Reimagining Food Access: A Strategic Research Partnership with the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank
The Challenge
When the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank discovered that no off-the-shelf technology platform could accommodate their unique participant management processes, they faced a deeper question: Should they build custom technology around their current model, or first examine whether that model itself needed rethinking?
This question led to my engagement with the organization—not to recommend a specific solution, but to help them understand the landscape of possibilities across the food banking sector.
A Collaborative Exploration
Over several months, I worked closely with the Food Bank's staff to explore how food access is managed across the country. This wasn't a traditional consultant-client relationship where I delivered recommendations from on high. Instead, I facilitated a collaborative learning process that kept internal stakeholders engaged throughout.
I led an internal steering committee that ensured staff perspectives shaped the research direction and findings. This approach was critical—the people running programs day-to-day held invaluable knowledge about what works, what doesn't, and what barriers their clients face.
The Research
The core of my work involved interviewing six of the largest food banks in the United States: Greater Chicago Food Depository, Greater Boston Food Bank, Houston Food Bank, Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, City Harvest, and Northern Illinois Food Bank. Through these conversations and analysis of Feeding America's Network Activity Report data, I used both quantitative and qualitative research methods to understand how different organizations approach the fundamental challenge of fairly distributing scarce charitable food resources.
The research explored critical questions: How do organizations manage pantry capacity? How do they scale portions by household need? What definitions of "fairness" and "equity" undergird different access models? How do technology and staffing resources enable or constrain these approaches?
Key Outcomes
Rather than recommending a single path forward, I delivered a framework for thinking strategically about food access models:
Access Model Archetypes: I synthesized the various approaches into clear archetypes, documenting the assumptions about fairness and equity embedded in each model. This gave the Food Bank a shared language for discussing trade-offs and possibilities.
Landscape Mapping: I provided a detailed mapping of how peer organizations align with different archetypes, including factors like organizational size, service area density, client diversity, staffing levels, and technology infrastructure.
Resource Requirements: I documented the staffing and technology investments required to support different models, helping the Food Bank understand not just the philosophical differences between approaches, but the practical implications.
Strategic Questions: Perhaps most importantly, I developed a set of internal questions to guide the Food Bank's own strategic thinking. Rather than telling them what to do, I equipped them with tools to evaluate options based on their unique community context, values, and operational realities.
Impact
The Food Bank is now using this research to inform their ongoing strategic planning as they prepare to reevaluate their service model and evolve their understanding of local need. The work has shaped their research agenda and is helping them design programs that reduce barriers to accessing free food for low-income residents.
By taking time to understand the landscape before making technology or program decisions, the organization is positioned to make choices that truly serve their community's needs—and align with their own explicitly defined values around fairness and equity.
Reflections
This project reinforced my belief that the best consulting work creates capacity rather than dependency. By facilitating exploration rather than delivering answers, and by ensuring staff engagement throughout the process, the Food Bank now has both the knowledge and the internal alignment to continue evolving their approach long after our engagement ended.
It's work I'm proud to have been part of—not because I solved their challenge, but because I helped them build their capacity to solve it themselves.
