Starting a grocery gift card program:
a step by step guide
If your work focuses on food insecurity, then this guide is for you
Empowering all communities to transform their response to food insecurity
After several years of honing a year-round grocery gift card model, I Can for Kids designed a guide to inspire other organizations who wish to establish their own programs. When you subscribe below, you’ll receive an email that provides access to this handy resource and tools.
While we’re pleased to offer this guide for free, we welcome donations to I Can for Kids in support of our ongoing efforts to update and communicate new content on a regular basis to ensure all subscribers benefit from new insights and information.
If you are an organization who serves food-insecure households in or near Calgary, I Can for Kids would like to explore collaborating with you to ease the burden of designing and operating your own grocery gift card program. Together, we can streamline our efforts and maximize our collective impact. Please send us a message at collaborate@icanforkids.ca
We hope you’ll join us in our mission to transform the way our society responds to food insecurity!
Why create a grocery gift card program?
Our research has proven that the grocery gift card model is cost-effective, efficient, and much more dignified. Most importantly, food-insecure households continually tell us that they prefer to access this type of support compared to traditional food programs. Why? Some of the key advantages they highlight include:
Dignity
Households experience no stigma, shame, or judgment when using gift cards in the store.
Inclusion
Households can shop in the same stores as everyone else right in their own communities.
Resilience
Households can choose the foods that meet their unique health, cultural, and religious needs.
Flexibility
Households can spend as much or as little of the gift card as they need while shopping at the most convenient times and store locations.
Who can benefit from this guide?
We provide insights and ideas for communities of all sizes, including cities, towns, and rural areas. There is something for everyone. Whether you’re an established organization looking to enhance current programming, or a new agency looking for an evidence-based way to alleviate food insecurity.
Charities
Nonprofits
Community groups
Health services
Social programs
Poverty reduction advocates
What can you expect in the guide?
Our guide serves as a practical roadmap to design and implement a grocery gift card program as an income-based response to food insecurity. Our suggestions do not require specialized software or a large body of staff to achieve the work. We structured the guide as a response to the many questions we receive from diverse organizations with varying levels of resources and skill sets. The four key areas in the guide include:
Evidence
links to key research and resources for readers who wish to discover more about food insecurity.
The design phase
outlines the key infrastructure, mindset, and skills needed to establish and evaluate a successful program
The implementation phase
focuses on the technical details required to manage procurement, distribution, tracking, and inventory activities
The Tools
provides a series of downloadable templates that help support key activities described in the guide
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