How one tech startup is giving cash to SNAP recipients : NPR

Propel CEO Jimmy Chen knows what it's like to go hungry.

Growing up in Kansas City, his parents sometimes had trouble putting food on the table. Today, his Brooklyn-based tech company is creating a free app for people participating in the federal government's hunger relief program. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP.

About 5 million people use the Propel app to check their SNAP balance and receive coupons and discounts on groceries. This gives Chen a pretty good idea of ​​how the federal government's unprecedented delay in making November payments is affecting them.

“Their budgets are already extremely limited. There's usually not a lot of wiggle room,” Chen says. “So, delaying an expected deposit by even a few days turns out to be a really huge deal.”

Now his company is trying to fill that gap., joining others private business, non-profit organizationsAnd People is struggling to make up for the government's delayed SNAP payments. On Saturday, Propel began paying out $50 to people who use its app, giving preference to those with children and little or no income.

“We understand that $50 is not enough,” Chen says, adding that Propel is trying to reach as many families as possible and “provide an amount that will give them some breathing room.”

The company has identified approximately 230,000 users who fit this “high need” profile. He has donated $1 million of the $10 million total needed to fund the $50 payments to most of them and hopes to reach that goal.

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Propel has also collected donations from its corporate partners, including New York-based anti-poverty nonprofit Robin Hood and e-commerce platform Babylist. He also launched a crowdfunding campaign with a non-profit organization. Give Directlywhich runs similar programs All all over the world and what worked with Propel in the past.

GiveDirectly says it has raised a total of $6 million so far, including Propel's contribution.

“The scale and scope of this need is so enormous. We're talking about millions of low-income Americans who are at risk of not getting this help,” said Sarina Jain, senior program manager for GiveDirectly, which specializes in disaster response in the US.

Even as they struggle to get this donation program off the ground, Chen and Jain acknowledge that the best efforts of nonprofits and private companies can never replace the federal government's spending 8 billion dollars every month under the nation's largest hunger-relief program.

“At the end of the day, the most important thing we can do in this country is to bring SNAP back online, transferring funds on a predictable schedule to the people who receive them,” Chen says.

42 Million SNAP Recipients Face Payment Delays

Nearly 42 million people rely on SNAP. They are now waiting for payments the government stopped making on Saturday, facing delays that could last months.

After two federal judges ruled The Trump administration said Monday that freezing SNAP benefits is illegal. said it will restart partial SNAP benefits.

But the government added that states will only receive about half the amount of federal funding they typically receive. He plans to use money from the Agriculture Department's reserve fund, which contains just $5 billion, far short of the $8 billion needed to provide full SNAP benefits each month.

The government also warned that it could take “several weeks to several months” for some states to process the reduced payments.

This could have disastrous consequences for many SNAP recipients like Shenita Melton. The 37-year-old lives in rural Anson County, North Carolina, and relies on SNAP to feed her four children.

Propel connected NPR with Melton, who said last week that she has already begun to struggle to find enough food for her children, especially three teenagers who “eat a lot.”

There aren't many food banks in the rural area where she lives. The few stores that exist allow people to buy groceries only once or twice a month.

Melton also says a lot of the food at these food banks is expired.

“I'm afraid of giving my kids expired food,” she says. “But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.”