purchasing program taking advantage of it, according to the three partners behind the program. The program…
As one of the first food pantries in the country to move to a digital ordering and reservation system, Lutheran Social Services in Ohio is providing time-saving benefits to clients, while cutting costs. LSS, which serves about 2,000 food-pantry clients a month in the Columbus area, started letting clients order…
About 200 pantries in New York City have shortened wait times and boosted dignity by letting clients reserve times to pick up their food. Now the maker of the service, Plentiful, is seeking to work with food banks across the country to help bring the low-cost reservation system to other…
Propel, a Brooklyn, NY, startup that offers an app to manage SNAP, scrambled as soon as it heard that the government would be handing out February SNAP benefits early due to the shutdown. Early issuance of SNAP would create a long gap between payments, it realized, and it hoped to…
It took a small army of volunteers and years of outreach, but the Ohio Association of Foodbanks has reached a remarkable milestone in its ongoing effort to connect people to government benefits and tax credits they are due. After more than 12 years, the association can point to nearly $2…