How Technology Is Transforming Food Banks Mission Delivery

One issue impacting food banks today is the downside of having accumulated a wide variety of different software solutions to manage inventory, their relationships with partners, donors, and sponsors, and more. With disparate technology systems “not talking to each other,” consolidated reporting is a challenge. At the same time, significant funders are asking food banks to provide more robust and insightful reporting to validate their impact on local communities.

Several food banks have enlisted us to conduct comprehensive assessments and chart roadmaps to guide their transformations to a new “future state” for better reporting and day-to-day service delivery. These agencies have encouraged us to leverage its specialized experience to help more food banks plan for the future. We will be speaking at the Feeding America Feed Nourish Connect conference in Denver, Colorado about its Comprehensive Assessment offering made especially for food banks.

This annual Feeding America Feed Nourish Connect conference focuses on enhancing the operational excellence of America’s food banks. Besides the conference session, you’ll find us as an exhibitor demonstrating its AgencyExpress ™, the software that over 50,000 food pantries use every day to order food from their local food banks. We built and maintain this software tool for Feeding America and are constantly incorporating new ideas from customers and improving it.

We are also excited about the demonstration by Feeding America of a prototype cloud-based platform that food banks can use to communicate with their partner agencies. We worked with Feeding America to understand the specifications needed by both food banks and their agencies. Then we researched the marketplace to find a tool that was scalable, affordable, and cloud-based while meeting Feeding America’s expressed needs. We look forward to hearing direct feedback from food banks staff about this new agency portal.

We will be sharing updates from the conference. Something else we are excited about is hearing a keynote address by the new CEO of Feeding America, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot. Claire brings years of experience from Walmart to her new job leading one of America’s largest nonprofit organizations. Claire is likely to share her childhood story of struggling with food insecurity. That background certainly led her to her new post.

Photo by CA Creative.