CUMAC’s two-story facility in Northern New Jersey has the look and feel of a standard food bank, with a warehouse, a handful of trucks, a client-choice pantry, and even a small garden. In practice, the operation has a mission that goes much further than giving out food or even addressing…
Food Bank News
Regi Young, the new Executive Director of Alameda County Community Food Bank, got into food banking after working in community organizing, and remembers being impressed by the resources food banks had and the large number of communities they were in. It also struck him that food banks could have greater…
Given the history of food banks, it would seem that those in the U.S. would have little to learn from their global counterparts. Food banks started as an American invention of the 1960s, and did not really spread abroad until the founding of the Global FoodBanking Network in 2006. Despite…
Food banks are riding the wave of a significant and durable increase in pandemic-related charitable giving. The fundraising and marketing provider RKD Group analyzed data from 72 food banks to find that fundraising revenue in second-quarter 2021 was a whopping 159% higher than 2019 levels (though down about 24% from…
When it comes to serving the Muslim community, one of the difficulties food pantries face is sourcing halal meat. Halal, a word meaning “permissible” in Arabic, requires animals to be slaughtered and processed in a certain way under supervision. Halal rules also prohibit certain foods, such as pork, ban the…
A number of small-scale farms have taken root at food banks and pantries across the country. Paradoxically, those who work on them will be the first to tell you that growing food for its own sake is not necessarily a top priority. “Obviously, in serving 200 people a day, the…
Among the insights revealed by a new tool that shows how racism affects food insecurity is that Black Americans in Midwest metropolitan areas are more likely than those in the South to suffer from food insecurity. Feeding America collaborated with Tableau to publish “Identifying Racism in the Drivers of Food…
In an outgrowth of the pandemic, food banks from New Hampshire to Texas to California are starting to permanently drop fees typically imposed on pantries. When Covid first hit, food banks began temporarily lifting the shared maintenance fees pantries pay to food banks to help defray the costs of transporting,…
In many communities around the country, equitable access to food often has less to do with opening a food pantry and more with starting a garden. As the pandemic steers the national conversation around food insecurity to include the importance of nutrition and the impact of race on hunger, more…