Through survey responses, focus groups and one-on-one interviews, Dare to Care learned that food pantry clients in 13 Kentucky and Indiana counties said more than half of what they take home goes to waste.
That can be because of dietary preferences or because they don’t like the quality. Ursula Mullins, chief impact officer at Dare to Care, said the nonprofit cannot control what food it receives from the federal government or through donations.
She suggested organizations could teach clients to cook with the available options, and that could help them create a full meal.
“Maybe Dare to Care can't do it all, but maybe we have a very robust partner who's out doing recipes and teaching, and we can say, ‘Can you do some classes on garbanzo beans and lentils?’” she said.
Mullins said they’re working with partners to offer more options for diverse cultural preferences.
“Our mission is to really move the food in mass and by volume. We don't really have a budget yet where it's like we could do this amount for kosher, halal, vegetarian, vegan and gluten free. That would be really hard for us, but we do have some pantries who raise their own funds to try to add more of that,” she said.
In the last 12 months, 65% of the more than 2,000 respondents surveyed said they “eat less because there isn’t enough money for food,” a statistic Mullins found “gut-wrenching.”
“What it also says is, if giving food to people was the answer and that was the solution alone, then we wouldn't have hungry people. Dare to Care is going to keep doing that, but Dare to Care operating alone is not going to fix it, right? There’s so many other structures and systems in place that are not working to help the most vulnerable of us,” she said.
More than half of the people surveyed in Dare to Care’s service area had faced the dilemma of having to decide between buying food and buying medicine. And 56% had to choose between paying for food and paying their mortgage or rent.
“From a research perspective, we frame these things as choices, because we know that that's the tradeoff that people are making. But in a practical sense, you just have to find a way to pay for both,” said Shawn Herbig, founder and president of IQS Research, the firm conducting the study. The study also showed reliable transportation was a significant barrier for people who want to get to local food pantries.
Forty-two percent of respondents said it is challenging to find a site when they need it. Food pantries are largely volunteer-run, which means they may have limited hours that aren’t convenient for a client’s schedule, Herbig said.
He said more transportation options can help, but there are other barriers to consider, including extreme weather conditions.
“Even if you have a car, that's not necessarily sort of a Goldilocks type of solution, it doesn't make everything else go away. And even if you don't have a car, we've got people working and sort of making ad hoc solutions to get the problem done,” he said.
Herbig said when clients have up-to-date information on opening and closing times and changes in hours, they can better plan their visits.
