Using Data for Systems-Level Advocacy

The Des Moines Area Religious Council (DMARC) Food Pantry Network has provided food assistance to Greater Des Moines since its founding in 1976. While some things about this work have remained constant, we have also experienced major changes throughout our organization’s history. One area has been an expanded focus on advocating for policies that address root issues leading to food insecurity as an increasing number of people rely on the emergency food system. This includes transitioning my role from advocacy and communications into a full-time advocacy position.  

DMARC has always looked for opportunities to innovate and challenge the status quo. In the past few years, we especially have made a commitment to use our network data to help leaders and community stakeholders understand the connection between their decisions and people’s experience with hunger and poverty.

Here is how we’ve approached using data for system-level advocacy in ways that have gained local and national attention:  

Seeing the story behind the data

When people visit a DMARC partner food pantry for the first time, they are asked a series of 12-14 questions about their household. In addition to basic contact information, we also ask demographic questions related to race and ethnicity, gender, age, education, housing, income sources, SNAP participation, and veteran status. Based on these cumulative responses, we can extrapolate a lot of information about food insecurity in our community.

DMARC’s data visualization dashboard was developed in 2017 by a former board member, Tom Fischer, who had recently retired and was looking for a personal project to dedicate his time to. Tom built out an amazing dashboard, coded in ‘R’ (a free publicly available statistical software), that allows us to explore our data through different graphs, charts, and most impressively, through a geospatial mapping feature. The dashboard has geographic layers, showing detailed, real-time data filtered by city boundaries, school districts, and Iowa House and Senate districts.

Using the dashboard, we were able to identify areas of high need and low access to scout locations for our mobile food pantries. We mapped out bus lines to better understand transportation barriers for people accessing our partner food pantry sites. And we very quickly realized that the dashboard would be an invaluable advocacy tool.

Localizing the issue for leaders

When I meet with Central Iowa legislators, I can provide them with data specific to their district, informing them of exactly how many of their constituents used a food pantry within the past month or year, and some basic demographic details of those people. We’ve also combined other existing data sets, such as the US Census American Community Survey, with our own data. In this way, we can make even more inferences through the data – such as showing how median rent increases are tied to increased food pantry use.

This data has helped us communicate the deep and interconnected complexities of what drives food insecurity with elected officials – and squash any notion that “hunger doesn’t exist in my district.”

Understanding inequities created by policies

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the national racial justice protests that followed in summer 2020, DMARC had internal conversations about how we could focus more of our organizational energy on making Greater Des Moines a more equitable community. One outcome of these discussions was the decision to publish the report, “Racial Disparities Among People Assisted by the DMARC Food Pantry Network.” Last year, we built off this original report and took an even greater dive into our data to produce the next iteration, “Portrait of a Food Pantry Visitor: Data, Demographics, and Disparities.”

This report identified several key findings, including:

• Racial disparities among food pantry visitors exist in all communities across Greater Des Moines but are especially pronounced in suburban communities.
• Children assisted by the DMARC Food Pantry Network are more racially diverse, and seniors are much more likely to be White - Not Hispanic.
• Gender disparities exist across all races and ethnicities.
• Racist housing policies of the past have lasting impacts to this day.

For this last point, we were able to overlay historic redline maps of Des Moines, thanks to our partners at Polk County Housing Trust Fund, to show that areas of the city which have faced historical under- and dis-investment based on explicitly racist housing and finance policies are still some of the areas of highest need to this day.

This point underscores not just how policies made nearly a hundred years ago are still having an impact on our community but also the unintended (or maybe intended?) consequences that policies made today can have far into the future.

This fall, we will unveil an updated “Portrait of a Food Pantry Visitor” report for fiscal year 2023. It will be interesting to see how these numbers may have changed, based on the huge increases we have seen in our Food Pantry Network over the past year. Stay tuned for the release of that report!

Being aware of unintended impact

We recognize that asking these questions at our food pantries can present a barrier in accessing assistance – asking personal questions of any sort may discourage people from seeking help, especially for non-native English speakers. We frequently discuss this impact as a DMARC team. Anyone can opt-out of answering any of the intake questions with no adverse consequences. The only answer that has any impact on the amount of food received is household size. We also have food that is available daily with no questions asked at all.

Ultimately, it’s a balancing act – trying to ask only the most necessary questions to help us understand the issue more holistically. Without this data, our advocacy would not be as effective, and we would not be able to produce pieces like our “Portrait of a Food Pantry Visitor” report. Data helps us understand and communicate the intersecting issues of hunger and food insecurity, and advocate for systems-level change, which is what it will take to truly end hunger in Greater Des Moines.

Learn more

View our data dashboard to see how pantry use is increasing as pandemic relief has ended and policies place greater restrictions on accessing public benefits.