San Francisco Food Bank

Agency distribution shopping program: more than 225 of the food bank's member agencies, including community centers, religious organizations, soup kitchens, shelters, affordable housing, senior programs, aids support programs and childcare centers, visit the warehouse on a regular basis to select bread, dry goods, meat and fresh produce for their clients.

Supplemental food program for seniors: this program provides a monthly box of nutritious usda food to more than 9,600 low-income senior citizens.

Strategic partnerships, advocacy, and voice: the strategic partnership, advocacy, and voice (spav) department collaborates with our communities, partners, and participants to develop strategies, actions, and solutions aimed at reducing barriers and improving access to food and coordinated food security systems. Additionally, it advocates with the community and participants for policy changes aimed at addressing the underlying causes of hunger. The food bank is leading efforts to address root causes of hunger through multiple innovation pilots that will change the food banking industry. In collaboration with community partners, here are the innovation pilots that are underway:- community markets: the food bank is piloting community markets, which are designed to provide nutritious and culturally centered foods to address access to healthy and cultural food within our communities, paired with coordinated services to address the root causes of food insecurity. Community markets are a transformative vision of going from a traditional 'pantry' model that is transactional and open limited hours with no wrap-around services, to larger market-style agencies that are open multiple days and/or extended hours to be more convenient and relational. Community markets are designed to be equity-centered and community-led.- capacity seed funding: capacity seed funding is an opportunity for organizations to accelerate their existing efforts in food programming and increase the number of individuals they are able to serve through one-time funding awards able to serve through one-time funding awards. The food bank seeks to be able to provide one-time funding to partners that would help them to raise their existing program's capacity. This award will fund an expected growth of 50- 500 new uos that will be food bank referrals from existing programming, the capacity seed funding call for partnership form will serve as a portal for interested partners to apply to receive this growth funding.- foodways collaborative: the foodways collaborative aims to assess the impact of a collaborative approach in designing culturally relevant menus for community partners. Key objectives included improving menu design and gaining buy-in from partners and communities. Success was measured by the design of a better menu (assessed through food item relevance), partner approval, and community acceptance (measured by feedback and returns).the food bank recognizes that to address root causes of hunger, policy changes on local, state and federal levels must give access to healthy foods and address government barriers in accessing benefit programs. Advocacy efforts include optimizing government food assistance programs (e.g., calfresh, the state's food stamp program, and san francisco's public school meals program), eliminating bureaucracy and barriers that prevents low-income individuals from receiving assistance, improving program quality and participation, and offering recommendations to elected officials and community leaders to reduce barriers to food for low-income residents of san francisco and marin. The sf marin food bank's advocacy efforts, in collaboration with coalition partners, have resulted in reducing food insecurity and addressing critical gaps within statewide programs. Here's some of what's included from our food equity agenda signed by the governor in this year's budget cycle:- calfood: secured $60 million in continued funding for food banks statewide to buy ca-grown food- calfresh minimum nutrition benefit pilot: $15 million and funding for automation to pilot increasing the calfresh minimum to $50 million.- ab 518: this year the sfmfb sponsored legislation that aimed to address gaps at the calfresh system. This bill intends to mandate that the state must report on the estimated calfresh enrollment gap, with analysis of those not accessing but eligible, and targeted outreach plans with an equity lens to close the enrollment gap. Additionally, the bill will require a state-level executive who will be accountable for delivering these results. As of september 18th, the bill was signed by the governor which marked a win for calfresh realignment which has not happened since 1996.