Food Banks Demonstrate the Power of Community Engagement for Results

Just over a year since adopt­ing Results Count™ prac­tices, two food banks on oppo­site sides of the coun­try — FIND (Food In Need of Dis­tri­b­u­tion) Food Bank, serv­ing Coachel­la Val­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, and Sec­ond Har­vest Food Bank of North­west North Car­oli­na in Win­ston-Salem — and their part­ners have used the Casey Foun­da­tion approach to fur­ther focus their strate­gies and incor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty feed­back to make those strate­gies better.

Results Count, the Foundation’s sig­na­ture approach to lead­er­ship devel­op­ment, stress­es the impor­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tion, equi­ty and the use of data to set tar­gets and mea­sure progress. For lead­ers in these sites, the frame­work has led to new ways of lis­ten­ing and respond­ing to their com­mu­ni­ties — and in the process, allow­ing the voic­es of the peo­ple they serve to shape and refine how results are achieved.

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Feed­ing Amer­i­ca, a nation­al hunger-relief net­work, called on mem­ber food banks in 2015 to col­lab­o­rate with part­ners on a range of issues — not just hunger, but food secu­ri­ty, hous­ing, health and employ­ment. The orga­ni­za­tion knew this would be a dif­fer­ent way of work­ing for the food banks. ​“Mea­sur­able change in these new areas would require spe­cif­ic lead­er­ship skills, like test­ing strate­gies and piv­ot­ing in real time,” says Feed­ing Amer­i­ca Pro­gram Man­ag­er Kel­ly Goodall. Feed­ing Amer­i­ca reached out to Casey to help, and FEED (Fuel, Engage, Empow­er, Dri­ve), a 15-month Results Count lead­er­ship devel­op­ment pro­gram, launched in Sep­tem­ber 2016.

In Coachel­la Val­ley, where the idyl­lic land­scape can obscure the fact that near­ly half the area’s res­i­dents live below 200% of the fed­er­al pover­ty line, FIND Food Bank and its part­ners estab­lished the col­lec­tive impact ini­tia­tive Lift to Rise. Fol­low­ing a com­pre­hen­sive needs assess­ment, the part­ners focused on improv­ing out­comes in tar­get areas that includ­ed health and hous­ing sta­bil­i­ty. But a crit­i­cal blind spot came to light through the initiative’s engage­ment with FEED: the role of immi­gra­tion sta­tus as a deter­min­ing fac­tor in who was strug­gling in the region, and how.

The work of the pro­gram guid­ed the part­ners to revis­it their orig­i­nal assump­tions about the sources of hard­ship and dig deep­er. ​“FEED cre­at­ed a cul­ture of lis­ten­ing that was essen­tial to our under­stand­ing of people’s feel­ings of insta­bil­i­ty,” says Heather Vaikona, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Lift to Rise and direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ty invest­ment at FIND Food Bank. ​“We reviewed the data and had to ask our­selves what the peo­ple who are actu­al­ly liv­ing these truths have to say. We had to think about results in the con­text of sys­tems of power.”

When Lift to Rise began test­ing strate­gies to increase the scale and sat­u­ra­tion of income-based util­i­ty sub­si­dies, it made sure that immi­grant house­holds could qual­i­fy for the reduced util­i­ty rates regard­less of their legal sta­tus. While only a small num­ber of new appli­cants were approved in the test­ing phase, it set a prece­dent that could ulti­mate­ly affect the bot­tom line for sev­er­al thou­sand low-income fam­i­lies in East­ern Coachel­la Valley.

The adop­tion of a results-based frame­work also led to a deep­er inte­gra­tion of com­mu­ni­ty voic­es in Win­ston-Salem, home to Sec­ond Har­vest Food Bank. There, Sec­ond Har­vest and its part­ners formed the col­lec­tive impact ini­tia­tive Imag­ine Forsyth, which is named for the broad­er county.

“Food bank­ing is his­tor­i­cal­ly good at mea­sur­ing out­puts, but not out­comes — how much food is going out ver­sus what dif­fer­ence it’s mak­ing,” says Nik­ki McCormick, part­ner­ship direc­tor for Imag­ine Forsyth and direc­tor of agency rela­tions for Sec­ond Har­vest. ​“The FEED pro­gram forced us to come up with a strat­e­gy that was dri­ven by results.”

Imag­ine Forsyth’s strat­e­gy — a nutri­tion deliv­ery pro­gram that com­bined healthy food access with nutri­tion edu­ca­tion and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices — was designed with input from com­mu­ni­ty focus groups and pilot­ed with a small set of fam­i­lies in the pub­lic hous­ing devel­op­ment Pied­mont Park.

After the program’s first cycle, the part­ners returned to the com­mu­ni­ty for feed­back and made adjust­ments to address bar­ri­ers to engage­ment. For exam­ple, two-hour cook­ing class­es were switched to less time-inten­sive demos, and addi­tion­al recipes were includ­ed with fresh food deliv­er­ies to help fam­i­lies with meal prepa­ra­tion. Quick feed­back mech­a­nisms, such as three-ques­tion sur­veys admin­is­tered dur­ing pro­gram ses­sions, allowed the net­work to iden­ti­fy par­tic­i­pa­tion bar­ri­ers and respond accord­ing­ly. By the end of the sec­ond cycle, 44% of par­tic­i­pants report­ed an increase in their intake of fresh produce.

McCormick attrib­ut­es these devel­op­ments to the Results Count frame­work, which, she says, ​“pro­vid­ed a skele­ton for how to do the work in a safe learn­ing envi­ron­ment, encour­ag­ing action with results as the North Star, rather than get­ting stuck in ​‘analy­sis paral­y­sis.’” Goodall points out, ​“It’s not ​‘What can we do in six months?’ but ​‘What can we do right now?’”

“The sto­ries of Lift to Rise and Imag­ine Forsyth demon­strate how results-based lead­er­ship goes hand in hand with com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment,” says Casey Senior Asso­ciate Jen­nifer Gross. ​“While these ini­tia­tives are in their ear­ly stages, their suc­cess so far indi­cates the poten­tial for changes that could tan­gi­bly improve the lives of many thou­sands of chil­dren and families.”