Get the Government to Do Its Part

Not everyone may agree, but some of us believe the government has a role to play in feeding the hungry, housing the homeless and addressing other pressing health and human service problems. In order to fulfill that role, government decision-makers need to know what those needs are.

An amazingly effective but simple way exists for your food pantry to communicate information about community needs to the officials who need to know about these needs. It doesn’t involve lobbying or anything else that anyone should find objectionable. All it requires is a little extra copying, addressing a few envelopes and applying some postage stamps.

What you want to do is duplicate seven extra copies of your pantry’s monthly activity report. Most food pantries I am familiar with compile a report on how many families they have served, how many people were in those households, why they were in need and how much help was provided. Don’t include clients’ names. Just provide a tally of need and of help provided. Make seven extra copies of that report each month and mail a copy to each of the following people:

You can raise awareness

What good will this do? More than you would ever believe! My experience as a lobbyist for the Illinois’ Legal Aid Programs, I learned three very valuable lessons:

Letters work

Except in the movies or in an orchestrated campaign, officials get relatively modest amounts of mail, and a lot of that is so scattered all over the landscape topically that there is no rhyme or reason to it.

But suppose one day out of the clear blue an official starts regularly hearing from dozens of churches and other respected community organizations about thousands of people in his or her district who don’t have enough to eat. Suppose he or she hears from the Methodists, the Catholics, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, the Baptists, the Seventh Day Adventists, big churches, little churches, churches of all races, city churches, suburban churches and rural churches, “Hunger! Hunger! Hunger!” What do you suppose he or she is going to do? Ignore it? Not likely!

They will take a very big interest in hunger and will explore and support opportunities to help address the problem. For example, every year most of America’s major anti-hunger advocacy organizations unify around a single omnibus package of legislation they want to get the Congress to approve and the President to sign. Those groups often send out legislative alerts noting which legislators will co-sponsor their package and urge people to get their area’s legislators to join that list.

Recently, this package had 21 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. Three of the 21 were the three relatively conservative gentlemen who represent the part of western Michigan my food bank serves. And why are they so interested in reducing hunger? Because every month they are hearing from the people like you and me that hunger is a very significant problem.

Mailing your monthly reports them to the officials noted above isn’t lobbying. It cannot possibly get you or your organization into any sort of trouble with the government. All you are doing is shining a light on an issue that otherwise lives in the shadows and is easily ignored.

By shining that light you will once again have multiplied the impact of your anti-hunger efforts to many times the power and impact they have ever had before. And it is precisely that gentle multiplication of impact that will make ending hunger in America something we will be able to proudly tell our grandchildren about. How will we do it? By simply doing a lot of good things even better.