SNAP Outreach

The Food Bank of Northern Nevada helps people in need apply for SNAP Benefits (formerly known as food stamps.) Roughly half of Nevadans who are eligible for food stamps actually receive them.  SNAP Benefits can help a family make ends meet by providing help purchasing food.  For a schedule of where the SNAP team will be, click here: SNAP Outreach Calendar; or for the rural areas, click here.  In Nevada, half of all food stamp benefits go to families with children.  This statistic highlights the importance of everything the Food Stamp Outreach Program does and shows exactly how vital application guidance is to ensuring that low income children eat.


Food Stamps generate economic activity in our local communities. 

The Food Stamp Program brings federal dollars into communities in the form of benefits which are redeemed by food stamp participants at local grocery stores. These benefits ripple throughout the economies of the community, state and nation.

 

Did you know?

  • Every $5 in new food stamp benefits generates $9.20 in total community spending.
  • Every additional dollar’s worth of food stamp benefits generates 17 to 47 cents of new spending on food.
  • On average, $1 billion of retail food consumed by food stamp recipients generates 3,300 farm jobs.

For more information about the Food Stamp Outreach Program, schedule of the Outreach sites, or if you know someone in need of Food Stamp Nutrition Benefits, please call Kelly Nowak at (775) 331-3663 or email knowak@fbnn.org.  **Please note: If you are e-mailing in regards to receiving food stamp benefits, please include a phone number to reach you at (if possible) so that we may contact you in a timely manner.

If you have more questions about the program, here is a link to SNAP Fact Checker. Without SNAP benefits, 41 million people in the US would have gone hungry in 2010 -- 48% of them children.

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SNAP-Shots

SNAP is effective, efficient and closely monitored.

•The SNAP Program is efficiently targeted to reach people who have the most difficulty affording an adequate diet. Eighty-seven percent of participants are households with incomes below the poverty level; 39 percent of households had a gross income less than or equal to half the poverty guideline.
•Benefits are provided in the form of an electronic benefit card (EBT) which acts like a debit card and can be used in supermarket checkout lines for the purchase of food.

•Changes to the Program that reduce eligibility or benefits cannot be adequately replaced by food banks and other private charities, or by local communities suffering the loss of local jobs.

SNAP benefits farmers, the food industry, and the economy.

•USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) estimates that each $1 billion of retail demand by food stamps generates $340 million in farm production, $110 million in farm value-added, and 3,300 farm jobs; and an additional $5 of food stamps can generate $9.20 in total economic activity.
Caseloads have closely tracked the unemployment rate, rising as unemployment rises, and falling when it declines.
•Paired with unemployment insurance, it is a vital part of America’s front-line defense against recession. It helps to prevent hunger in families with laid-off workers that fall into poverty, provide temporary support until these families can get back on their feet, and when natural or man-made disasters hit, the SNAP Program provides timely, critical resources to help people cope, and is an important ingredient for physical and economic recovery.

•In fiscal year 2006, the Food and Nutrition Service provided nearly $740 million in disaster assistance to disaster victims. SNAP helps those seeking economic independence.

•SNAP helps low-wage workers make ends meet and assure that families are financially better off working than on welfare.