Giving Compass' Take:

• Fast Company reports that a new wave of activist food banks are starting to try to put themselves out of business, by working on issues like minimum wage and rent control in an effort to fix the underlying problems that cause hunger.

• How can philanthropy help food banks better measure their impact? 

• Learn the do’s and don’ts of donating to food banks. 

Each year, food companies and supermarkets donate millions of meals to hunger relief nonprofits like the Greater Boston Food Bank, a massive warehouse with two-story-tall refrigerators. Around the country, a sophisticated network of food banks and pantries helps feed people every day. But despite the billions invested in the system, it’s designed to mitigate hunger, not fix the underlying problems that cause it: millions of people in the country still rely on donated food—even if they have full-time work.

“We have the most-efficient emergency food system, and we have historically low unemployment,” says Noreen Springstead, the executive director of the nonprofit WhyHunger. “And still 40 million Americans are hungry.” Hunger is less a problem of food scarcity than of poverty, she argues. And that means that the country’s system of hunger relief, and the philanthropy supporting it, needs to continue to evolve.

That evolution means food banks’ new end goal is to essentially put themselves out of business. But as they work on that challenge, by turning toward more pointed advocacy in the fight against the causes of hunger, it often means threatening the very donors that provide them with funds and food: Supermarket giants are often the companies paying the low wages that mean even employed workers must seek help at the food banks. And without those corporate partners, their primary mission of hunger relief comes under threat.

Read the full article about food banks by Adele Peters at Fast Company.