Our Tableau-driven dashboard of the largest 300 food banks in America is interactive and searchable, while offering many different perspectives of the data. By introducing the dashboard, we hope to advance the collective knowledge and understanding of the players working to solve food insecurity in America.
Food Bank News
Everyone has a story about what they did during the pandemic. Rich Cumming’s includes the closing of his events business, followed by his introduction of a technology platform designed to connect all the players involved in getting food to those who need it, within a local area. At the pandemic’s…
Second Harvest Heartland of Minnesota announced last week that it would invest $13.2 million into smoothing out racial disparities in the way it distributes food, partly by making food more accessible and appealing to communities of color. The commitment, which will roll out over five years, covers a wide breadth…
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…
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…