For most Calgarians, its taken as axiomatic that food banks and the social support they provide improve the lives of those in need—but what if food banks could also improve the financial health of taxpayers?

According to new research performed by the Calgary Food Bank (CFB), based on the clients they serve, the answer could be yes, with every dollar being donated to the Calgary Food Bank saving taxpayers $9.84 in return.

According to the CFB, the $20,600,189 in donations they received in the last fiscal year had the potential to deliver as much as $202,705,860 in social benefits that would otherwise be covered by organizations like Alberta Health Services, the Government of Alberta, The City of Calgary, and the Calgary Drop-in Centre.

“The key message from this research is that the Calgary Food Bank is impacting its clients’ lives beyond just the provision of the food hamper, and this research makes clear that food banks are a key part of our social safety net. So, I would encourage people to invest in this valuable resource in our community,” said Dr. Lucy Harry, head of research at the Calgary Food Bank.

The analysis found six secondary benefits in the areas of access to nutritious food, improved mental health, improved financial situation, improved quality of life, improved life circumstances, and other social benefits due to clients receiving emergency food hampers.

“Not only is demand for food support continuing to be at an all-time high, but the amount of donated food on our shelves is down 51 percent over last year at this time. It is growing increasingly difficult to meet the need,” said Melissa From, CEO of the Calgary Food Bank.

“This study is sending a powerful message—the private sector, governments and individuals can support Calgary Food Bank knowing that their investments will have a transformative effect on lives and yield robust long-term financial returns and societal value.”

She said that for the CFB, there was a lot to unpack from that $9.84 figure but that it was likely to help guide their internal decision-making and help decision-makers know where it impacts the community.

“Whether it’s public policy decisions or decisions that other charities are making, but also donor decisions. The reality is that inflation and the cost of living has increased significantly, and anytime that a donor is making a decision about where to invest or where to donate their hard earned dollars, that’s an important decision,” From said.

“I think that the more information we can provide donors so that they can make an informed decision and to know that their dollars are having exponential value and impact is so important. I think that this is really going to serve our community, as well as individuals and corporations and levels of government make decisions.”

The figure also proves the mantra that “cash is king,” From said.

“We are so grateful for all of the food donations we receive from the community, and we always put those to good use. But when folks invest money into the Calgary Food Bank, we can make those dollars stretch very far,” she said.

“Now we know that those dollars have an incredible return on investment, so it’s really a win-win when folks donate their hard-earned cash to the Calgary Food Bank.”

Standard form of financial analysis used to look at non-standard impacts

The CFB research was performed as a Social Return on Investment Analysis (SROI), which is a form of financial analysis to measure values not typically included in accounting or financial statements.

“A social return on investment analysis is a methodology that’s used in nonprofits. We designed our research based around previous studies, and there’s a clear kind of step-by-step process, which is outlined in our long report on the Calgary Food Bank website,” said Dr. Harry.

She looked at three different segments of CFB users, determined through the number of visits and the average gap length between visits in a one-year period.

Of those groups, the food bank interviewed 10 frequent clients (one-month average gap and 8 visits per year), 11 occasional clients (2.5-month average gap and five visits per year), and 10 situational clients (nine-month average gap and two visits per year) for a total of 31 semi-structured interviews.

“The 31 interviews were quite in-depth, qualitative interviews, where we would meet with a client and we talk with them for an hour, sometimes more, and we made sure that we got a sample of across our client population,” said Dr. Harry.

“It was important to then verify our findings with a larger sample of our clients, where we kind of dig a bit deeper into some of the questions and some of the findings that we were getting from the interviews.”

That survey for validation was done with 1,000 clients of the Calgary Food Bank.

The research looked at whether client outcomes would have occurred regardless of food bank interventions, what outcomes could be attributed to the provision of emergency hampers to clients, and the drop-off rate to measure the rate of impact decreases after the end of use of the Calgary Food Bank.

What the food bank found was that $9.84 value as a result of every dollar of donation made—with the caveat that to avoid overestimating the Calgary Food Bank’s impact, the report used the most conservative of financial proxies to represent the social and health impacts on clients.

Calgary food bank favourable in impact compared to other food banks across Canada

In comparison, the CFB provided SORI ratios from other non-profits in Calgary, and from other food banks, with values ranging from 6.79:1 and 11:1 for Inn From the Cold and the Reset Society: Exit Program, to 2:1 for the Our Food Project in Cape Breton, and 23:1 for the Australia Foodbank.

The Calgary Food Bank has also previously used an impact ratio of $1 donations being able to distribute $3.50 worth of food to clients.

“Why this is higher than the number that we quoted previously is because before we looked at more of our distribution power, whereas this is really thinking about what are wider impacts on society, and how can we attribute a financial value to them. So this is kind of a unique study for us,” said Dr. Harry.

“We know from working here that our impact on clients beyond just the provision of the food hampers, and so we wanted to use an evidence-informed approach to really understand that and to attribute a financial value to it.”

Although Dr. Harry said that there weren’t any surprising results from the research, there were at times surprising aspects from individuals during the interview stage.

“One of the interviews that I did, I sat down and I had an interview with a young mother. Before I started the research interview I like to have some small talk to make the participant feel a bit more comfortable, and after we’d spoken for a little bit, and she felt more comfortable with me, she confided that she needed some help filling out the research form because she didn’t know how to read,” Harry said.

“I found that extremely surprising. She had grown up in Canada, and I think that that’s just an indictment of the fact that food insecurity is part of a complex set of interconnected social issues.”

The functional illiteracy rate in Alberta, according to the Conference Board of Canada, is 44.8 per cent. An estimated 17 per cent of Canadians cannot read at or above the lowest tested level for literacy.

Calculating an impact

The way that the Calgary Food Bank arrived at that $9.84 figure was by summing the total financial proxy cost from services like AHS and The City of Calgary, multiplying that by the unique clients served annually, and multiplying that again by a calculated impact figure that included the value of the donated food.

That was then divided by the annual cost of the emergency food hamper program.

Some of those inputs that went into the calculation included $482.50 per patient, per year for AHS from high food insecurity, $8,554 per patient, per year for admissions to AHS for stress and anxiety, an $824 per adult Emergency Needs Allowance cost from the Government of Alberta, $25 per person, per year for the City of Calgary’s Social Isolation Strategy, $50 per adult, per year for Fair Entry Recreation from the City of Calgary, and $2,550 per person, per year for housing in the Calgary homeless shelter system.

Those figures, said Dr. Harry, were selected through the survey responses.

“In our survey of 1,000 clients, we asked them about the specific ways in which we had improved their lives. So, for example, we have mental health as one of our indicators, and one of the survey questions was, exactly, ‘how has your mental health improved as a result of the Calgary food bank?'” Dr. Harry said.

“We based our financial proxies on the most frequently selected options. So, for example, for mental health, we look to the proper admission for stress and anxiety, because clients have most frequently responded by saying, using the Calgary Food Bank reduced my stress.”

Using a less conservative set of figures, such as increased homeless housing costs, the ratio was found to rise to a high of 30.81:1.

A brief summary of the Calgary Food Bank research and the full report can be found at www.calgaryfoodbank.com/resources.