The Hard Choices Ahead: Rethinking Food Bank Prioritization in an Age of Scarcity
When I worked at Feeding America, I had the chance to engage with thousands of local organizations—food pantries, meal sites, and other community anchors working every day to address food insecurity. As part of that work, we developed a set of organizational personas to better understand what motivated these groups to grow, adapt, and serve more people in more ways.
One of those personas wasn’t aspirational, it was a warning. We called it the “Scarcity Mindset.” These were organizations that couldn’t see a path forward. They believed the resources simply weren’t there. At the time, we saw that as an unfounded belief. The data told us there was abundance, more food, more funding, more opportunity, IF we could help connect the dots.
Today, I’m not so sure.
But, before we resign ourselves to making trade-offs, we have to push back. Now is the time to mobilize the more than 60,000 local food security organizations—along with their staff, volunteers, donors, and neighbors—to speak out. We need to tell this administration, and lawmakers at every level, that cutting SNAP by $300 billion, as passed in the House tax bill, will make it harder for millions of Americans to thrive. These policies aren’t just numbers on a page, they are direct blows to communities in every corner of the country. Before we make impossible choices about who gets help and who doesn’t, we need to stand together and demand that these choices not have to be made.
If these policies pass, and continue the shrinking pipeline of available food as the number of people needing support continues rising fast, that scarcity mindset might not be a distortion anymore, it might be the reality. And the pressure is only growing.
The recent Stanford Social Innovation Review podcast, "Addressing Hunger in America," outlines a challenging truth many food banks are facing: resources are tightening while the need remains stubbornly high. In this moment, we’re staring down a new reality, one where food banks may need to make decisions they’ve historically tried to avoid, like setting eligibility requirements or limiting the amount of food different organizations receive.
It’s a hard pivot. The emergency food system has thrived in recent years on the idea that anyone could walk through the door and receive help. But the current resource constraints are forcing food banks to reconsider that open-door approach.
The risk? That we start drawing lines in the wrong places.
Food banks may look toward tiering as a strategy—allocating more food to some partners, less to others. But if we’re not careful, tiering can reinforce gaps in access. If the "high-performing" tier is defined by volume we may end up funneling more food to communities that already have more infrastructure, more voice, and more access; further exacerbating gaps in access.
But what if we turned tiering upside down?
What if we tiered, like some food banks have, not by who can move the most food, but by who needs the most support?
That means:
Prioritizing historically marginalized and rural communities that lack a strong safety net.
Directing food and funds to small grassroots partners who are deeply embedded in their neighborhoods, even if they don’t have the large warehouses and CRMs.
Valuing partners who are trusted by our most vulnerable communities as criteria for resource distribution, not just traditional performance metrics.
Well-resourced communities often have multiple organizations working in tandem—they have backup plans. But many communities do not. And those are the places food banks must lean into right now, not pull back from.
We’re entering an era where hard decisions are inevitable. But if we let a commitment to equitable access guide those choices—not just efficiency—we have a chance to make this moment one of transformation, not retreat.
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