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…
Food Bank News
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…
Giving food pantry clients the ability to choose their own food can feel like a big undertaking, but Lowcountry Food Bank of Charleston, S.C., has developed a flexible, hands-on approach that’s helping pantries in its network make that move one baby step at a time. About 30% of the 60…
Followers of the Food is Medicine movement will know that a growing number of private food box companies are working with insurers to provide their clients with healthy food as a covered benefit (Food Bank News wrote about that here). Steve Brazeel, Founder and CEO of SunTerra Produce, is showing…
Without input from the community, the renovation of Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank’s main warehouse, unveiled last week, probably would have turned out a little differently. In improving the warehouse, the food bank employed the same strategy it had when it constructed a brand new warehouse in another location in 2021.…