Private Food Assistance in the Deep South: Agency Profiles and Directors' Perceptions of Needs and Opportunities under Charitable Choice

Suzie T. Cashwell
Western Kentucky University

John P. Bartkowski
Mississippi State University

Patricia A. Duffy
Joseph J. Molnar
Vanessa Casanova
Marina Irimia-Vladu
Auburn University

December 2002

With an expanded awareness of the problem of food insecurity during the past two decades, food banking has emerged as an important tool in America's fight against hunger and malnutrition. Food banks are umbrella agencies that centralize food collection and then disseminate their goods to pantries in local communities. This study examines the structure of food banking in two states-Alabama and Mississippi. Given their predominantly rural populations and high proportion of low-income households, Alabama and Mississippi are ideal locales in which to examine this issue.

A key point of departure for this study is the transformation in social welfare provision brought about through charitable choice. The charitable choice provision of 1996 welfare reform law significantly expands the opportunity for public-private partnerships in the provision of social services. In particular, charitable choice enables government entities to provide public funds to underwrite the service programs of faith-based organizations. Because faith communities form the backbone of civic life and benevolence work in much of Alabama and Mississippi, this two-state region is also an outstanding area in which to examine the role of religion in the delivery of food to the poor.

Given these considerations, this study attends to two primary questions: (1) What types of local community agencies provide food assistance to the poor in the Alabama-Mississippi area, and what can we learn about those who serve as directors in these agencies? Moreover, what are the predominant attitudes that such directors hold about poverty and hunger? (2) How receptive and knowledgeable are food agency directors toward charitable choice programs? Specifically, to what extent do Alabama-Mississippi food agency directors demonstrate a grasp of the general policy contours, specific legal provisions, and implementation status of charitable choice? To undertake this investigation, we collected primary survey data from a random sample of food pantry directors (n=233) whose agencies are affiliated with food banks in Alabama and Mississippi.

First, because little is known about private food agencies and their directors in these two states, we generate detailed profiles of food agencies in the Alabama-Mississippi area and provide a composite portrait of these organizations' directors. Surprisingly, about three-quarters of the food agencies in our survey are affiliated with a faith community. Thus, religious organizations seem to account for the bulk of food assistance work conducted in Alabama-Mississippi communities. Nearly eight in ten of these faith-based food agencies are affiliated with small and moderately sized congregations, a finding that confounds the common equation of faith-based service provision with large religious organizations. Food providers in our overall sample offer services predominantly to residents of rural communities in this two-state area.

Our demographic profile of food agency directors reveals that they are predominantly white, female, well-educated, and reside in middle-class households. We also asked questions to elicit the social welfare attitudes held by these directors. Most directors attribute poverty to structural causes rather than individual factors. However, an appreciable proportion of directors harbor suspicious views of pantry clients. This finding suggests that a trust gap exists in the provider-client relationship at many food pantries in our study region.
A second goal of our study entailed gauging food agency directors' receptivity toward charitable choice and assessing their awareness of this policy's provisions. It is noteworthy that over two-thirds of the food agencies in our survey do not currently receive government funds. Yet, slightly more than half of them indicate a willingness to apply for public monies in the future. What, then, do these directors know about charitable choice? In general, food agency directors are woefully uninformed about the general policy contours, key legal provisions, and implementation status of charitable choice. By most standards, the vast majority of our respondents failed the charitable choice knowledge test posed to them through the survey. The average on this examination hovers around 33 percent. Nevertheless, these findings should not be used to impugn food directors in Alabama or Mississippi. If food directors are undereducated about charitable choice, the fault resides not with the directors themselves but with structural conditions that create an information gap between policymakers, state administrators, and those who are combating hunger and poverty in the trenches of local communities.

The clearest implication to emerge from this study, then, is the need to close the information gap that exists between policymakers who pass new social welfare laws such as charitable choice and service organizations that are presumed to benefit from such policies. To be sure, additional research must be conducted in other parts of the nation to determine if there are broader regional variations or more systematic rural-urban differences in the charitable choice knowledge gap discovered here. Nevertheless, our study suggests that organizations ostensibly empowered by charitable choice must be educated about this policy if they are to make a reasoned choice about its merits and drawbacks.