When Second Harvest Heartland of Minn. sponsored a study to better understand SNAP usage among Latinos, it was not much of a surprise to discover that the community had numerous misconceptions about the program. A few specific misperceptions did surprise though, such as the belief that SNAP applicants’ children would…
Food Bank News
A critical tech partnership between Golden and Feeding San Diego has transformed the charitable giant’s ability to allocate resources toward reducing hunger in San Diego County, both with direct services and through a network of 160 partner organizations. Integrating technology can be a timesaver for a charity – but only…
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.…
The Capital Area Food Bank is one of only six food banks in the Feeding America network to serve three states, giving it a front-row seat into the multitude of ways the federal TEFAP program is administered across state lines. The 40-year-old program, which distributes commodities grown on U.S. farms…
It’s widely acknowledged in the hunger relief community that the people who grow the nation’s food also tend to be among the most food-insecure. The estimated 2.4 million people in the U.S. who work on farms, many of them southern border immigrants, earned an average of $20,000 to $25,000 in…
There’s no doubt that the new ability in some states to tap Medicaid money as reimbursement for nutrition services is attracting attention from the hunger-relief community. But there’s another legislative mandate that is having a more immediate impact on food-bank partnerships with healthcare organizations. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid…
When it comes to nutritional quality, a recent study has given the green light to the majority of foods in three USDA food programs at the heart of the charitable food system. The study assessed food items offered by the TEFAP commodity food program for food banks, the FDPIR program…
The Kelly Center for Hunger Relief in El Paso, Tex., had a pretty good feeling a few years ago about the positive impact of its FreshStart program, which is designed to move food pantry clients toward self-sufficiency. Those feelings were confirmed with the results of a recently released formal evaluation…
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.…