Abstract
Food banks make up an increasing phenomenon of nonprofit organizations answering to new social needs related to the global socioeconomic crisis. In order to explore if they are suitably adapting to their environments in Spain, one of the countries most seriously affected by the crisis in South Europe, this work assumes a hybrid qualitative–quantitative structure composed of an exploratory case study based on semi-structured interviews followed by a survey addressed to all the Spanish food banks. Much of the academic literature has concerned the appropriateness of food banks as a delivery mechanism in the context of welfare state withdrawal. This paper takes this in a different direction by examining Spanish food banks from an organizational management point of view. Wary of concerns about the institutionalization of food charity, on the one hand, and recognizing the escalating daily reliance on food banks, on the other, this paper seeks to address potential technical supply problems and challenges food banks face and open debate about the organizational networks of food banks more generally. The results show nonprofit entities based on a voluntary workforce who run supply chains in order to join both social and business targets. Their situation, performance, resources, mutual relationships and the links with other entities are described, paying special attention to the changes induced by the latest contextual changes. In short, food banks are efficiently organized and well established in their territories as a coherent social movement, although they should improve in their strategic view, coordination, resources and sources of these, to satisfy more adequately their increasingly complex demands.
Highlights
800 million people in the world are at risk of malnutrition, hunger or starvation [1], and the population by 2050 would require an increase of 70% in the delivery of food [2].In contrast, nearly one-third of the food which is produced every year for human consumption is lost or wasted
Are food banks responding to the challenge by adequately adapting their management to the surrounding problems? To answer this research question, this paper aims firstly to explore the present reality in relation to the crisis context through a case study of one of the Spanish food banks and, secondly, to draw a nationwide overview by means of a massive survey
Tarasuk and Eakin (2005) have already pointed that the coordination tasks of a food bank are carried out by the paid staff [55]. This differs partially from the more participatory management style we found in the North of Spain case study, a collective way to run that food bank by means of a small team composed of a few board/trustees members—all of them volunteers—in a close and quotidian relation with the paid manager
Summary
800 million people in the world are at risk of malnutrition, hunger or starvation [1], and the population by 2050 (estimated at around 9000 million inhabitants, from the present 7400) would require an increase of 70% in the delivery of food [2].In contrast, nearly one-third of the food which is produced every year for human consumption is lost or wasted. The food waste problem is greater in the industrialized countries, where, in most cases, it is caused by both the retailers and consumers, who throw perfectly edible food away [4]. Food banks conform to nearly a half-century-old worldwide phenomenon of nonprofit organizations whose target is to deal with part of this problem by recovering surplus food and reallocating it to people in need [5]. Their major field of operation is in developed societies and their activities are structured in several areas. They have programs in place to search
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