When Stephen Giuliano became Executive Director of Operation Sharing in Ontario, Canada, he determined that the best way to address hunger in his community was to shut down the food pantry. In its place is a program, now in its 15th year, in which clients use food cards loaded with…
Food Bank News
The Greater Chicago Food Depository’s expansion into meal preparation with the addition of a massive new kitchen adds oomph to a growing frontier of service for the nation’s food banks. With its $50-million commitment to preparing meals, announced last month, the Food Depository is sending a strong message that it…
Arlington Food Assistance Center Director of Programs The mission of the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC) is to provide free, nutritious, supplemental groceries to individuals and families in need who reside in Arlington County. Clients are referred to AFAC by the Arlington County Department of Human Services, local social service…
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…
‘Tis the season when food-bank donors get hit with an onslaught of emails — and possibly a dose of email fatigue. A new idea for email campaigns, designed specifically for food banks, reverses that course by riveting the attention of supporters through a simple game. The gamified emails do the…
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…
If you’ve ever wondered whether public comments sent in to the USDA to oppose proposed SNAP cuts make any difference, then Anore Horton, Executive Director of Hunger Free Vermont, wants you to know: “They make a huge difference.” Here’s why: By law, the USDA must take into account every public…
Until a few years ago, Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana was like most food banks in its reluctance to say no to any and all offers of food. So it might send a truck to a third-grade classroom 20 miles away to collect half a dozen bags of shelf-stable groceries,…
A survey of food banks and pantries released earlier this month underscores the difficulty of beating hunger using current methods. The good news is that 90% of the nearly 300 food banks and pantries surveyed said they believed hunger was solvable, according to WhyHunger, which published the survey on October…