CLIENT SCHEDULING:

How might we easily and efficiently schedule client food pickups?

During the pandemic, scheduling became a critical component of the distribution of food boxes as a result of the outbreak. To limit the spread of disease, it was necessary to schedule individual appointments for clients to pick up their food. The organizations now require a scheduling system that facilitates food lines to move faster. The additional benefit is that clients feel less shame by fostering a warm and welcoming environment that respects their need for privacy when receiving services.

CLIENT CHOICE

How might we support clients having the freedom to select the food they want?

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One of the main priorities of food security organizations is allowing clients to choose the food they want. Not only does this prevent food waste, but it also promotes dignity for the client and enables the provider to track client preference. The pandemic presented a new challenge to food security organizations: clients could no longer shop for their food indoors. This led many organizations to ask, “How can we still provide clients their choice in food if our volunteers need to do the shopping for them?”

Organizations who held onto their practice of allowing clients to choose their food did so by having the client fill out a preference sheet upon arrival, but this solution turned out to be time consuming, creating long lines for food. In addition to this, clients may feel shame standing in long lines due to stigma associated with food insecurity. Issues around personal safety, efficiency, and shame informed a need to allow clients to choose their food prior to arrival. And, if inventory were connected to the food clients select, this timely connection could ease the time and labor spent managing and updating inventory.

RECORDING CLIENT DATA

How might we manage data more efficiently?

Client data such as identification, household size, and proof of residence is collected by agencies for grants and federal food program reporting purposes. In smaller organizations, this may be a manual exercise of recording on paper and later entering data into a spreadsheet. This process is very slow and time-consuming and also puts data at risk of being lost, mistyped, or stolen. As a result, staff experience delays in processes and experience challenges tracking down information on repeat visitors, orders, or special requests, not to mention the burden of repeat sign-ins for clients.

INVENTORY TRACKING AND REPORTING

How might we improve inventory tracking and reporting systems?

Organizations receive donations varying by product and quantity daily. Staff are required to track these donations by the weight received and weight distributed to clients in monthly reports for grants, government programs, and private funders. Small organizations may be tracking inventory by manually counting items and recording on pen and paper, later transferring to spreadsheets. When it comes time to report inventory data back to funders, this information is typically transferred again into another software. Both of these instances of data transfer are time consuming for volunteers or staff. If inventory data could be integrated with a data reporting system that created real time visualizations or other innovations, organizations could easily see what foods they need and which foods are not being chosen by clients.

MANAGING VOLUNTEERS

How might we reduce the organizational burden of managing volunteers?

Organizations dealing with food security face a major challenge in managing volunteers. Both large and small organizations face issues with volunteer scheduling and correspondence. Small organizations may be relying on volunteers to sign in and out on printed spreadsheets to keep track of their hours and later manually enter information into online spreadsheets. Large organizations may simply have too many volunteers to keep track of with either digital or physical spreadsheets. Volunteer hours are essential to track, because they are often reported back to funders. For this reason, a key need these organizations report is reducing the burden of managing volunteers, such as scheduling, checking in and out of shifts, and including volunteer information in required reports to funders

DELIVERY ROUTING

How might we create a system that maps the most efficient route for volunteers to deliver food boxes?

A large number of organizations expressed that they are in need of an automated delivery routing system. Volunteers are often asked to deliver food boxes to clients who are disabled, elderly, or lack adequate transportation. Many organizations providing delivery services simply give a list of client addresses to the volunteer, allowing the volunteer to enter each address into their choice of common mapping apps. This practice leaves volunteers zig-zagging around town on inefficient routes, wasting their valuable time and potentially expending more gas than necessary.