Standards are hardly exciting. But if an organization wants to expand its reach and influence, they’re a necessity.  The Food is Medicine Coalition is hoping that the standard it just released around medically tailored meals will get more organizations to adopt high-quality, nutritious meals as a way to treat chronic health conditions. Nonprofits including Meals on Wheels organizations and food banks are expected to be among the early adopters.  The standard arrives at a time when greater attention – and scrutiny – is being paid to the impact of non-medical interventions like food an ..read more

As the former executive chef of a country club in Oklahoma, Jeff Marlow every once in a while would have to order a semi-truckload of ice for every day of a major golf tournament. Because there was no facility in the state large enough to handle such orders, the ice would have to be shipped in from Missouri or Arkansas. Now as Chief Executive Officer of Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma, Marlow is presiding over one of the largest freezers in the state, as well as four semi-trucks with drivers. With its ample freezer capacity and a workforce including 10,000 volunteers annually, the food bank now ..read more

Manna Food Center’s paper-based system for helping people purchase food at local markets is not very sophisticated, but gets points for innovation. Since the pandemic, Silver Spring, Md.-based Manna has been distributing paper vouchers to hundreds of people, who can use them to purchase culturally relevant food at small locally owned groceries that cater mostly to immigrant communities. The initiative supports local businesses, while also giving people access to the foods they really want. “They can have the ultimate choice, which is shopping for themselves,” said Jackie DeCarlo, Manna’s Chief ..read more

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 grocery retailers, highlighting the ability of food banks to use their purchasing clout to create a healthier food system. Food banks’ movement toward more nutritious food accelerated during Covid, when the sector benefited from billions of dollars of government assistance to purchase fresh produce. When the ..read more

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 10 million dozen eggs delivered to food banks in 33 states, putting it on its way to achieving its vision of supplying one million protein-rich meals a day by 2027 to change the eating habits of children by age nine. All those eggs help fill a 500-million-pound protein gap at the nation’s food ba ..read more

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 down why clients bypass food pantries that are close, in favor of a particular warehouse site. All of these creative responses flowed from issues flagged by data projects being conducted throughout the food banking network. They underscored a key message of a recent webinar hosted by More Than Food Consulting ..read more

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 helps community organizations all over the country train volunteers to help people file their taxes. The food bank now runs one of the largest IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) programs in the United States, making it second only to the U.S. military in providing free tax assistance, according t ..read more

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 voice around common interests and advocacy efforts, and providing mutual support are all some of the ways front-line food providers are working together. “It wasn’t like this ten years ago,” noted Stephen Grimaldi, who has been Executive Director at New York Common Pantry since 2008 ..read more

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 using evidence-based guidelines adopted by Feeding America. Using the system, food banks can set and meet higher nutritional standards, while also validating their progress toward higher quality food. Following agreed-upon guidelines is important as healthcare providers increasingly rely ..read more

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 a stage of formalizing those grant programs as they seek to make capacity-building a standard part of their operations. High demand for food during the pandemic underscored the need for robust pantry networks, hitting home the reality that pantries could become bottlenecks if they were not eq ..read more