Feeding the Need: Charitable Food-Providing Organizations and Gaps in the Social Safety Net

In the United States, one in ten people are experiencing food insecurity, unsure of from where their next meal will come. Various government-based and charitable programs endeavor to meet this need. Although SNAP (formerly food stamps) supports millions with financial benefits to purchase food, charitable organizations offering groceries or cooked food are left to fill massive remaining gaps. Nearly 50 million people visited a charitable food organization in 2021, receiving nearly eight billion pounds of food. Approximately 75,000 organizations, including schools, nonprofits, places of worship, and hospitals, offer services to the hungry beyond the major direct government programs. Scholarship so far has not sufficiently characterized this range of these organizations or explored how variations in their aims, capacities, and modes of operation affect the adequacy and equity of the services they deliver to various specific subgroups of needy populations. To move beyond vague assumptions that all charitable food provision efforts are similar, this thesis uses interviews, mapping, and field observations to develop and classify organizational profiles for some 100 extra-governmental food providing organizations operating in the greater Atlanta region. It suggests how key dimensions of organizational variation influence who among the hungry gets help and who does not. The broader implications of this work are two-fold: We gain a better understanding of the actual functioning, accomplishments, and shortfalls of organizations that channel billions of dollars of public subsidies and private charitable resources into efforts to help hungry people. And we learn why more than money is at stake, because private (as well as public) food-providing organizations are sites of social interactions and civic engagement for staff, volunteers, and clients.