For Bryan Stevenson, it all started with a birthday cake. A legislator in Stevenson’s home state of Alabama complained in the media after he saw a woman in the grocery store use food stamps to buy a birthday cake for her five-year-old child.
“He was outraged,” Stevenson recalled. “He didn’t think that you should be able to use food stamps to buy birthday cakes for children, and he demanded an investigation. It so upset me, this idea that if you’re poor, the lives of your children are not to be celebrated.”
Stevenson, a lawyer, activist and the author of the bestselling book “Just Mercy,” is also the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization based in Montgomery, Alabama. Stevenson created EJI in 1989 to challenge excessive punishment, mass incarceration and the death penalty.
EJI also created the Legacy Sites in Montgomery. The sites include a museum, memorial and sculpture park that aim to provide a fuller picture of slavery, lynchings, segregation and racism, and their role in shaping U.S. history, past and present.
In 2020, EJI expanded its mission still further by launching an antipoverty initiative. “The pandemic dramatized the challenges of the poor in this country,” Stevenson said. “I decided that we should start an initiative that would take on poverty as its own issue.”
EJI’s antipoverty initiative had two components: healthcare and food insecurity. The organization opened a health clinic in 2023; it also began to explore how to address widespread hunger in the state. Alabama is the fifth-poorest state in the U.S., “with 17% of adults and 23% of children (1 out of 4) facing food insecurity,” according to Alabama Public Health.
EJI has provided grants to food banks and other anti-hunger programs, and while Stevenson appreciates that work, he also wanted to address individuals with special nutrition needs.
“The other thing that was important to us was creating a program that gave people dignity and a little more autonomy to solve their problems in their own way,” he said.
That’s where the story of the birthday cake comes in. “We decided to create a new model,” Stevenson said. “What we wanted to do was to empower families who are dealing with food insecurity. If they want our input and advice on how to maximize these resources, we’ll provide that, but we’re not going to presume that they don’t know how to manage. They know things about managing limited resources that people who haven’t had that experience never have to learn.”
EJI receives support from a wide range of private and corporate funders as well as individual donors. It initially relied on its general support dollars to underwrite the new antihunger program; then two funders, Bancel Philanthropies and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, stepped in with targeted support. Bancel Philanthropies was created by Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of pharmaceutical and biotech giant Moderna, and his wife, Brenda. Like RWJF, Bancel Philanthropies’ funding priorities include reducing health disparities and food insecurity. Bancel Philanthropies began providing support for the program in 2023, while RWJF’s support began last year. The combined support totals over $1 million.
“The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Bancel Philanthropies both came to us and said, ‘Man, we really love this. This is consistent with the kinds of things that we’re interested in, and we want to provide added support for what you’re doing,’” Stevenson said. “It’s been a thrill to see this program take off. We are now in virtually every county in the state of Alabama.”
How does EJI’s anti-hunger program work?
At the core of EJI’s anti-hunger initiative is direct monetary aid to families — aid that isn’t quite the same as a guaranteed income, but also isn’t far off. EJI created a card worth $415 that goes to qualifying heads of households, with priority given to families with children. The cards can be used for food, as well as staples like diapers and toiletries. All families facing food insecurity are invited to apply; EJI evaluates applicants’ needs but works to minimize red tape and intrusive oversight. Those who qualify receive a card every month for six months. Families can reapply when the six months are over, but EJI asks them to wait to reapply for at least three months to permit more people to participate. EJI has provided cards to 6,500 families since the program was launched.
As grocery prices inched up with inflation, EJI noticed that $415 a month didn’t go very far. They also learned about what families in small towns and rural areas without grocery stores were facing. “Some families were driving 40 or 50 miles to get food,” Stevenson said. “So we decided to acquire food and take it into the counties ourselves. We started with a van, but demand was so great that we then developed the mobile grocery store.”
The mobile grocery store is a 48-foot truck that features aisles and grocery carts. Prices are steeply reduced; shoppers can purchase staples like 18 eggs for $2.50 and a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread for $1, according to EJI materials. When the mobile grocery store pulls up, families with EJI cards get first priority, but others in the community can also shop there.
“We’ve learned so much,” Stevenson said. “One of the surprising things is the number of grandparents who are now taking care of grandchildren. Some are taking care of three or four children under the age of 15 because mom is deceased, or mom is incarcerated, or is dealing with addiction or mental illness. That grandmother wasn’t planning on raising three or four kids and has her own health issues, so she’s making choices between medication and food. That’s precisely the situation we’re trying to remedy.”
Participants can recommend friends and neighbors whom they believe could benefit from the program, too, and for Stevenson, that is one of the best parts of the initiative. “I asked one older woman what she likes about the program, and she said, ‘Well, I love the money. I love being able to buy the food. But the thing I love the most is that you all allowed me to help other people.’ Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you don’t want to be generous. She said, ‘You all have allowed me to be a philanthropist.’”
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Which funders are tackling food insecurity, and will more step up?
Stevenson is proud of EJI’s antihunger program, but he knows the need — in Alabama and around the country — is far greater than his organization can address. He hopes EJI’s approach can serve as a model in other regions. This October, when the program hits the three-year mark, EJI will publish a report on the model, its implementation and results. EJI is also planning to conduct outreach to other organizations and local governments. “I think this is a model that has real potential,” he said.
Stevenson would like to be able to serve many more people, but EJI has already had to grow its staff to operate the antihunger program and is looking for more resources. He is talking to other funders and hopes that more will join Bancel and RWJF.
Providing food aid to those in need has long been a charitable staple here in the U.S., and a number of funders already work specifically to promote food security. Some focus specifically on policy and advocacy, as IP’s Martha Ramirez reported last year. More recently, Ramirez reported on a community development strategy that centers communities of color and is funded by the Kresge Foundation, RWJF, The California Endowment and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. And to name one recent example, just last month, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation announced major grants to regional food banks in Georgia and Montana.
But meeting America’s hunger crisis is going to take far more support — and in the Trump era, that means more support from philanthropy. Even before Trump took office, hunger in the U.S. was on the rise. Now, Trump’s economic policies and budget cuts threaten to boost food insecurity even higher.
The administration already canceled $1 billion in USDA funds that were intended to buy food from local farmers for school lunch programs and food banks. In July, passage of budget reconciliation legislation (the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act) put more Americans at risk by slashing funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs will push food costs even higher.
Feeding America, the country’s largest hunger relief organization, oversees a network of more than 200 food banks and 60,000 programs that provided over 5.7 billion meals last year. Feeding America is a pass-through that receives funding from donors and in turn provides support for hunger-relief organizations. In a recent statement, CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot warned about the impact of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill: “At a time when food insecurity is rising nationwide, this legislation threatens to worsen the crisis, taking away access to food and healthcare from millions of people, including children, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities.”
If the U.S. is the richest country in the world, why is hunger so prevalent — 1 in 7 households experienced food insecurity in 2023 — and why do we tolerate it? Stevenson, who has devoted his life to fighting injustice, thinks it has to do, at least in part, with the deep and growing chasm between the people making policy and those who struggle to pay their bills — or splurge on a cake for their child’s birthday. He is referring here to policymakers, but it’s a chasm that philanthropy leaders also need to recognize — and work to cross.
“I think that distance creates policies that are unfair and unjust,” Stevenson said. “I don’t think you can be effective managers of resources or responsibilities if you’re not proximate to the people you serve. That distance is very evident in the current policies. You have people who are making policies about a whole community of people who they don’t know. They have presumptions about how people are lazy or dangerous, and it’s just not what we’ve experienced at all. We see hard-working people who are doing everything they can to take care of their children.”
