Find a Food Bank Near You

If you are among the millions of people affected by the delay of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, or if you want to help those who are affected, this blog post is for you.

Despite two court rulings on Friday, October 31st ordering the Trump Administration to use contingency funds to continue SNAP benefits, the administration is dragging its feet. Even if they comply with the ruling, it is unclear how long it will take for individual SNAP recipients to see the money on their cards. In the meantime, here are some resources to help you find nonprofit organizations on the front lines, wherever you happen to be.

CauseIQ

I will tell you a little more about CauseIQ below, but first, let’s use it to find local food distribution charities. On the site’s main page, use the “Nonprofits by Location” search to find your local area. In my example pictures, I’m using my old stomping ground, Myrtle Beach, SC.

On the page for your selected city, scroll down past [CITY NAME] area nonprofits, Job trends for [CITY NAME] nonprofits, and Sizes of nonprofits in [CITY NAME] to find Types of nonprofits in [CITY NAME]. Below this list of nonprofit types, click the dropdown to show all rows.

With all the rows showing, you will be able to see “Food and agriculture nonprofits.” Click there to see a breakdown of subtypes - food distribution programs, food banks and pantries, agriculture nonprofits, and organizations supporting multiple food and agriculture nonprofits.

For your purposes - looking for a local organization to support - click on food distribution programs, as these encompass food banks and pantries as well as other food initiatives.

Once you’ve selected food distribution programs, scroll down the page to see a directory of food distribution programs in your chosen city.

This is probably all you need for our purposes here. If, however, you want to explore CauseIQ a bit more, you can click on “Open the CauseIQ search interface” to see what additional data CauseIQ offers. Most of the filters in that search interface are locked without a subscription, but this is a good way to learn what is available. The free subscription provides 8 search filters, while the two paid versions offer over 400 filters.

Idealist

Idealist.org makes it easy to search for organizations, volunteer opportunities, jobs, internships, and events at nonprofit organizations around the US. You can filter a search by location, by location type (in-person, online, or hybrid), by cause, by organization type, by language, by distance, and more.

If you are looking for food banks, food pantries, or food distribution organizations, filter to the cause area hunger, food security. You can do a blank search for organizations or for volunteer opportunities in your geographic area by leaving the search box empty. Once the results come up for all organizations or volunteer opportunities in your location, you can use the filters to narrow to your cause area.

Now get out there, y’all, and help where you can!