Food banks are starting to throw around their purchasing power. Because of pressure from food banks, some food manufacturers are starting to remove added salt, sugar and fats from their canned and other goods. A side benefit is that more nutritious food is also ending up on the shelves of…
Food Bank News
At Hatch for Hunger, there’s no question whether the chicken or the egg came first. It was definitely the egg. The Indiana-based nonprofit, founded in 2015, is committed to becoming the nation’s most reliable source of animal protein to America’s food banks. In late 2023, it announced the milestone of…
Second Harvest Heartland of Minnesota has had enough. Last year, the nation’s seventh-largest food bank recorded 7.5 million visits to its food pantries, up from 5.5 million the year before, and double the number of 2021. “It’s unsustainable,” said Allison O’Toole, the food bank’s CEO. It’s why the food bank…
One food bank is looking into providing people with gas cards or discounts on car repairs so they can more easily get to food pantries located far away. Another food bank has rolled out compassion training to pantry volunteers to ensure clients don’t feel judged. Another is trying to nail…
There may be food banks out there that offer free tax prep and filing services to low-income individuals, but perhaps none have embraced it as forcefully as Food Bank for New York City. Since 2002, the food bank has been taking advantage of a long-standing Internal Revenue Service program that…
It’s fair to say that running a food pantry, even as a volunteer, is a time-consuming job, making it difficult to plan beyond the immediate tasks at hand. But it’s also evident that a new spirit of collaboration between front-line emergency food providers is percolating. Sharing information, establishing a unified…
A software system developed by Blue Ridge Area Food Bank is helping food banks not only push more nutritious food out the door, but also prove that it’s nutritious. The Nourish system, developed in partnership with a local university, lets food banks track the nutritional quality of their food inventory…
Two years of knocking on doors and building relationships with health care clinics helped Tarrant Area Food Bank win a large grant from CVS Health Foundation to carry out a five-part Food is Medicine pilot. The multi-year grant, funded at $750,000 a year, will feature medically tailored meals prepared by…
Food banks have long said that they’re only as good as their pantry networks, and lately, they’ve been backing up that sentiment with intention. Fueled partly by Covid-era support, food banks have been growing the capacity of their pantries through a wide range of grant-making activities. Now, many are at…