Revealing Hunger in Plain Sight

As access to federal nutrition programs like SNAP becomes more uncertain and barriers to participation increase for millions of Americans, more people are turning to food banks for help. As demand for food banks continues to rise, the Iowa Food Bank Association (IFBA), a nonprofit of six Feeding America food banks that supports over 1,500 partner agencies and pantries, recognized an opportunity to better understand how growing food insecurity is impacting communities as well as where support for solutions exists, so they can advocate more effectively for policies that address hunger.

Through a research partnership with Murmuration, IFBA tapped into our years of experience as a leading resource on civic life. Murmuration used Community Voices, one of the largest and most rigorously maintained public opinion panels in the country, and Civic Pulse, a daily survey initiative that analyzes thousands of open-ended responses every week, to design and field three custom surveys in collaboration with the Iowa Food Bank Association that captured responses from 4,000+ people across Iowa, its six neighboring states, and the country at large. In collaboration, Murmuration and IFBA developed survey questions to understand how people really feel about rising food costs, how they’re changing their behaviors as a result, and what solutions they support.The survey findings revealed that 72% of Americans say food insecurity is a problem in their state, and more than three-quarters of Americans say they have had to adjust their grocery purchases due to rising costs. The data also showed that Americans broadly agree that food insecurity is a problem worth solving, and they support practical ways to address it.

These findings equipped IFBA to raise awareness of the widespread, bipartisan public support that exists for efforts that expand access to food—including state funding for food banks, SNAP, Double Up Food Bucks, Summer EBT, universal school food programs, and funding for food banks to purchase products grown in-state as part of the “Choose Iowa” program which supports Iowa farmers in expanding and diversifying their businesses—at a time when these state-level nutrition initiatives face uncertainty. The survey results were featured in Radio Iowa, CBS 2 Iowa, and Business Record, reaching over 5,000 Iowans and helping to build public awareness and momentum for IFBA’s advocacy efforts–ultimately bolstering their case that Iowa should be investing in hunger relief programs.

“These Murmuration results helped to amplify our advocacy efforts, demonstrating to elected officials that there is strong bipartisan support for programs that help our neighbors in need,” says Katie Sorrell, Executive Director of the Iowa Food Bank Association.

Explore the findings in detail, including select open-ended responses from our Civic Pulse survey, at Murmuration’s Substack.