Open Hand Atlanta: Improving Lives of Georgians in Need One Meal at a Time

We checked in with our friends at Open Hand Atlanta in mid-December. We enjoyed a tour of their busy kitchens and the rest of their facility and then sat down to chat with Open Hand about how they serve the community and what they’re excited about for the future.

Open Hand is the largest provider of meals and nutrition information in the Southeast U.S. They deliver medically appropriate (and tasty!) meals, nutrition education, and therapy to homebound seniors and under-served individuals challenged by chronic disease. But Open Hand sees itself as more than a traditional meal delivery organization. They’re rebels and innovators working to change the dialog around nutrition in a community-based setting.

Many health-impaired seniors can’t afford proper nutrition or are unable to prepare their own meals. As a result, their diets put them at risk for chronic disease. That’s where Open Hand steps in. Last year, more than 3,400 people with chronic and/or critical illnesses and disabilities in metro Atlanta counties benefited from Open Hand’s nutrition programs. These programs cut average health care costs and reduced hospitalization for clients.

At the end of the day, it’s about helping neighbors in need.

— Matt Pieper, Executive Director, Open Hand Atlanta

The number of meals Open Hand needed to deliver has grown quickly, and they’ve found themselves delivering over 5,000 meals per day. This rapid growth has created unidentified complexity and inefficiencies in all areas of operations. Sometimes they had too much food, for example, and sometimes they didn’t have enough. Open Hand reached out to us for help.

When we first started working with Open Hand in 2014 we mapped their current business process and helped unravel the tangle of inefficiencies within it. We assessed their technology infrastructure and created seventy-five process maps along with detailed recommendations for improvements.

Open Hand is currently working to fund a complete overhaul of its entire IT system. TechBridge’s John Jarvis spends hours on-site every week helping them streamline and consolidate servers and eliminating bottlenecks that could prevent clients from receiving the food they need. Our team is inspired to work with an organization that is thinking beyond the status quo when it comes to nutrition, says Jarvis. This work will also enable Open Hand to offer better meal choices to customers. At this point, says executive director Matt Pieper, TechBridge is family.

This revamping (set to begin rolling out in January) will save Open Hand money and allow them to ramp up capacity. This will further their goal of scaling up their services to reach Georgians in more rural areas.

At the end of the day, it’s about helping neighbors in need, says Matt Pieper.

About Our #BetterTogether Campaign

We are proud to have assisted so many organizations on the front lines of social change in our communities — alleviating homelessness, fighting poverty, helping kids do better in school, making sure seniors get proper meals, and so much more.

We created the #BetterTogether campaign so that we can showcase some of the important efforts of the nonprofits and people we’ve worked with. And because social change is a community effort, we also wanted to showcase our generous sponsors, amazing technology partners, tireless volunteers, and staff. Without them, we couldn’t do our work.

We feel that these stories exemplify the transformational work that can happen when organizations and individuals work hard — together — towards a common goal. We hope that hearing these stories is as inspirational to you as it is to us.