One of the most difficult things about running a food bank is the unpredictability. Making sure everything gets done every week with so many variables at play. How many people will come through the door next time? Will there be enough donations to supply everyone? Do we have enough volunteers? What kind of problems will we have to deal with? Do we have the right signposting and support in place to deal with them?

When I was managing the food bank (Earlsfield, in south west London), it often felt like running on a treadmill that was getting faster and faster. There was no time to stop or even pause and catch a breath. After a busy session, it was straight into planning the next one.

And with this exhaustion, often came a bit of guilt. This just felt wrong. The harder we worked and the busier we got, the more it felt like we were enabling the normalisation of food banks as a solution to poverty. I felt this each time we put out messages on social media, asking for donations or new volunteers. Was it just reinforcing the message that food banks are here to stay?

Then there’s the issue of reliance and dependence on food banks. When giving out food parcels, were we stopping people from finding the help they needed to tackle the root cause of their financial problems? How could we make sure that in addition to distributing food parcels this week, we were helping with real solutions so that another food parcel wasn’t needed the following week?

Ultimately, how could we ensure we were doing everything possible to enable the smooth running of the food bank, but at the same time, doing our bit to fight against the food bank status quo and ultimately end the need for charitable food aid?

After wrestling with this problem for some time, we adopted a new framework to ensure balance across these different objectives. The food bank trustees agreed that time and effort needed to be split across three strands of work which we called ‘pillars’:

1. Immediate relief of poverty symptoms

This pillar is the most basic and immediate, the “bread and butter” of most food aid organisations. What could we do when someone walks into the food bank, how could we relieve their poverty symptoms straight away? Giving food parcels or vouchers would be the first thing to do, but we could give Sim cards (thanks to the Vodafone Charities Connected initiative) and clothing vouchers (Clothing Collective).

2. Mid term support and advice

This pillar concerns what we can do to lessen the effects of poverty and prevent people from needing the food bank again and again. IFAN’s ‘Worrying About Money?' leaflets would be a crucial tool here, giving invaluable information about where to find support to maximise income, specific to the local area. For more support, Citizens Advice Wandsworth would operate onsite (funded by a National Lottery grant); so too, Family Action - an early intervention solutions-focused service, funded by the council; and there’d be a drug and alcohol advisor, managed by St. Mungos. In addition to having these services within the food bank setting we would also host some ad-hoc events. For example, a health workshop run by our local GP surgery, Brocklebank, where people can have key measures such as blood pressure, height, and weight taken.

3. Campaigning

The final pillar is about the long-term goal - making sure that one day, charitable food aid is no longer needed. Therefore, we would need to invest time and effort to participate in IFAN’s campaign work to reduce food insecurity (only a fraction of people facing severe food insecurity access a food bank) and the need for charitable food aid through a cash first or income-focused approach. The key activity in this pillar was getting heavily involved with IFAN’s initiatives, whether this be sharing social media posts and infographics, signing petitions, letters etc. We would make sure that we were talking about #cashfirst or income-focused interventions at every available opportunity, especially bringing up a cash first approach to food insecurity any conversations with people of influence (e.g. our local MP, the leader of the council, our local Mayor).

So, how did we put our three pillars’ framework into practice?

1. We revisited this framework at monthly trustees meetings, to ensure we were covering all areas. It changed the way we allocated our time. Prior to this framework we spent most time on the first area, the “immediate relief of poverty” through food parcels. But having this framework in place ensured we spent time on the other areas too. The framework became an accountability measure.

1. It led to the decision to recruit an operations manager to take care of the first pillar, so that the overall manager could focus on the bigger picture including all three pillars. This helped us all to also prioritise critical advice and support to maximise income and campaigning priorities to address the root causes of the food insecurity driving people to need our help. We recruited more volunteers for the central “support and advice” pillar. In addition to volunteers packing bags and taking orders, it was essential that we had volunteers who could perform a “triage” role, referring and signposting to support services. We trained existing volunteers who seemed to have the right skills and also recruited new ones.

1. The framework led to a more structured approach for our social media messaging. We made sure that any communication asking for donations, volunteers etc. was balanced out with messaging about the bigger picture, how there shouldn’t be a need for food banks at all. This didn’t have to be complex, it could be as simple as sharing IFAN’s social media posts and/or regularly asking people to write to their MP to urge actions on poverty.

1. We shared the framework with the wider volunteer community, so everyone was aligned about what we were trying to do. We used the framework when we went through a new volunteer induction, so that from the outset our new recruits were clear about our food bank’s overall aims. We would also talk about all three areas in any conversation with donors, partners and supporters.

1. The structure provided a useful way to talk about food bank activities any time we had a speaking opportunity. Whereas in the past we may have focused on the food bank operations (donations etc.), whenever we had the opportunity to engage with the community, we made sure we included each area. For example, in May 2023 we were invited to speak at the Wandsworth Mayor’s celebration of the volunteer community in Wandsworth. Our speech was structured across these three areas.