In early 2024, Food Banks Canada launched a set of national standards covering all areas of food bank operations. These benchmarks strengthen accountability and trust, ensure good practices, and equip food banks to serve their communities as effectively as possible. So far, over X food banks have achieved accreditation in the Standards of Excellence.
It’s a major endeavour, but nobody has to undertake it alone: food banks are encouraged to ask questions, learn about opportunities to apply for funds, or request assistance at standards@foodbankscanada.ca. Also willing to lend a helping hand are Standards Ambassadors: people who have been through the accreditation process and who have generously offered to share their experiences, tips, and templates with the broader food bank network on The Exchange.*
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When the leaders of Clarington East Food Bank in Newcastle, Ontario, first saw the Standards of Excellence, they felt overwhelmed. “We looked at them and thought, ‘We’re already doing a lot of this, but how do we show it?’” recalls executive director Susan Pascoe. “We didn’t have anything to track what we were doing. Not a single [recorded] policy. We didn’t even have bylaws. We were starting from scratch.”
Pascoe assumes this is not an unusual situation for a smaller food bank like Clarington East, which serves around 30 people per day. The organization relies heavily on volunteers who are dedicated to serving their community but not necessarily passionate about paperwork.
Paperwork serves valuable purposes when it’s used well, however, and Pascoe focused on making sure it would be. “We involved the volunteers in creating the policies, procedures and tools,” she says. For example, she went into the kitchen and explained that the food bank would need a way to ensure each fridge maintained an appropriately cold temperature. “Then I would ask, ‘What would make it easy for you to do that?’” she says. “I would tweak the temperature chart accordingly and then go back and say, ‘Is this what you meant? Does this work for you?’ We did a lot of mini training days, too.”
As a result of this approach, volunteers at Clarington East tend to know what to do and why they’re doing it. “I think they bought in when we listened to them and made improvements based on their feedback,” Pascoe says.
The journey has paid off. “We were doing a very decent job before,” Pascoe says. “But now we’re at a truly consistent level where you don’t have to worry about anything like, ‘Oh, did that person remember to wipe the counters? You know they did.”
The Standards are making food banks less isolated and more collaborative, she adds. “Whatever problems you’re facing, I guarantee that somebody else has already experienced them. This is our chance to identify our strengths and gaps, and to support each other in filling the gaps.”
During a virtual drop-in session last October, Pascoe shared an honest account of the challenges and benefits the Standards of Excellence brought for Clarington East and offered guidance that included:
-Keep it simple: There is more than one way to achieve each standard. For example, a food bank that handles large volumes of food might need inventory-management software to trace and discard any food that gets recalled, but a smaller food bank could perhaps simply designate somebody to visit the storage room to check barcodes and make sure no recalled items are on the shelves.
For human-resource policies, East Clarington relied on a service that supplied pre-made templates for small businesses and nonprofits. But even those were more in-depth than necessary to meet the Standards and the food bank’s needs, so the team is simplifying them.
-Adopt flexible policies: Policies are meant to direct and inform processes and procedures, without impeding the need to adapt and fine-tune them. “For instance, when you’re dealing with recording food weights, you could use a form and tie the form number to the policy number,” Pascoe says. “Then you can tweak the forms without having to go back for Board or committee approval. So if you, say, realize you forgot to include a column on your form, you can easily change it.”
–Don’t go it alone: In addition to Food Banks Canada, provincial food banking associations are knowledgeable and willing to help organizations navigate the Standards.
Share the work internally as well. Pascoe suggests creating a committee that leverages the various kinds of expertise available in the Board, staff and/or volunteer base.
She also recommends logging into The Exchange, a digital platform where food bankers share questions, answers, and resources amongst themselves.* “You can just say, ‘Hey; I’m really stuck on this particular standard. Does anyone have a template for it?’” Pascoe says. “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We have a great network who are willing to share.”
To access recordings and resources from previous virtual sessions with Standards Ambassadors, log into The Exchange or contact knowledge@foodbankscanada.ca.
*To register for accounts on The Exchange, a digital sharing platform for eligible food banks, write to knowledge@foodbankscanada.ca.
