Does Your Food Pantry Serve Your Clients… or Your Volunteers?

I once became embroiled in a week-long argument with a colleague who was adamant that our food pantry’s primary mission was to serve our volunteers. They argued that our goal was to give community members positive and meaningful ways to support their neighbors, and that giving away food to people in need was the vehicle we used. My perspective that our food pantry should center people experiencing hunger as our primary beneficiaries was not welcome or accepted.  

As frustrating as this discussion was, it also wasn’t surprising.

Because many people believe food assistance is a privilege that must be earned rather than a right, it prioritizes giving food away rather than ending hunger.

This framework excuses subjugating the needs of people experiencing hunger to those of the volunteers supporting the effort. This is how organizations unintentionally transition into a volunteer-focused organization rather than a client centered pantry.

It’s more comfortable to focus on the givers than on the receivers. Our society carries lots of problematic assumptions about hunger and people living in poverty, and by focusing our efforts on volunteers (who generally have less lived experience), we don’t have to challenge these ideas or our biases.

Food pantries are chronically short of volunteers, and it is essential that we ensure our teams feel appreciated and valued. But too often, this attitude strays into favoritism.

This manifests in many ways, like pantries letting volunteers take food outside of distributions. This is against the rules everywhere from the national level down, but it’s still a common practice for pantries to turn a blind eye to a volunteer taking a dozen eggs to save themselves from going to the grocery store after their shift.

This attitude is further demonstrated in systems intended to minimize volunteers’ effort, like restocking shelves when volunteers want to, rather than when the shelves are empty (a frustration I recently heard from a volunteer/client about their local pantry.) While it’s less work for volunteers, it also means fewer options and less food for shoppers.

It’s also important to recognize a volunteer focus in the increasing prevalence of pantries hiring a security officer, who often costs significantly more and is more intimidating than giving staff and volunteers regular training in de-escalation and trauma-informed care. In most cases, the security officer is intended to increase the comfort of volunteers, rather than ensure all clients feel safe and welcome.

Efforts of a client-centered food pantry:

• Seek out people with lived experience of hunger to add to the leadership team, staff, and volunteers. If it’s hard to do, then you’ve found a great opportunity to examine and rectify barriers to participation in your organization.

• Make sure that you’re not demanding these individuals bear the sole burden of identifying and solving your pantry’s weaknesses. Make sure everyone does their homework in learning and studying the root causes of hunger and inequality, and exploring how to improve services. Don’t tokenize.

• Examine your pantry hours. This is one of my pet peeves- food pantries are almost exclusively open at the convenience of volunteers, who tend to be wealthy retirees looking for something to occupy their weekday. This often means that food pantry distribution hours are inaccessible to people working full time jobs, acting as caregivers, or managing a household. Ask your clientele to take a survey if you can about what pantry times they can use, or experiment with adding weekend or evening hours.

• Enforce at every possible moment the idea that everyone deserves to eat, and evaluate policies based on this concept. Do your rules align with increasing dignity, respect, and abundant access to food for everyone in need, or do they focus on the comfort and convenience of volunteers?

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While I fully recognize that most pantries have a chronic shortage of volunteers, compromising your priorities for volunteer recruitment makes it harder to stay committed to your goal of ending hunger.

Organizations attract volunteers who agree with their values.

Focus on allowing your volunteers to do only what they want the way they want to, you’ll end up with a pantry that meets no one’s needs.

Prioritize serving clients the best that you can and you may have fewer volunteers, but at least you can be confident that they are empowering your organization to fight hunger with dignity, respect, and abundance.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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