Who the players are
Foundational context so a builder knows the landscape, and who they should talk to. This is the
“subject-matter expert voicing the customer” that a nonprofit partner would normally provide in person.
(Draft, to be enriched from the sector source report once it’s in the drive.)
The organizations
- Food banks: larger operations that source and warehouse food and distribute it out to pantries
across a region. (See Dan, a food-bank program manager.)
- Food pantries: front-line sites where people actually pick up food. Many are small, hyper-local,
and volunteer-led. (See Gladys, running a twice-monthly church pantry.)
- Food cupboards: small, grassroots or community-led food resources, characterized as an open and accessible Mutual Aid strategy where people can pick up or drop off food items, hygiene items, seasonal essentials, etc. Food cupboards frequently run out of products, get cherry picked, and are often only sporadically restocked as volunteers/contributing organizations have a surplus of items.
The network line that matters most
Feeding America is a large national network that roughly 60% of food-resource organizations belong
to. The other ~40% do not. Those disconnected organizations are often the ones that need the most
resources and support. A builder who only designs for the connected 60% misses the orgs where the need is
greatest. This is why the designs emphasize pulling small, disconnected pantries into a
broader network.
Who a builder should work with
If you’re building here, co-design with the community (see
start-here/methodology.md). Concretely, you’d want to talk to:
- someone at a local food bank;
- the pantries and other organizations in that community;
- possibly a church or volunteer-led food cupboard, almost always volunteer-run, with the least
capacity and the most need.
TechSoup may be able to help make these connections. We are the connector / convener, not a
replacement for talking to users. Tell us what you want to build or what you need.
The two sides of “the customer”
The people in this sector split into:
- Clients: food-insecure people receiving support (privacy, dignity, convenience matter enormously).
- Providers: staff and volunteers running food banks and pantries (capacity, data, and waste matter).
Both are represented in personas, and a single tool often serves both at once.