What Food Pantry Should You Donate To?

A colleague recently reached out to me about hosting a food drive. Their organization is ready with a donation barrel, but they wanted a recommendation about whom they should donate to. In writing my response, I realized there were a lot of factors to consider when making this decision.

(This is also the time of the year where many organizations are inspired to host their own food distribution or meal, but that often doesn’t actually help local anti-hunger efforts.) Collecting resources for an experienced organization is much more effective, and easier for everyone.

While every anti-hunger organization needs food right now, it is important to recognize that there are many different types of pantries with different styles. Luckily, there are thousands of diverse organizations out there, and with a little research you can find one that aligns with your values.

How to pick an organization to donate to:

Volunteer: The gold standard for picking your donation recipient is to volunteer more than once, which will help you identify if they are a good fit with your belief system. I recommend more than once because the first time is mostly orientation. The second shift will be when you really start to understand how things work. Spending some time doing on-the-ground service will help you learn what resources are or are not available to inspire your donation drive.

Word of Mouth: If volunteering isn’t an option (many food pantries have full shifts right now because of the holidays, but they are often in great need of volunteers in January, too!) I recommend seeking out ways to connect with a volunteer, shopper, or someone else familiar with the organization. Staff are likely swamped, but other community members may have capacity to share their experience. What do they love about it? What makes it special?

Other factors to consider:

Proximity: There are a lot of different ways to choose a food pantry to support, and proximity is an incredibly valid one. Selecting the food pantry nearest to you is a great idea because you’ll support individuals within your immediate community. More of your neighbors than you realize likely utilize the resource.

Doing an internet search for your nearest food pantry might surprise you- I recently learned that two different churches in my neighborhood also have food pantries that I didn’t previously know about.

Client experience: This is the primary factor that determines the recommendations that I give out. While it’s impossible to really know without having been a client myself, I consider factors like being a grocery-style pantry, what communities they welcome, and how they determine eligibility.

I favor pantries with the fewest eligibility requirements, since it’s impossible (and completely irrelevant) for us for know why someone comes to a food pantry.

For instance, I won’t recommend donating to a pantry that only serves people who already receive benefits like SNAP or WIC, since that excludes a significant number of vulnerable individuals (and that number will soon grow from SNAP cuts.)

There are still many organizations, covertly or not, who remain unsafe spaces for marginalized communities like immigrants and LGBTQ+ individuals. I look for organizations who explicitly welcome these communities, because in an increasingly hostile world silence can easily be interpreted as taking the side of the oppressor.

There are many organizations out there serving specific demographics, from veterans, to foster children, to people living with HIV/AIDS, and many more. If there’s a community you feel passionate about supporting, there’s probably an anti-hunger resource or food pantry aligned with your beliefs who needs your help.

It’s also important to consider what type of support you want to offer. If you want to donate to a larger food bank, money is probably more desirable than food, since they have more buying power and less capacity to sort and distribute small-scale donations. However, a food pantry might prefer food donations (please ask!), and have specific requests based on their current inventory, such as canned fruit or soups.

I like to encourage themed food drives which guide donors’ choices and make sorting slightly easier for recipients. Things like baking supplies, soups, or spices and seasonings (my personal favorite) help ensure the recipient organization has enough to distribute to many shoppers, and saves them from the conflicts that can occur with limited high-demand items.

While every anti-hunger organization needs food right now, it’s important to carefully consider where your donation goes. It demonstrates who you think deserves to eat, and who you think doesn’t.

Ensuring your donations go to the pantries who give their guests the most positive, abundant, and dignified experience helps move our world a little closer to the place where everyone has access to those same privileges.

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

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Building an Abundance Mindset in Your Anti-Hunger Team

When we are depleted, it is harder to take care of those around us. It’s difficult to convince our community we have the resources we need to support them when we ourselves don’t believe it.

There is no time or place where this reality is more relevant than right now in our food pantries and banks. Rising numbers of visitors alongside interruptions and cuts to the food supply mean that anti-hunger fighters face increasing burdens with fewer resources.

Last week, I had the ultimate privilege of being part of a webinar panel on building abundance hosted by Katie Martin, the author of Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries, alongside food banking expert and consultant Seana Weaver.

We spoke about why the idea of abundance is so important to food pantries, and dug into some of the ways that we can foster that attitude among anti-hunger advocates. Here is the video if you’re interested.

It’s important to remember that abundance means having a lot of something, and that it’s possible to have a lot without having enough. This is an essential duality that food pantries experience every day.

How we think about hunger is one of the most powerful influences on how we fight it. When we focus on what we don’t have, the emphasis falls on maintaining limited resources, often to the detriment of the people we intend to serve. When we adopt an abundant mindset, it empowers us to celebrate what we do have and use it more effectively.

While a future post will discuss what we can do to help food pantry guests feel this sense of abundance, it’s important that we start with staff and volunteers. Convincing this demographic that your food pantry has the resources to thrive means they can more successfully convey it to your community.

Introducing abundance to staff:

Adequate wages and benefits. Too often the nonprofit world expects employees to be martyrs, dedicated to the work regardless of the reward. No matter how we feel about the work, the reality is that we also must pay rent, afford medical bills, buy food, and maintain our vehicles. You’re likely to breed resentment if your focus on abundance is limited to the people you serve.

Support: Are there enough staff to do the work? Is it possible for staff to comfortably take a break or lunch? Is there an expectation (spoken or not) that staff should sacrifice to support each other, like not taking days off? While I recognize that few pantries have the resources to add staff, keep in mind that retention is cheaper than regularly hiring and training new individuals.

Recognition: Fighting hunger demands an enormous amount of emotional labor. Every day, staff work with people who are struggling with enormous challenges; not just hunger but also housing insecurity, medical debt, caregiving, and all kinds of discrimination. Offering daily support to 40 or 50 different people experiencing some kind of trauma is enormously exhausting. Too often, workplaces don’t recognize that the conversations that go into these interactions are just as difficult and draining as moving thousands of pounds of canned goods.

Demonstrating abundance to volunteers:

Celebrate abundance. When a guest leaves the pantry with an abundant amount of food, I’ve often heard volunteers mutter comments about how it’s “too much.” I like to counter this attitude by regularly telling volunteers how excited I am when someone leaves with lots of food, and to envision the excitement and security that the individual must feel when accessing this support. This can gradually help your volunteers transition from the idea that your pantry should give out as little food as possible to maintain supply, and instead to give out as much as is necessary to ensure your community feels supported and nourished.

Pick a food item to treat abundantly. Ask your volunteers to act as if they have an unlimited supply to encourage guests to take. It doesn’t have to be a popular food, and it doesn’t have to be consistent (I’ve done this with everything from cranberry sauce to cabbage to veggie chips.) Demonstrating an excess will help volunteers gradually process that their role is to be givers of abundance rather than gatekeepers, while also sharing this attitude with your pantry guests.

Don’t put volunteers in enforcement roles. When volunteers are responsible for supervising shoppers, such as telling them where they are allowed to go or how much food they may take, it forces them into a confrontational position focused on scarcity. It’s incredibly difficult to feel positive about the impact they’re making when the focus is on telling people what not to do and what they can’t have. I encourage pantries to have volunteers in monitoring positions, but to get staff when enforcement is needed so that volunteers remain immersed in abundance. This is an increased responsibility for staff- highlighting the need for support and recognition!

Building an abundance mindset is not something that can be achieved overnight. It requires repeated exposure over a long period of time until it is gradually adopted as part of the food pantry culture.

The most important thing to remember about implementing an abundance mindset is that you can make a significant impact simply by adjusting the way you think and talk about hunger. Even if you’re not able to make any changes to systems or structures, considering the attitudes we approach hunger with can have a powerful impact on the experience of everyone within the food pantry community.

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

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Uplifting Dignity Amidst a Hunger Crisis

Being an anti-hunger advocate is exhausting right now. The scale of the need we face as people experiencing hunger go without essential SNAP benefits is astronomical. I’m frightened by the growing needs of my neighbors and the overwhelming but vastly insufficient amount of work demanded of my peers. Even though benefits are in the process of restored, it is hardly the end of rising hunger.

A common theme I’ve recently noticed in the public sphere is the tendency to minimize the severity of hunger. I understand it- the suffering and the ramifications are too great to imagine, so it’s easier to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Even empathetic analyses are failing to recognize how the loss of SNAP- even temporarily- may be a harbinger of houselessness, dropping out of school, job loss, serious medical consequences, and more.

Hunger has much bigger consequences than just empty bellies.

Hunger is never the only challenge people face, and cutting food resources also cuts away at other essential lifelines.

Although our primary goal is to ensure people can access the food they need with dignity and compassion, it’s important that we remember there is so much more that we aren’t helping with.

To succeed in our mission, we need to actively avoid minimizing the experience of hunger.

Food insecurity is trauma.

It’s true that one or two days of hunger won’t kill you. But the cumulative impact of reoccurring food insecurity has profound, lasting impacts, and we impede our own efforts when we dismiss the hardship of this reality.

How to avoid dismissing the impacts of hunger:

Acknowledge when your food supply is inadequate or inappropriate. There are a million valid reasons why you don’t have the food your shoppers want or need, but they don’t need to hear those details. If they can’t get the food they need, at least they can see that anti-hunger advocates understand what they’re facing.

My previous pantry saw a noticeable decrease in conflict when we started listening to the concerns of our shoppers without intent to respond. It’s hard, but it will help your shoppers feel seen, and you’ll hopefully learn something!

Actively fight judgements based on appearance. Especially now, as the government shutdown weigh heavily on our economy, people who may have never previously visited a food pantry before are seeking help. They may drive nice cars, live in upscale neighborhoods, and wear new clothes, but none of this influences their need for food and support.

Educate your volunteers on the limitations that poverty places on food choice. Our social narrative is that people experiencing hunger don’t know how to make good choices which is why they live in poverty. It takes ongoing and consistent training to help your team understand the systemic, rather than individual, problems of poverty.

As food pantry attendance goes up alongside staff stress and fatigue, fight the tendency to treat shoppers as a number rather than an individual. While the total number of clients served and pounds distributed are important, it’s essential to remember the stories that people bring and the experience they’re having. It’s real. Consider developing a practice of pursuing at least one involved conversation per distribution with a pantry guest and setting aside time to reflect on what you learned.

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

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What’s a Free Little Food Pantry?

Recently, one of the largest food pantries in my hometown reported that they’ve seen a significant drop in the number of LatinX and immigrant visitors they serve due to the threat of deportation. In the dystopian reality we’re facing of secret police and public kidnappings, it’s easy to overlook that this doesn’t mean these people are no longer experiencing hunger- it’s that they no longer have safe avenues for access.

It is harder and harder to support people facing food insecurity as our public spaces become less safe.

Early in the pandemic, when food banks and pantries were overwhelmed with more people experiencing hunger than they could ever support, my neighborhood started to see “Free Little Pantries” sprout up. They were small cupboards, or occasionally refrigerators, stocked by community members offering an anonymous way for their neighbors to get free food.

I’ve had a couple conversations recently about the value of these resources, and with public spaces being less safe, it seems like a relevant moment to explore their challenges and benefits.

In theory, free little pantries are amazing. They offer a discreet way for people experiencing hunger to freely take the food they need. Enthusiastic neighbors can fill the pantry with the food they have available, and people can take what they want without supervision or judgement. During the height of the pandemic, they offered a low-contact way to get food, and now they discreetly provide food with less risk of encountering ICE. However, they’re not a simple or easy undertaking.

If you’re thinking about starting or supporting a free little pantry, here are some things to keep in mind:

Who will be using this pantry? What are the demographics of your neighborhood? Is it a working-class neighborhood, where there may be residents who just need a little boost now and then? Is it a higher-traffic area, where there may be more people who are unhoused passing through? How will people find out about it? There are various websites where you can list your location, but how many people do you want to know about it?

Free little pantries can be a valuable resource for those who are houseless, but they can also be a source of frustration when they don’t offer anything someone can use without a kitchen.

I’ve heard tragic stories of people experiencing houselessness spending Christmas munching on dry pasta, because that was the only food they could access. It’s important to know the demographics who need the most support.

How are you going to stock it? Some people are excited to cook and prep ready-to-eat foods for their fridges, while others are ready to do regular shopping. Some pantries depend on donations, which means they never know what or how much they’ll have. What kinds of food are you hoping to offer? The free little pantry near me usually has egg noodles and off-brand tomato sauce, and the fridge is currently full of local garden excess.

While I respect enthusiasm for cooking meals for free little pantries, I also caution against it. It’s hard to guarantee the safety of these meals unless you’re very carefully supervising your fridge, labeling ingredients, documenting dates, and monitoring temperatures.

Are your neighbors supportive of this project? It’s important to think about the level of traffic you’re comfortable with. Do you have a neighbor who will call the police anytime they see a stranger walk by? Are they going to complain about unknown cars passing through, or potential garbage on the ground? A free little pantry can never really be a solo endeavor, and you’re going to need community buy-in.

How much time do you want to spend on this project? How often are you able to check it, organize, and clean the space? Depending on the level of traffic, it may need more or less attention to keep it acceptable for users and neighbors.

If you have the energy and enthusiasm, go for it! Free little pantries are a great option for offering food to people experiencing hunger with low barriers and anonymity.

They are a great resource for those who may just need a little boost to make it to the next payday, but it’s important to recognize that they don’t have the capacity to fight ongoing food insecurity. They’re an individual solution to a systemic problem.

If you’re looking for other ways to stay engaged, consider food or fund drives for your local food or pantry (and of course engage in their advocacy efforts). Check with them on what their eligibility requirements are and seek out the organizations who are working hardest to support immigrant and marginalized communities. Consider seeking out backpack programs that send kids home from school with food or volunteer with other community food justice efforts like Portland’s Fruit Tree Project or the Green Bag Food Project.

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

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Keeping Compassion in Anti-Hunger Spaces

I receive an increasing number of messages from people eager to convince me of the prevalence of fraud in emergency food assistance programs (usually in response to this post).

Writers share how a neighbor or relative was excited about receiving help to fill up their refrigerator, and this joy was evidence that they must not really need the food and had committed fraud.

Despite not having any personal knowledge of the recipients’ finances, life situation, or food security, the writers are universally confident that their acquaintance doesn’t need the food and are simply exploiting the system.

They’re sure the system is broken because people experiencing hunger are happy about having enough to eat.

I don’t bother to even acknowledge these messages anymore. They teach me far more about cultural attitudes about hunger than about any disfunction in food assistance programs, but I continue to be shocked by the cruelty of this attitude. These writers believe their entire community should have less access to food because one person they don’t know anything about had more food than they were comfortable with.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an attitude exclusive to internet lurkers. It’s also an attitude regularly reflected in food pantry volunteers and organizational policies themselves, particularly in how they maintain power dynamics and expect clients to act with humility. This is why recipients of food assistance responding with joy and excitement to a few days of food security is so triggering.

We live in a society that is actively working to disregard the humanity of the people around us by reinforcing systemic oppression. This directly reflects in how we think about, talk about, and fight hunger. Our anti-hunger systems have long sought to control the behavior and the attitudes of people experiencing hunger in a way that demeans rather than uplifts these individuals.

How can food justice advocates bring empathy back into the fight against hunger?

Advocate for the humanity of the people you serve. Have conversations about how you don’t want to live in a world where it’s okay to ignore hunger, or to deliberately deprive people of the resources they need to survive. Make people say who they think should starve to death. It’s true this is an aggressive position, and you may lose volunteers or donors. But it’s important to recognize that if individuals believe there are people who don’t deserve to eat, they are not doing your anti-hunger organization any good anyways.

Remind people that hunger-free communities benefit us all. In a world that prioritizes our own self interest, it’s not wrong to discuss how supporting our neighbors also improves our own lives.

Practice self-care. There’s nothing more exhausting than the emotional labor of trying to convince people that they should care about others. I’ve discussed before the work that goes into welcoming nervous clients using stigmatized services, but it’s equally important to recognize that fighting hunger requires engaging with people who advocate for cruelty over compassion.

While arguing with them is rarely productive, anti-hunger advocates are often forced into positions where they must connect professionally. Do what you must do to shake off this ugliness- a primal scream in the walk-in freezer, cuddle your pet, aggressively weed your garden, or eat a bar of fancy chocolate.

There is nothing more important right now than our front-line advocates maintaining their ability to practice compassion and ask it of others.

Previous Post: Don’t Offload Food Waste onto Pantries

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

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Don’t Offload Food Waste onto Pantries

The smell of overripe bananas will forever make me nauseous. Our food pantry once had a pallet of bananas donated that the person on the phone promised were completely edible, with “only a little bit of brown.” While that was technically true, the fruit was also so soft I couldn’t pick it up without it disintegrating, and there was no way that I would offer this to my clients.

(If you’re like 99% of my volunteers, I know what you’re thinking and I’m going to stop you right there. Baking banana bread requires flour, sugar, and oil, all of which are incredibly rare at food pantries. It’s also a recipe primarily familiar to Western Europeans, unlike many of our shoppers. It’s not a practical suggestion, and it drives your food pantry staff bonkers.)

I spent the next two days unpacking the bananas from their boxes and tossing them into our compost bin. The smell permeated my hair and clothes, and I regularly had to step outside for fresh air. I wanted to call the donor and yell at them to take this donation back. It was a waste of my time and a test of my patience, as well as a burden to our compost system. But of course, I couldn’t risk jeopardizing the relationship.

As massive federal cuts leave nonprofits scrambling to access resources, anti-hunger organizations are sending out pleas for community food donations. Although vastly inadequate, for many underfunded nonprofits this is their only option for continuing services.

As part of this campaign, organizations are seeking to establish or boost relationships with corporate partners like groceries stores who have the potential to supply larger quantities than individual donors.

When these relationships work, they are a boon for everyone. Businesses get public appreciation for making a donation (and the tax benefits), and food pantries get the food they need to serve their neighbors.

But just as often, these transactions act as a way for businesses to offload their waste disposal.

Too many people still hold the pervasive idea that it’s okay for people living in poverty to eat lower quality food, which justifies them donating foods that no one else wants to eat. I’m sure this banana donor genuinely believed they were helping us since they knew that food pantries were desperate for food, thanks to constant messaging they hear about donations.

Unfortunately, this attitude places recipients in the uncomfortable position of having to either silently accept the donation or risk offending the donor.

Our current nonprofit culture lives in such a scarcity mindset that it has become the norm to accept these donations, even when it brings additional costs for the recipient such as waste disposal and labor.

How can pantries advocate for quality donations?

Make expectations clear from the outset. My pantry developed an internal system for evaluating food that we would have done well to share externally. We only distributed food that must last until tomorrow and bring joy to recipients. While soft ripe bananas might still technically be edible, they brought no one joy. Telling donors this at the outset would help them understand what we could and couldn’t accept.

Engage in a dialogue with donors about the challenges of receiving food that doesn’t meet your needs. (This has the added benefit of introducing the idea that you don’t just want any foods, but have specific needs for your community.)Before a donation is even made, I like to mention the hardship of receiving food that has to be immediately tossed. Whenever possible, look at the donation before you make a commitment.

This demands confident leadership, but don’t be afraid to refuse donations that don’t meet your standards or align with what you were told you were receiving. While you may risk offending or losing a donor, you also set yourself up for a far more productive relationship in the future. They weren’t helping you by donating garbage, so you don’t actually lose anything.

Asserting donation expectations also teaches your volunteers and community the standards of your organization. Volunteers often assume that food brought into the pantry has already been determined acceptable, which means it’s okay to distribute to clients. When you don’t allow low-quality food in the door, you teach your team that your clients deserve only the best.

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

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What Happens When Emergency Food Runs Out?

Like any other public space, my food pantry regularly encountered people who were challenging to work with. After spending significant effort helping an individual get through their food pantry visit, volunteers regularly asked me why I didn’t just refuse them service.

They questioned whether it was appropriate for me to spend that much time helping someone who was rude, unruly, or struggling with their mental health get through the pantry. Inevitably, the volunteer would point out, “they can always just go somewhere else.”

That’s the assumption that gets us into trouble.

There is no guarantee that someone can find food elsewhere.

Food pantries are often located in inaccessible locations, far from city centers and public transportation. For people without a car or with disabilities, it may not be possible to travel to another pantry. Food pantry hours are also notoriously inconvenient- designed to accommodate the schedules of volunteers rather than the needs of shoppers.

It’s never safe to assume that someone will be able to find food somewhere else.

It’s especially important to consider this as our government debates drastic cuts to SNAP which will cut off this essential resource for people who may have no other options for food access. Food pantries are already facing cuts to their food supply, which means the two main tools we use for fighting hunger are significantly weakened and inadequate for the growing need.

What happens when people can’t access food?

Nutritional quality declines. Lower quality foods are cheaper, and people must buy what they can to fill their belly without regard for nutrition. Poor diet leads to poor health, which increases healthcare costs and adds barriers to survival. Without enough money, there are no workarounds. We sometimes joke about this- like how it’s a rite of passage for college students to survive on nothing but ramen, but this hurts everyone.

People eat less. In households with children, it’s common for parents to reduce or skip meals so that their children can eat. In combination with lower quality food, this contributes to poor health, stress, fatigue, and emotional dysregulation.

Housing security drops. Without enough money for food and housing, households must juggle between the two, which makes it more likely that they fall behind. Investments in affordable housing are also one of the most effective ways to fight hunger.

Theft. When people have no other way to access food, they may resort to shoplifting. Getting caught risks a criminal record which increases their barriers to food security. Our society is often eager to demonize people for these types of crimes even though these individuals have few other options. Telling someone to get a job does nothing to help them endure their empty stomach tonight.

Because our society consistently treats hunger as a result of poor decision making, it’s easy to frame the solution as making different choices- maybe people just need to look harder or somewhere else to find food. But what this paradigm fails to consider is that there are not unlimited options for finding food.

It’s very real and very true that people run out of people and places to turn to for help. Especially with recent and impending cuts to emergency food assistance, we can no longer assume that someone will be able to find food when their SNAP is cut and their food pantry emptied.

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

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Fighting Hunger and Making Food Fun

I have something a little different to share this week. Please enjoy this guest post I wrote for FoodCorps about the transformation my food pantry saw when we eliminated limits on most of our food supply.

As the anti-hunger world faces increasing budget cuts, restrictions, and fears about scarcity, it’s more important than ever that we focus on how we can still uplift abundance to ensure everyone can have fun with what they eat.

Previous Post: Can We Force People to Eat Healthy?

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Can We Force People to Eat Healthy?

For years, there’s been debate in anti-hunger circles about the need to improve the diet and health of people experiencing hunger. Most recently, discussion has revived around adding purchasing restrictions to SNAP to make soda, candy, ice cream, and prepared desserts ineligible for purchase with benefits.

On the surface, it sounds like a great idea. Assuming that people just need to be directed towards healthier options, this would be an efficient policy. Because Americans generally believe that poverty results from making poor choices, it’s easy to accept that people experiencing hunger need help making better choices. We’ve also all been conditioned to believe that people using SNAP are trying to manipulate the system, which makes it easier to accept that they need extra restrictions.

However, this policy proposal does not improve health, recognize current barriers to food security, or respect the dignity of people experiencing hunger. Empowering people to eat healthier benefits everyone, but this policy proposal fails to do so.

There’s no evidence that people who use SNAP have a worse diet than people who don’t.

This should immediately call into question why SNAP has been chosen to be the policy tool for this crusade.

If this policy seeks to reduce junk food consumption, why does it only restrict people receiving benefits? Specifically targeting vulnerable, low-income demographics for a society-wide issue is disingenuous and inequitable.

After working in anti-hunger spaces for nearly fifteen years, I’ve learned from thousands of people seeking food assistance. Overwhelmingly, these individuals demonstrate that they know how to eat healthy.

Ask at any food pantry, and staff will tell you that quality fresh produce is always in highest demand and shortest supply. We see too many food pantry photos of shopping carts loaded with potato chips because that’s all they have- it’s not that shoppers are choosing them over healthier options.

People experiencing hunger know as well as any other demographic what healthy eating looks like.

The barrier isn’t knowledge or choice; it’s access. Fresh foods are more expensive than processed. Critics like to point out that an apple is cheaper than a bag of frozen chicken nuggets, but they ignore the reality that an apple is not a meal. An apple, peanut butter, and fixings for a sandwich on whole wheat bread is significantly more expensive than a bag of frozen chicken nuggets. By calorie, healthy foods are more expensive.

What would these SNAP restrictions achieve?

Since adding restrictions to SNAP do not increase the budget of beneficiaries, eliminating the purchase of certain foods reduces choice. By making unhealthy options inaccessible, it does not make healthy foods more accessible.

SNAP funds are so inadequate that they have always forced people to prioritize the cheapest foods. The choice has never been between a bag of chips or a vegetable stir fry.

This policy intends to assert the idea that people experiencing poverty need the leadership of people who have never been food insecure, which is condescending, paternalistic, and completely ignorant.

It also takes away the chance for recipients to practice self-care through food. Facing the incredible challenges of today’s world, everyone deserves the freedom to buy the foods that make us feel comforted, safe, and nourished, even if they’re not always the healthiest.

If policy makers really cared about the health and diet of SNAP recipients, they would be fighting to increase SNAP benefits. If they really feared the risks that junk food poses to Americans, they’d be working to reduce access for the entire population.

This policy just intends to be cruel towards and already vulnerable population.

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

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Changing Our Diet Won’t End Hunger

Content warning: discussion of slaughtering animals for meat consumption

I increasingly receive emails from people excited to share the secret to solving hunger- usually advocating for a miracle crop, agricultural practice, or a specific diet. While these conversations are a great opportunity to learn about their passion, ranging from hydroponics to yucca farming, these solutions don’t usually address food insecurity. They may help with sustainability, conservation, or health, but fail to consider the root causes of hunger.

The solution to hunger has very little to do with food.

Here is a recent must-read on the root causes of hunger recently written by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

Hunger is a political rather than agricultural problem. Food access, rather than quantity, is the barrier to a nourished world.

Nevertheless, one of the most common proposals I hear for ending hunger is vegetarianism. Many people argue that the resources it takes to raise livestock would be much more effectively dedicated to other food products. They’re not wrong, but the issue is so much more complicated than that.

I grew up on a small farm that raised sheep and poultry for meat, with the occasional goats as well. My parents dedicated significant effort to enriching our pastures to ensure it made the animals and the land healthier. Most years, we hired a mobile butcher to slaughter our animals on-site to reduce the stress and trauma of traveling. Meat has always been a part of my diet, and I was never sheltered from the realities of raising livestock.

As a result of my background, I believe that it is possible to sustainably and ethically eat animals. Our society would definitely benefit from changing the way we treat animals, but I’ve witnessed how livestock and conservation do not have to be mutually exclusive.

There is no one “best” way to eat.

Food is how we celebrate culture, traditions, show affection, and care for our bodies and I have the greatest respect for people who make the choice to limit or eliminate their consumption of animal products, whatever their reasons.

While there are many compelling reasons for our society to eat less meat, an essential component of food justice is ensuring that people choose what they eat rather than having the decision forced upon them.

Our world would absolutely be healthier, more humane, and more sustainable if we consumed fewer animal products.

But promoting a vegetarian diet as the solution to hunger does not increase access to food- it simply eliminates a source of nutrition that is essential for many people.

Chastising food insecure families for eating meat is no more dignified nor respectful than placing restrictions on what SNAP recipients can spend their benefits on.

Beans and other plant proteins are not a significant food for many cultures (and it’s a personal pet peeve of mine that many food pantries and banks tout offering dry beans as a miracle solution to hunger.)

As SNAP data shows us, we can empower people to eat healthier by increasing their buying power and is more effective than reducing their options.

Food systems are rapidly evolving, and there are many conditions right now that may significantly impact the foods we can regularly access. But it’s essential that in our effort to ensure our neighbors are nourished we not sacrifice their autonomy and power of choice.

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

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The Best Part of Using a Food Pantry

I recently was chatting with a farmer who sells their produce at a nearby farmers market, and I mentioned that my professional experience lies primarily in food pantries, and they had so much to say. This farmer shared that when they first moved to Oregon, they depended upon a food pantry and clothing closet. I wasn’t sure what they were going to say next, because it is a negative experience for many.

However, this person absolutely gushed about what a positive experience they had. They visited a grocery style pantry, which gave them the autonomy to make their own food choices, and they said their regular visits were the most respectful, dignified, and compassionate experiences they could have imagined. Years later, their farm still makes regular donations of fresh produce to that pantry.

I don’t hear a lot of these stories. While there are plenty of wonderful food pantries doing incredible work, there are also lots of food pantries reinforcing the narrative that people experiencing hunger are there because of personal failures, bad judgment, or a lack of responsibility. Even pantries with friendly volunteers and a healthy food supply can foster systems and attitudes that still leave their shoppers feeling humiliated or ashamed.

Unfortunately, eliminating these judgements in food pantries depends upon establishing new foundational attitudes rather than just increasing the budget or building capacity.

It’s not something that we can fix with a grant, a handbook, or a webinar training series. This is a reflection of much deeper assumptions that our society holds about poverty, hunger, and responsibility to one another, and it’s much harder to change.

This farmer I spoke to didn’t mention anything about the quality or the quantity of food they received. They didn’t even talk about the line or limits on food supply. Instead, they talked about how the food pantry made them feel. They felt respected, seen, and dignified.

While food is obviously an important component of the pantry experience, this reminds me that even pantries without enough food or those who are unable to access culturally or nutritionally specific options can still make a lasting, positive impact on the individuals they serve.

What are the foundational attitudes for fostering a positive food pantry experience?

Everyone deserves to eat without qualifiers, conditions, or exception. It’s important to recognize that if someone doesn’t get food at your food pantry, they might not eat at all. That is not okay. People who have a new iPhone deserve to eat. Immigrants and refugees deserve to eat. People with strict preferences and nutritional limitations deserve to eat. People with visible and invisible disabilities deserve to eat. The community can tell whether your team believes this or not, in how policies are implemented, clients are treated, and services are advertised.

Even if food pantries don’t have everything someone needs, they can still practice compassion by respecting their humanity and need for nourishment. If you’ve ever heard a volunteer question whether someone deserves to visit your food pantry, then you have work to do.

Autonomy. People deserve the right to make their own food choices (in opposition to the myth that bad choices lead people to hunger which necessitates them needing supervision making “better” ones). Switching to grocery style pantries is the best way to do this, and through eliminating limits.

You are the best expert on the food your body needs to thrive. Why would a food pantry client be any different?

Treat pantry clients as equals. It’s far too easy when dispensing charity for organizations to demand submission from program recipients, which can manifest as strict rules about waiting in line, nitpicking about paperwork, or checking shopping bags to ensure limits were followed. There are ways to enforce pantry policies without aggressively asserting the power imbalance of using a food pantry. Start by discussing the power disparities, with clients if you can; they probably have a very different perspective than staff and volunteers. Welcome clients to the volunteer team, and take seriously what they share about their own experience.

Dignity. Food pantry clients don’t want pity, or condescension, or judgement at all (just like anyone else!) As the need goes up and pantries serve increasing numbers of clients, it can be hard to hold onto the reality that every one of those clients is a human over whom the pantry has significant power. However, focusing on scaling up and efficiency adds very little to a positive food pantry experience.

Even though these are foundational attitudes, they aren’t impossible to introduce to a pantry. Success depends on consistency and exposure, and leadership that is eager to embrace food justice and human dignity. Building these ideas into your mission, values, and strategic plan is the best way to demonstrate your commitment to the community.

Nonprofits are overwhelmed by need and rightly panicked about funding. But we need to focus on the reality that the most important part of using a food pantry; the piece which clients will remember and share with their neighbors, has little to do with the food they got and everything to do with how their visit made them feel.

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

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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?

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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The Indignity of Waiting in Line

In 2025, Who Deserves to Eat will publish on the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month to allow me to better balance my time with other food justice projects. Follow me on LinkedIn if this isn’t enough conversation on food access for you!

This time of year, it’s not at all unusual to see food pantries with a line of clients stretching out the door and around the block. Demand for food increases with cold weather, costlier utilities, and the price of the holiday season, but few pantries have the capacity to increase the number of people they can provide food to at the same time.

This results in longer and longer lines of people experiencing hunger waiting to get the food they need to survive, and more challenges and stress for everyone.

Most food pantries occupy small physical spaces while offering limited hours, which contributes to larger crowds of clients seeking help simultaneously.

There are very few situations in which waiting in a long line is relaxing.

Harsh winter weather can make waiting for your turn in the pantry immensely unpleasant and be a barrier to access for those who can’t withstand the weather or stand for the required time.

Few pantries have a setup where shoppers wait indoors or even in a covered space. Those that do allow waiting inside often lead to a tightly packed crowd where people may be uncomfortable or anxious, which can escalate tensions.

No food pantry has all the food it needs for its clients to thrive. Very few organizations can provide their neighbors with what they need to celebrate their health, culture, or community. Many organizations embrace a scarcity mindset by emphasizing what they lack, including encouraging clients to come earlier during distribution to get better quality food, “to beat the crowds.”

This attitude often fosters competition, prompting more defensive attitudes while in line and while shopping. And longer lines increase anxiety as the people closer to the back worry that they won’t get the food they need.

Besides being physically taxing, the demand on time can be a barrier to waiting in line. Food pantries often have distribution hours that cater to the availability of volunteers rather than the needs of their community. That is why many, if not most, food pantries are open during the workday.

Unfortunately, this may mean that people simply don’t have the time to wait in line.

I’ve met many clients running by a pantry on their lunch break, only to see the long line and realize that they won’t be able to get food without risking their job.

The long line can also be a significant barrier for people with children. Even when the weather is pleasant, standing still in a crowd with young kids is not easy. Now imagine doing it surrounded by individuals who are stressed, cold, and hungry.

Managing the pantry line:

Extend your distribution hours. Longer open hours means people won’t have to rush to get there during a concentrated period of time.

Manage your food flow. Every pantry has a different system, but consider finding a way to ensure that people coming at the end of distribution get some food that is just as desirable as what was given away first. I used to set aside a specific section of popular foods so that I had something fun to offer even when the rest of our supply was low. If you’re able to do this consistently enough, you can usually find a community of shoppers happy to come near the end of distribution, which can ease the pressures of the opening line.

Assess physical exposure. Is there a way to move the line indoors? If not, can you cover it, and potentially add heaters? Offer hot tea?

Even if none of these options are available to you, let clients know that you recognize how miserable it can be. Empathy is powerful. I used to have a basket of candy we’d pull out if the line got long (warming cinnamon in the winter, and mint in the summer) and a staff member would distribute it and chat with our shoppers. We apologized for the line and assured them we had plenty of food, and that we recognized the failures of the system.

Remember that for many of your shoppers, if they can’t get food from you, they may not eat at all. Imagine being hungry, and worried about feeding your family, and standing in a freezing cold line surrounded by strangers. It is scary, intimidating, embarrassing, and exhausting. While it’s important that pantries not tolerate aggressive or violent behavior, we need to recognize that we are using a system that deliberately stresses and antagonizes the people we serve.

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

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Food is a Right, Not a Gift

Because gift-giving is voluntary, our society expects us to express gratitude for that honor. We appreciate the intentions of the gift-giver even when the gift itself is not something that is useful or wanted. In general, this is not a bad expectation. It emphasizes the value of relationships over the value of the gifts themselves.

However, when this attitude carries over into food banking, it can quickly grow toxic and counterproductive.

Everyone deserves to eat.

Food is necessary to live, which means if we treat it as a gift, we construct a framework that makes the survival of our neighbors’ dependent upon gifts bestowed by others. While we can certainly argue that American capitalism grants a few powerful individuals the authority to determine who lives or dies, an ethical society shouldn’t accept this attitude.

When fighting hunger, providing food is more urgent than manipulating the relationship of the pantry and shopper.

Historically, this relationship in emergency food assistance has been defined by reinforcing existing inequalities and outdated assumptions about poverty. Food banks and pantries often emphasize their services as a gift to recipients, which undermines the right of our community to be nourished and healthy with no strings attached.

Food banks and pantries provide a vital service for our neighbors who are prevented from accessing food elsewhere. In nearly all circumstances, organizations depend upon volunteers “gifting” their time, labor, and funds to fulfill their mission. It can be quite easy for nonprofits to embrace language around gift-giving to echo the holiday spirit and evoke compassion from their communities.

But when we frame the giving of food as a gift when fighting hunger, we perpetuate harmful assumptions that ultimately inhibit our efforts. It unintentionally constructs a scenario where staff and volunteers expect their efforts to be treated as a gift- which means believing that recipients should express gratitude, and that they aren’t entitled to what they are given. But no one should ever be expected to be grateful for food.

This language reinforces the power imbalance of giver versus receiver and entirely disregards the individual needs of people experiencing hunger. Because our society expects the recipients of gifts to be grateful, it often means any comments or concerns about how the gift doesn’t serve them are unwelcome or ignored.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard food pantry staff or volunteers complain about how a client asked for different options because they wouldn’t or couldn’t eat what they were offered, and were annoyed that their gift was not accepted with humility.

The food that food banks, pantries, and meal sites provide is not a gift. It is a human right, attempting to fill a very big hole created by the inequalities built into our society. While anti-hunger organizations do not have the capacity to meet the full scope of the need, they are still vital for helping millions of people make it through yet another hungry day.

We fail ourselves, and each other, as empathetic creatures by maintaining a paradigm that denies everyone the right to be nourished by healthy, culturally sensitive foods.

There will be no new blog post next Monday, December 29. Who Deserves to Eat will return on January 6, 2025.

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

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How to Help Children Fight Hunger

The winter holidays are approaching, which means many parents are looking for ways to engage with their children during the long vacation. My previous food pantries always saw a noticeable increase in the number of families, or parents reaching out on behalf of their older children, looking to volunteer at this time of year.

When it is done well, parents and children leave their volunteer service feeling enriched and impactful. When it is not handled gracefully, it can be harmful to everyone.

As a food pantry manager, I’ve fielded calls from dozens of parents looking for opportunities to help their children “appreciate how fortunate they are.” Essentially, the lesson they are trying to convey is how lucky their children are that they don’t have to use a food pantry. Framed this way, it emphasizes an “us/them” dichotomy that rarely fosters empathy or understanding of hunger. This attitude reinforces the attitude that visiting a food pantry is shameful, and further perpetuates the myth that poverty is a matter of luck or hard work, rather than systemic oppression and inequality.

I also regularly hear from families wanting to spend December helping the “less fortunate members of their community.” Again, this language emphasizes the differences between them and food pantry clients and may cement them in the minds of their children. Without thoughtful guidance, attitudes like this can perpetuate harmful attitudes around racism, poverty, and inequality.

This type of volunteering is performative and biased, even if well-intentioned. Poverty is not something to be gawked at, and this attitude is harmful to anti-hunger organizations working to emphasize dignity and the belief that everyone deserves to eat.

Volunteering as a family can be a hugely positive and formative experience, but service must be treated with delicacy and respect. Far too often, the people using services like food pantry clients are treated as a vehicle for volunteers to complete their “good deeds” or as examples to illustrate a specific assumption.

There are specific steps that parents and nonprofit organizations can take to fight these tendencies, increase the impact of their volunteer services, and help children develop an understanding of social justice that empowers them to be future changemakers.

For parents:

Find volunteer projects that your children are excited about. I grew up volunteering for the National Letter Carriers Food Drive for over a decade, sorting food at the post office into boxes as the mail carriers brought it in during the annual event. My family had so much fun that we took over management of our post office and staffed the team exclusively with our school friends and their families. Finding activities that your children enjoy can foster long-term interest in volunteering and passion for the issues you’re working on (twenty years later, I’m doing the same work!)

I encourage families with children under twelve to pursue roles that don’t provide direct service to clients. This helps ensure that children don’t interact with clients until they have the maturity to do appropriately. There are still many ways to participate in impactful service like repacking bulk foods at a food bank, managing a food drive, or sorting food boxes or toy donations. These offer great opportunities to have conversations with children about how they are helping- and to introduce the systemic barriers that prevent people from accessing these resources. Parents don’t need to be experts on this subject- but they should put effort into finding an organization aligned with these values.

When children are old enough to do direct service with clients, it needs to be voluntary. The youth who thrive while volunteering are the ones who want to come. Sullen and grumpy children working with people living with hunger degrades the experience for everyone. When parents focus on the lesson or morality of service with reluctant children, it furthers their disengagement and disinterest, and I’ve seen this manifest many times as disrespect towards clients.

For pantries and anti-hunger organizations:

Be clear about and enforce age restrictions for volunteer roles. Almost every time I have been instructed by leadership to make an exception for a donor or volunteer’s grandchild, I find myself acting more as babysitter than pantry manager, or doing damage control with clients. It’s not worth it. If you can make some positions child-friendly- awesome! It’s also okay to have roles that are exclusively for adults.

Model language that combats the idea that you’re helping the “less fortunate” or “needy” in your marketing, literature, and conversations with volunteers. Your community will repeat your words, so deliberately discussing the systemic nature of poverty helps volunteers and potential volunteers adopt this idea over outdated assumptions.

In your volunteer orientation and training materials, introduce the root causes of hunger using language accessible to a twelve-year old. When there are children present, you won’t have to make any changes, and it’s likely that your adult volunteers will also benefit from the simplest framing of this immensely complex issue. This ensures everyone has a clear understanding of your mission and goals in a way that empowers your community.

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

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Food Pantries Fighting Hanger: Bring Snacks!

Have you ever been hangry?

A combination of hungry and angry, hangry is the perfect term for the short temper and dysregulation that accompanies the stress of hunger. I am the ultimate hangry person. When I get too hungry, my tolerance level for everything drops, and I essentially check out until I get some food. My friends and family know that once I’ve hit hangry, we’re not going to get anything done until the situation is rectified.

I know I’m not alone. Hangry is an increasingly popular term because it captures the peevishness that grows alongside hunger. We all know that no one is their best self when they are hangry.

This especially goes for food pantry clients and people facing food insecurity. Hunger amplifies stress, which can be further sparked when facing the indignities that can accompany seeking out food assistance.

Every food pantry I’ve worked at regularly served people who hadn’t eaten in too long. Whether they didn’t have an easy way to travel to the pantry or postponed their visit for as long as possible, it was not unusual to serve clients who hadn’t eaten in twelve hours or more. (I’ll never forget serving a young man at one of my first food pantries who hadn’t eaten in two days. That level of hunger and stress brings enormous urgency to everyone at the pantry.)

Asking someone feeling hangry to wait in a slow-moving line, fill out a tedious intake form, and pay attention to a boring orientation on pantry rules is a big and unfair ask.

Interactions between clients and volunteers can be tense. Volunteers are trying to adhere to the policies they’ve been taught as efficiently as possible, potentially without awareness of the other issues clients might be experiencing.

Clients are often trying to get in and out quickly with as much dignity as possible, which can run contrary to the systems volunteers seek to enforce.

Imposing strict rules on people dealing with hunger, stress, and other challenges can make these interactions harder.

Food pantries and meal sites all experience their fair share of challenging interactions. Our shoppers come with complex stories and high stress that can amplify triggers. But there are few scenarios where getting someone the food they need doesn’t make it better.

How can pantries do better at meeting clients’ immediate needs?

Provide snacks or small bites, like granola bars or an apple, at check in. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but the opportunity for someone to eat before heading into what is regularly a stressful situation can alleviate some of the anxiety. It also helps build a more welcoming atmosphere.

Allow people to eat in the pantry. This doesn’t mean you have to let people assemble a meal right then and there, but snacking while shopping should be welcomed! Snacking at one of my previous pantries made a big difference in keeping children calm and quiet, which enabled their guardians to enjoy a more relaxed shopping experience and alleviate everyone’s stress.

It’s not too much to ask people to clean up after themselves, and your pantry should already have several waste bins distributed throughout the room. While you may still have to clean up an occasional mess, it should be preferable to escalating unnecessary conflict.

Teach volunteers to check for clients who might need extra support. Even if you don’t have enough snacks for everyone, having something available when necessary can make an enormous impact. I can’t count the number of times where my pantry saw an escalating situation, but getting our shopper a granola bar and a juice box immediately relieved the tension. Also, recognize the emotional labor that goes into diffusing these difficult situations.

Food pantries often serve high numbers of people with specific nutritional requirements. Being equipped to support someone with low blood sugar with emergency snacks should be an expectation rather than an aspiration of all anti-hunger organizations.

Model healthy self-care by ensuring that staff and volunteers also get breaks for snacks and lunch. I once worked at a pantry where I rarely got a lunch break, and it was often my volunteers who pointed out that I needed to eat when my mood started to go south. Modeling self-care helps ensure that everyone is better-prepared and more thoughtful about supporting our neighbors through the next challenge that arises.

I often see pantries seeking to develop a more efficient, professional atmosphere through increasingly strict rules and official looking paperwork. It’s these same pantries who experience increased conflict by placing unreasonable and inflexible expectations on their community.

Food pantries strongly benefit from a friendly, casual attitude over formality. It is entirely possible to develop a professional, respectful food pantry that has best practices for supporting their clients rather than asserting their authority. Offering snacks is a great first step.

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

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Keeping Food Pantries Safe Spaces for Everyone

In conversation with several food pantries this fall, I’ve noticed a common theme. As they serve a rising number of clients with high anxiety and urgent needs, organizations are starting to hire staff whose sole responsibility is pantry security and rule enforcement. While recognizing the need for safety, it’s worth examining this trend and the potential impact.

It’s important that everyone feels safe at a food pantry. Building an inclusive community depends on establishing a physically safe space. Because food pantries serve such a wide diversity of people, this can sometimes be a challenge.

Conflict is not uncommon. People experiencing food insecurity often endure trauma, high stress, and sometimes mental health and substance abuse issues. Hunger is a traumatic experience both mentally and physically, and it’s essential that we respond with compassion and empathy rather than force. All my previous food pantries had occasional visitors we had to navigate carefully because of the potential for unsafe or violent behavior. It is important that food pantry staff have an established protocol for how to manage these interactions while ensuring that everyone feels safe and welcome.

Pantries need to carefully consider how they build a safe space. Most food pantries are run by people of priviledge with no lived experience of poverty, which means they are more likely to trust law enforcement personnel. Many other communities feel less safe with an official in uniform present, which means bringing a security officer into the pantry does not necessarily build a more welcoming environment. Whatever you believe about the police, it’s important to remember that everyone does not agree with you, which influences the conditions you facilitate.

Depending on your location and demographics, fears about immigration enforcement can also impact who feels safe around a security officer. Many food pantry advocates remember the decrease in Latine clients we saw during the height of President Trump’s anti-immigrant deportations. We should expect similar situations to arise again.

In many scenarios, dedicated security officers exacerbate conflict by responding with combative rather than de-escalatory tactics. While having a staff member trained and skilled in building a safe space should be every pantry’s goal, a security officer is unlikely to be the most productive response for building a safe and welcoming environment.

Here are some strategies for de-escalating conflicts and maintaining a safe space:

The biggest mistake that food pantries make is treating poor behavior like a deliberate effort to be difficult rather than a symptom of trauma, fear, or mental illness. Responding to these issues as transgressions that need to be punished fuels confrontation rather than alleviates it. People respond with the same level of energy we direct at them, which means aggressive responses evoke aggressive answers.

Instead, train your team to prioritize above all else that your visitors are food insecure individuals who need help and support. Trauma-informed care recognizes that hunger isn’t the only challenge they’re bringing in the door. Start by checking in with the shopper to see if they have specific needs that help can resolve the issue- it often is as simple as a snack or bottle of water. I can’t emphasize enough how many times getting someone a snack resolved any issues.

Remember the power imbalance inherent to food pantries. Staff and volunteers literally control whether our clients will get to eat today or not. I’ve met teams who’ve grown casual about this authority, which fosters a lack of empathy for the needs of shoppers. Everyone deserves to eat.

Have as few rules as possible for clients to violate. Some of the pantries with the highest levels of conflict also have the most rules about eligibility, shopping style, or food choices and amounts. When we set up situations where we prioritize discipline and obedience, we build opportunities for conflict. What policies are nonnegotiable and which are flexible based on the situation?

Anytime you need to escalate a concern with a client, take it outside of the pantry space even if that means waiting until they are done shopping. If they get angry or threatening, this helps keep everyone else safe.

Volunteers should never participate in confrontation with clients. This should be a trained staff responsibility only, which helps maintain a positive experience for volunteers and avoids fueling negative attitudes towards shoppers who are struggling.

Invest in de-escalation training. The best advice I ever got for working with people who are having a hard day is to speak quieter and slower. As conflict escalates, we talk faster and louder as energy builds. As difficult as it can be in the heat of the moment, making the effort to drop your energy level can induce people around you to slow down as well. Your body language also can either feed or diminish the issue.

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

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Why You Shouldn’t Host Your Own Holiday Food Event

As the holiday decorations have arrived in force at all commercial retailers, I’ve been pleased to see many of them them partnered with barrels and posters collecting for food drives. I’m excited to donate cans at my local rock climbing gym and funds at the grocery store.

However, it often seems like every business not supporting a food drive is now hosting their own holiday meal, food box distribution, or toy drive. It’s a great way to connect with neighbors, market services, and build a positive reputation. But it’s not always the best thing to fight hunger.

While hosting a your own food program sounds great on paper, it’s not as simple as one might believe.

We all enjoy the warm feelings of helping people in need, but if your organization hasn’t hosted before, you may not be well set-up to safely manage and serve hot foods, store and distribute food boxes, or ensure that your services prioritize the dignity of your recipients.

Too often, these kinds of distributions focus more on generating goodwill towards the host than providing meaningful support and empathy for community members.

Even more frequently, these distributions are designed with one particular community in mind rather than the broader population (commonly seniors, children, or veterans). While wanting to support your friends and your neighbors is noble and good, communities thrive when services prioritize those with the greatest need and barriers rather than the people the American business community relates to the most.

Consistency is important to food access. Offering a one-time event can be hard to ensure neighbors know about it, and one-off events can leave people confused without options the following year. Anti-hunger organizations are well-suited for hosting these events because that is what they do. They have established relationships with their neighbors and clients and are trained to safely distribute food in a way that elevates the dignity of all involved. Your local athleticwear store or graphic design studio doesn’t have the same tools and skills.

If you’re suddenly inspired to use your business to make a difference this year, consider why. Are you motivated to ensure your neighbors have access to the food they need to celebrate their community? If so, you are better off partnering with an existing organization that has the capacity, framework, and resources to make the event a success.

If you are interested in hosting it yourself for the marketing potential, then it’s important to recognize that your primary goal is self-promotion rather than food access. When you ask your food bank for support on this project, know that the staff are intimately aware of your motives, and frustrated by your requests.

If you want to host a food distribution because you want to nourish and uplift your people – your church, your apartment complex, your community group, or your clients, think about who in your area is already offering assistance. With very rare exceptions, most food banks require that any distribution be open to any and all who need it, not just specific people.

Encourage your clients, church, or community to explore the services that already exist. Using existing services helps food banks more than setting up new distributions. Established programs have a better understanding of the needs in a region and can better allocate resources without needing to train, certify, and coordinate an inexperienced partner.

Additionally, food banks, who are likely to provide most, if not all, of the food distributed, are already swamped during the holidays. They have limited capacity to onboard and support new and one-time partner agencies. They also may plan most of their holiday food orders around the number of agencies they anticipated serving, so sourcing additional foods may not be easy.

How to have the most impact this holiday season:

Evaluate your focus. Why do you want to host your own event? Do you think you can do it better than anyone else who’s already doing it? If so, why aren’t you doing this work full-time? Using charity as a marketing tool is a long-established tradition, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ethical or effective at addressing hunger. Partnering with an established organization makes everything easier by allowing everyone to lean into their strengths.

Volunteer at an established organization. They absolutely need your help, which saves you from dealing with complicated logistics like unloading pallets, finding places for people to park, or scheduling your own volunteers, and lets you enjoy all of the fun aspects of the work. Established organizations have mechanisms for reaching and advertising to clients, so they can be confident that the community is aware of the events or resources they offer. Existing programs are also likely to have more capacity than first-time, one-off events, which means they are prepared for the demand. As a new resource, you wouldn’t have that confidence, and nothing would be worse than turning people away at the door.

Donate funds to these established organizations. Food banks NEVER have enough turkeys for Thanksgiving (although they occasionally see an increase after the holiday as stores donate the ones that didn’t sell). Having the funds to buy the specific foods for people to celebrate their holiday is hugely empowering. And if you want to keep you money and support more local, donating directly to pantries or meal sites enables them to do more of what they are already doing well, instead of offering a cheap imitation.

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

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The Future of Hunger in America

No matter how you feel about the outcome of this election, the reality is that if Trump implements the policies he has proposed, food insecurity is likely to significantly increase.

Mass deportation (or even just threats of) will decimate the agriculture community which depends on migrant labor. This will contribute to both food shortages and increased costs.

Separating nutrition programs from agriculture within the Farm Bill, as proposed by Project 2025 (Chapter 10), removes any incentive for compromise between parties and is a deliberate move towards slashing SNAP. (This one really frightens me.)

Further proposals within the document recommend reinstating SNAP work requirements, which are proven to increase hunger and have no positive impact on employment.

The administration also plans to target Universal School Meals, which over the last year have provided ample proof that nourished children have better outcomes. The list goes on.

It’s true we have no idea what will happen, but these are the policies that have been proposed.

What this means is that we can expect significant changes in America’s hunger landscape. The resources we have and the policies we uphold are likely to fluctuate alongside a volatile economy. We face uncertainty, fear, and an increasing disinterest in evidence-based policy. Anti-hunger work is going to get harder.

One of my biggest frustrations of working in the anti-hunger community is that we tend to be reactive rather than proactive. Food bank and pantry staff are overworked, underpaid, and under-resourced, which makes it incredibly hard to plan long-term. But long-term planning is the only way we will make a difference, because ending hunger depends on ending it tomorrow and not just today.

We can amplify our impact if we are prepared for the future, which is why I’m outlining steps that food pantries should take now to prepare for increasing need.

What your food pantry can start doing today to prepare for a changing landscape:

Conduct a SWOT analysis. Does your pantry have the capacity to grow if demand for your services increases? By how much? What are the obstacles to that growth?

I fully recognize and empathize that we are entering the busiest time of year for this industry, but doing this now is the only way we can prepare for future changes that could very well overwhelm our services.

Clarify your organizational values. While I’m sure you’ve got beautiful mission statements on the wall of your pantry, it is important for food pantries to be clear about whether they are a safe space and who they are dedicated to serving. The Trump administration has shown enthusiasm for attacking marginalized communities like BIPOC, LGBTQ+, migrants, and others. People within these communities are rightfully concerned about their safety in all public spaces, given the increase in hate crimes we saw during his last administration. Food pantries can be proactive by deciding if they are safe for these communities. If you want to keep serving these communities, you need to prove they are welcome.

I know that there are plenty of organizations and staff that aren’t interested in being these safe spaces. It’s important that everyone share this information- so advocates know where we can safely refer our clients and direct resources. If your pantry doesn’t want to serve LBGTQ+ shoppers, I certainly don’t want to send them to you.

Build safe spaces. This means establishing a staff and volunteer team committed to genuinely welcoming vulnerable communities. Teach your team about the importance of pronouns. Source culturally specific foods, and celebrate them. Do your shoppers see their communities represented among volunteers, staff, and leadership? A future blog will specifically examine building safe physical environments and the trend of food pantries hiring security staff. If our neighbors are fearful of law enforcement, a security agent can deter them from seeking food assistance.

Assess eligibility. Who do you serve, and who do you have capacity to serve? One of the major food access programs in my region uses federal welfare eligibility as their primary qualifier for services. What happens if the administration adds requirements that cause people to lose benefits? I will be looking for whether this organization changes their eligibility requirements, or if they allow the disqualification of thousands of their shoppers because of federal changes. Who do you serve, and/or who do you have capacity to serve? Who might need more help in the future?

Teach your volunteers and broader community about the value of a well-nourished world. When everyone is well-fed, we are all stronger. Policies that eliminate food access resources are intended to punish individuals for behaving differently than we think they should. But these efforts to deprive our neighbors of the food they need to survive do not help anyone. They hurt us all.

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

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Healthy Foods Aren’t Always Fresh: Improving Access

I recently found myself wrestling with the use of the words “healthy” versus “fresh.” In the food access (and wellness) fields, we often use these terms interchangeably when talking about diet, but my ruminations made me consider how it might not always be the best practice in the context of food justice.

Fresh foods are those that have undergone minimal processing, and usually need to be consumed shortly after harvest or collection. Fresh foods are generally considered healthy because they are generally whole foods without any of the additives that define our industrial food supply. They offer the simplest opportunity to consume our daily nutrients.

While most fresh foods are healthy, not all healthy foods are fresh. When it comes to fighting hunger and building food access, this is an important distinction.

Fresh foods can be hard to access. The weather in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, has quickly transitioned to fall, which means my garden is rapidly declining in productivity and many farmers’ markets are soon closing for the winter. Fresh foods will become harder to access as the season progresses, and the options at the grocery store will have to travel greater distances with variable quality.

When we place an emphasis on healthy foods being exclusively fresh, we add extra barriers for individuals who may not be able to access this option. At every food pantry I’ve ever worked at, I’ve encountered shoppers who were apologetic about their “bad diet” because they didn’t have a refrigerator or cooking capacity to choose fresh foods, regardless of what else they were eating.

Consistently accessing fresh foods requires easy access because it has a limited shelf-life. Food pantry clients often limit their shopping excursions to once or twice per month to minimize time and transportation costs, which means they only eat fresh food for a couple days after each trip.

Fresh foods also often require refrigeration and extra preparation to use, which can be beyond the capacity for someone with limited storage, inadequate tools, no time, or physical limitations. When we insist that eating fresh food is the only way to eat healthy, we mislead too many of our neighbors into believing that they are eating wrong.

When we teach people that their only options are inadequate, we foster discouragement and defeat. Food shaming never improves outcomes.

It is entirely possible to eat healthy without fresh foods. In many scenarios, preserved options are more nutrient dense because they were harvested and preserved at the peak of ripeness.

How can we foster access to healthy foods without focusing on fresh?

Many pantries have started to implement systems for helping clients recognize healthier options, like the Supporting Wellness At Pantries (SWAP) system. It’s a simple and efficient way to uplift the nutritional qualities of shelf-stable goods common to pantries. This helps highlight the value of preserved options without comparing them to fresh foods.

Start these conversations with staff and volunteers to ensure they’re familiar with barriers to fresh food and the value of preserved options. Our world is very eager to find a magic bullet for health, and it’s important that volunteers don’t reinforce this idea in the pantry. Presenting a challenge to develop healthy choices from the shelf-stable section can be a great learning experience for volunteers, and help them think about the nuances of food insecurity a little more.

Embrace frozen foods. It was revolutionary when one of my previous pantries recognized the potential of frozen options. Our supply constantly changed, but having a spot to consistently offer frozen vegetables and a mix of other options was an efficient option for clients to load up. While this does demand an extra piece of equipment, there are many organizations (and even food banks) that offer funding and grants for the purchase of freezers and other tools to facilitate frozen distribution.

Focus less on individual healthy or unhealthy foods, and more on the meals they can create. Healthy food is more than the sum of its nutrients, and we do our communities a disserve when we adopt a black/white perspective. Health comes from the security of knowing where your next meal is coming from, from the joy of connecting with your community, and the confidence of nourishing your body with what it needs.

It is important to recognize we should continue increasing access to fresh foods. One option is for pantries to remove their limits on how often clients can visit (whether they be monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly). Food pantry produce rarely lasts very long, so increasing pantry access would significantly improve fresh options, as long as the pantry has the systems, inventory, and paradigm to support such a move.

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

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