Childhood Hunger

Latest News on March 2010

March 26
USDA Announces Efforts To Increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation

Improved Access and Increased Participation to Deliver Benefits to Americans in Need

USDA Press Release
March 25, 2010

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that USDA will award grants of up to $5 million to improve access to and increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) - formerly the Food Stamp Program.

“The health of our nation - of our economy, our national security, and our communities - depends on the health of our families,” said Vilsack. “These grants will allow us to improve access and increase participation in our Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that serves as a vital resource to the most vulnerable Americans. Breaking down barriers to participation will help this Administration deliver on its goal of reducing hunger and improving nutrition across the country.”

The Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 authorized USDA to award $5 million in grants for state and local government and private non-profit organization projects to simplify SNAP application and eligibility systems and improve access to SNAP benefits by eligible households.

This year, USDA is interested in funding projects that apply a process improvement process (PIP) to the State agency’s application, certification and recertification procedures to make them more efficient and effective. The Department is also interested in funding projects that involve a partnership between a State agency and one or more private non-profit organizations.

The deadline to submit grant proposal applications is June 23, 2010.

“Our programs are enhanced by the creativity and support of our partners at the State and local level who work every day to end hunger in America,” said Under Secretary for Food Nutrition and Consumer Services Kevin Concannon. “Increasing participation in this critical program and reaching more children and families in need will move us one step closer towards achieving our goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015.”

USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service oversees the administration of 15 nutrition assistance programs that touch the lives of one in four Americans over the course of a year. The largest program, SNAP, puts healthy food on the table for more than 38 million people it serves each month, half of whom are children.

Grant applications for organizations can be obtained at www.grants.gov.or on the Food and Nutrition Service website at www.fns.usda.gov/snap or by calling the grant officer, Lisa Johnson, at (703) 305-2848.

Source

March 16
Cause Plus: Building Loyalty with Philanthropy

At Corner Bakery Cafe, doing the right thing is not only a goodwill-marketing effort but an employee-retention tool.

Chain Leader
By Mary Boltz Chapman
March 15, 2010

Chain Leader’s Driving Traffic research in November showed that 73 percent of restaurant chains support charitable organizations to increase customer counts. Corner Bakery Café is one of those. But it finds that philanthropic efforts also help the 115-unit Dallas-based restaurant chain engage and retain employees.

Take, for example, its participation in Share Our Strength’s Great American Dine Out. In 2009, guests contributed $23,000; the company matched their donation, rounded up and gave $50,000. “This was double what we raised the prior year,” says Senior Vice President of Marketing Diana Hovey, “and it’s largely due to the tremendous passion of our team.”

Hovey says Corner Bakery surveys its 3,500 employees, or “bread heads,” about once a year. They revealed that workers wanted to do more for their communities and be part of something bigger than themselves. “Any type of cause effort we do on the marketing end, they have just grabbed it and run with it,” she says.

The Cool Factor

So when the chain began its involvement with the Great American Dine Out in 2008, the team was enthusiastic. “We got such great feedback from employees,” Hovey says. “And when we surveyed them again, there was a heightened sense of pride, a lot of write-in comments saying, ‘This is very cool.’”

That year, Corner Bakery gave a percentage of sales the week of the event. In 2009, it upped the ante. Customers who contributed a dollar or two received a two-part certificate. Half was posted in the restaurant; the other half held a bounce-back coupon for a free Whoopee Pie or other dessert. It required the staff to be more involved, telling customers about the program and sharing the effort. Two weeks before the September event, Hovey said there already were donation cards lining the walls at many units. The company had to print more certificates before the week-long event even started.

Hovey credits staff pride. “Our bread heads know a lot of the guests by name,” she says. “They want to share it with the guests. It’s another way to engage them, something to start a conversation. It’s exciting to see how fired up they are.”

Act Locally

Employees also contribute time and effort to local events. Last spring, the Corner Bakery ran a chainwide “Catering to Our Community” promotion that allowed online nominations for local charity groups to receive a full catered meal. Volunteer managers and servers brought free meals to 100 groups.

To help staff efforts to communicate the Great American Dine Out promotion, Corner Bakery Cafe sent an e-mail to its mailing list, created a Facebook page and used in-store materials.

Hovey says she was surprised at the number of thank you notes the company received from the employees who participated. “They were excited to see firsthand their efforts to give back.”

Measuring Success

While she says the efforts contribute to staff loyalty and retention, Hovey says it’s difficult to quantify cause marketing’s return on investment. But she argues that’s true with any marketing. “Anytime we do a promotional effort, we look at what did it do to traffic counts, what did it do to sales of promoted items, the typical measures,” she explains. “But you also have to look at, what was the operators’ feedback? Did they enjoy the promotion? Did it work well? What were some of the other benefits?

“And I think that the things we hear from this, from the comments and notes from employees, is they love being part of it. You’ve got to look at what it really does to tie the loyalty of your team to the brand, what it does to reinforce that relationship that the employee has with their guest.”

Hovey says Corner Bakery is definitely going to participate in the Great American Dine Out again this year.

March 15
State further behind handling food stamps, medical benefits

Backlog slows effort to meet court order to keep up with requests

The Baltimore Sun
By Brent Jones
March 13, 2010

Three months after a judge ordered the state to speed up delivery of food stamps and medical benefits to low-income Maryland residents, the problem has worsened, court filings show.

At the end of January, the state’s Department of Human Resources was operating at an 81 percent compliance rate processing those requests, down 2.5 percentage points from the previous month, according to papers filed in Baltimore Circuit Court.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say the decline shows that the state - which faces a year-end deadline to improve services - continues to struggle. “We’re still seeing people with clear, long delays in their application come into our office,” said Carolyn Johnson, a lawyer for the plaintiffs - Baltimore County residents Miracyle Thompson and Earline Augustus-El and three advocacy organizations.

Human Resources Secretary Brenda Donald attributes the drop to the department’s handling thousands of backlogged applications statewide at the end of last year. Unapproved applications are only one part of the backlog - there were a number of paper applications that had not been entered into the system. Donald listed Baltimore County as a region with a high number of overdue requests not addressed by DHR workers; 7,500 applications were recently reviewed, and the department has since cleared about 5,500.

Thompson sued the state last year after having to wait more than two months for food stamps and medical services for her children. Her case was joined by Augustus-El, the Public Justice Center, the Homeless Persons Representation Project and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice.

In December, Judge Barry Williams ruled that the state needs to be in full compliance with the law by the end of 2010. At the time, Donald said that was “impossible” and asked for an additional six months, but her request was denied.

Donald said in a recent interview she expects to have a better gauge on the state’s progress toward the court order within the next couple of months. In the past three months, the state’s hired dozens of temporary clerical workers and paid overtime to full-time staff to shave down the number of overdue applications. Also, “we’re tracking compliance with current applications, and we’re at a much higher rate,” she said.

By 2011, the department plans to have an upgraded computer system that will speed up the application process, Donald said.

In his December ruling, Williams also ordered the state to submit a corrective action plan to the plaintiffs, which the department did at the end of January. But the proposal was soundly rejected by the coalition last week in a written response submitted to the court. Calling it a “disappointment,” the plaintiffs wrote that they saw “no evidence that the proposed [corrective action plan] constitutes a comprehensive and verifiable plan that will ensure defendant achieves full compliance.”

Johnson said some of DHR’s initiatives, such as an enhanced Web-based application system, will not take effect until next year, well after the court-mandated deadline. The plaintiffs added that other proposals, including increased training for workers and an interactive voice response system to handle calls, lack hard deadlines for results.

Another new proposal, an expedited reactivation process for customers with closed cases, is set to begin in July, but the plaintiffs argue that the implementation will not be done in time to significantly affect the compliance rate for this year.

Donald said the department will submit a written reply to the plaintiff’s response in coming days.

“We wanted to present a comprehensive reform plan,” she said. “I’ve been very clear, this is not just about doing some short-term quick fixes. This is about a comprehensive overhaul on the way we process applications. We wanted to show we’re looking at this in a long-term view. The technologies will go beyond the timeline set in December.”

The state has teetered between an 85 percent and 88 percent compliance rate for much of the past decade, but that was before DHR had to deal with the large backlog last year. Most states aim for a compliance rate of at least 90 percent. Only two states, Montana and Massachusetts, are at 96 percent or better.

Within the past two years, DHR officials say, they have implemented programs designed to streamline the food stamp system, including allowing interviews over the telephone and training new employees faster. But the department was unequipped to handle the flood of applicants after the economy declined, advocates say. Some advocates have also questioned how often DHR is using phone applications, which are left to the discretion of each jurisdiction, rather than face-to-face interviews.

About 530,000 Marylanders receive food stamps, a 32 percent increase since 2008.

In April 2009, Thompson sued the state when her two oldest boys, who have sickle-cell anemia and asthma, became sick after not receiving their medications on time.

Augustus-El later joined the suit and testified in court that she has high blood pressure and suffers from depression and diabetes. She said her depression became uncontrollable when she did not receive her medication, and she was unable to care for her children.

The coalition of advocates took up the case last summer and represented the women in court.

“We want to remain optimistic because we want this problem to be solved,” Johnson said. “But we were disappointed in what we saw in that plan, and that their performance has actually gotten worse since the trial. The other concern, from my sense, was the lack of urgency to get this done.”