A nonprofit-tech partnership delivered relief to SNAP families

Finances already looked tight for Jade Grant and her three children as she entered the year’s final months.

- BY JAMES POLLARD

“Everyone's birthday is back-to-back,” the 32-year-old certified nursing assistant said. “You have holidays coming up. You have Thanksgiving. Everything is right there. And then, boom. No [food] stamps.”

Grant is among the nearly 42 million lower-income Americans who get help buying groceries from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. When the federal shutdown began in October, she wasn't worried about losing her benefits — she said she is used to government “foolishness.”

But circumstances got dicey when the budget impasse entered its second month and President Trump took the unprecedented step of freezing November SNAP payments. With one child who eats gluten-free and another with many allergies, specialty items already drove up Grant’s grocery bill. Now she wondered how she’d put food on the table — especially with her youngest’s 6th birthday approaching.

Then Grant logged into Propel, an app used by 5 million people to manage their electronic benefits transfers, where she saw a popup banner inviting her to apply for a relief program. Within a minute, she’d completed a survey, and about two days later, she got a virtual $50 gift card.

The total didn’t come close to her monthly SNAP allotment. But the Palm Bay, Fla., resident said it was enough to buy a customized “Bluey” birthday cake for her son.

Nearly a quarter of a million families got that same cash injection from the nonprofit GiveDirectly as they missed SNAP deposits many need to feed their households. The collaboration with Propel proved to be the largest disaster response in the international cash assistance group’s history outside of COVID-19; nonpandemic records were set with the $12 million raised, more than 246,000 beneficiaries enrolled and 5,000 individual donors reached.