Corporate Giving – The Food Trust

Corporate Giving – The Food Trust is sponsored by The Food Trust. Provides opportunities for corporate support through the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) program and cause marketing partnerships.

Healthy Food Financing Initiatives – The Food Trust We’re hiring seasonal community outreach staff! Home What We Do Healthy Food Financing Initiatives Healthier communities through financing Healthy Food Financing Initiatives (HFFIs) are public-private financing programs that invest in new or expanding grocery stores and other fresh food retail outlets in low-access, low- to moderate-income communities throughout the United States.

Healthier communities create healthier economies, and research shows that the development or presence of a grocery store not only improves health outcomes but also creates jobs and stimulates additional investment. Apply for funding in Pennsylvania Millions of Americans live in communities without access to a supermarket or other healthy food retail.

This problem impacts residents of cities, small towns, rural areas and everywhere in between, especially those living in lower-income neighborhoods.

The built environment is deeply intertwined with the social determinants of health, and communities without a strong healthy food infrastructure also experience lower levels of employment, higher rates of food insecurity, higher transportation costs, higher rates of diet-related disease and a range of other challenges.

Healthier communities create healthier economies, and research shows that the development or presence of a grocery store not only improves health outcomes but also creates jobs and stimulates additional investment. HFFI programs can also help address a lack of access to capital for small food retailers.

HFFIs provide one-time grants and loans, as well as technical assistance, to fresh food retailers to increase access to healthy, affordable food options and to improve economic development opportunities.

Healthy food retailers supported by HFFIs not only promote access to healthy food by offering opportunities to purchase nutritious foods, but they also serve as economic anchors to further commercial revitalization, creating local jobs, generating tax revenues, and capturing local dollars within the community, among other economic and community development outcomes.

Today, The Food Trust works with partners across the country to develop and implement programs that offer financing and technical support to grocery stores and other healthy food retailers. In addition to administrating the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative , we currently support the Massachusetts Food Trust Program and the Kansas Healthy Food Initiative .

We have also recently supported the Deep South Healthy Food Initiative .

The Food Trust also supports partners implementing or applying for the two HFFI programs at the Federal Level: America’s HFFI Food Access and Retail Expansion (FARE) Fund , through the USDA Healthy Food Financing , through the US Department of Treasury’s CDFI Fund In 2001, The Food Trust published Food For Every Child: The Need for More Supermarkets in Philadelphia , a report which mapped food access in Philadelphia.

The report, which found that the city’s lower-income communities also had lowest supermarket access and the highest rates of diet-related deaths, spurred Philadelphia City Council hearings.

At the request of City Council, The Food Trust convened the Food Marketing Task Force, a group of high-level representatives from the public health, economic development and grocery retailing sectors, to identify the challenges to operating supermarkets in these areas and propose policy recommendations to address these challenges. From that task force – and the support of Pennsylvania State Rep.

Dwight Evans – came the Pennsylvania’s Fresh Food Financing Initiative (FFFI), an innovative grants and loan program to encourage fresh food retail development. Pennsylvania’s FFFI was seeded with $30 million in state funds over three years, and this seed money was leveraged by The Reinvestment Fund, a Community Financial Development Institution. The Reinvestment Fund and The Food Trust co-managed the initiative.

Pennsylvania’s FFFI approved 88 projects for funding, representing 1. 67 million square feet of retail space and 5,000 jobs created or retained, making healthy food more available to an estimated 400,000 of the state’s low-access residents.

Named one of the top government innovations in the country by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the success of FFFI made the initiative’s public-private structure a model for other cities and states committed to improving food access.

At a national level, an effort to raise awareness of the issue of limited food access by The Food Trust and our partners PolicyLink and Reinvestment Fund , led to the creation of the Healthy Food Financing Initiative , a partnership between the U.S. Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health to provide financing for developing and equipping grocery stores, small retailers, corner stores and farmers markets selling healthy food in areas that otherwise may lack healthy options.

Developing Program Guidelines and Materials The Food Trust works with partners to develop program criteria, guidelines, applications and marketing materials, as well as a framework for evaluating community impact.

Building a Project Pipeline Working with grocers, wholesalers and trade associations across the country, as well as farmers markets, public markets, corner stores, mobile vendors and food cooperatives, The Food Trust serves as a liaison between low-access communities and healthy food retailers by identifying potential sites, cultivating qualified applications and informing retailers of opportunities for development.

Determining Applicant Eligibility Eligibility analysis requires a nuanced understanding of food access in low-access communities. Using maps, data tools and community perspective, The Food Trust evaluates healthy food financing applications to ensure that projects are sustainable, reflect community preferences, and improve food access in true areas of need before a comprehensive financial assessment is undertaken.

Prioritizing Projects and Preparing for a Store Opening The Food Trust advises healthy food financing program partners while applicants go through the financing and development process, and prioritizes projects that generate the greatest impact.

Providing Technical Assistance to Retailers The Food Trust offers technical assistance to retailers in areas such as in-store healthy food marketing, nutrition education, community engagement and local food procurement. Evaluating Program Impacts Together with academic institutions, The Food Trust conducts ongoing evaluation of healthy food financing outcomes.

With national partnerships, The Food Trust helps elevate program impacts and successes at the local and national level.

Healthy Food Access Portal Community Development and Healthy Food Access in NJ (2022) Webinar: Healthy Food Financing Initiatives – Successes, Innovations and Lessons Learned (2022) Healthy Food Financing Programs Across the Country (as of 2018) Moving from Policy to Implementation: A Methodology and Lessons Learned to Determine Eligibility for Healthy Food Financing Projects (2014) The Healthy Food Financing Handbook: From Advocacy to Implementation (2013) Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters: A Review of the Research (2013) The Grocery Gap: Who Has Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters (2010) Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative Grants and loans are available to healthy food retailers across the commonwealth.

New grant cycle coming soon! Healthy Food Access Portal This website helps advocates and entrepreneurs launch successful healthy food access policies and programs. Meet the Healthy Food Financing Initiative team