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The problem

The cost-of-living crisis has resulted in growing levels of food insecurity in the UK, and in turn, growing pressure on community food aid organisations.

In response, many local authorities have implemented interventions to support community food aid organisations in their communities in effort to ensure they can serve the rising numbers of people seeking their assistance.

Birmingham City Council (BCC) declared a cost-of-living emergency in late 2022 and as a result, the Council created a funding stream to support community food organisations over the cost-of-living crisis. At that time, the Council was receiving information from community food organisations suggesting they were facing insufficient supplies of food arising from growing demand for their services, and that demand was anticipated to further increase over the winter. Going into winter 2023, projections for food aid use in Birmingham were once again very high.

The intervention

BCC made available four grants to support community food aid organisations with food supplies and infrastructure needs over 2022 to 2024.

  • Emergency food aid fund (EFAF): available from December 2022, this provided organisations with £800 per month for 6 months for the purchase of food/consumables for distribution to clients/recipients of food aid.
  • Supplementary Food Aid Fund (SFAF): available from March 2023, this was put in place to support organisations that didn’t receive the EFAF and introduced due to high demand for EFAF. It provided organisations with £400 per month for 3 months.
  • Affordable food infrastructure fund (AFIF): available from April 2023, this provided organisations with up to £3,000 to purchase infrastructure and/or equipment to increase the capacity of food projects to provide food that is nutritious, culturally appropriate, and safe (and hot where appropriate) to more people, in ways that enable dignity, choice, and/or socialisation.
  • Winter Food Aid Fund (WFAF): available from November 2023, this provided organisations with £5000 for the purchase food and other consumables for organisations to give out to individuals. All monies had to be spent by 31 March 2024.

Key Stakeholders

Birmingham City Council (Food System Team), community food sector organisations.

Setting: Birmingham

Target Population: Organisations running food projects including food banks, social supermarkets, food clubs and community cafes and other food projects delivered in Birmingham that met the criteria for funding through any of the EFAF, SEFAF, AFIF, or WFAF were included in the target population for this study, including those that did not receive funding.

Casual Loop Diagram: View the diagram in Kumo.

Research questions

The evaluation addresses a set of process and outcome evaluation questions. The process evaluation questions focus on understanding whether the provision of grant funding from BCC worked as intended, i.e. did it reach organisations who needed it, were organisations able to access it, and did organisations use the funding as intended? The specific process evaluation questions that will be addressed are:

1. In what ways did community food organisations that received funding from BCC over 2022-24 differ from organisations that did not receive funding over this period?

2. What were the reasons for applying or not applying for BCC community food sector funding, and barriers and facilitators to doing so, over 2022-24?

3. Did organisations experience any challenges related to making use of the funding for its intended purposes?

The outcome evaluation questions focus on outcomes for organisations who received the funding and their patrons, including potential unintended consequences arising from the BCC funding. The primary research questions are:

1. How did receipt of BCC funding impact on the quality, quantity and variety of food distributed from the organisations?

2. How did receipt of BCC funding impact on the numbers of people served by organisations in receipt of funding?

In addition to these primary questions, there are secondary questions related to the mechanisms that may underlie the primary outcomes as well as more distal outcomes:

3. How did organisations’ activities, services and ways of operating change, if at all, as a result of the funding, and how did these changes contribute to observed changes in outcomes?

4. What, if any, changes arose from the funding that were unexpected or not anticipated?

5. Has the funding resulted in any longer-term changes in organisations’ ability to sustain their services into the future?

Key Outcomes

Understanding motivations for and barriers to applying for funding and changes in quality and quantity of food available for distribution over 2022-2024, along with the perceived differences these changes made to people using community food projects.

Evaluation design

In order to understand the impacts these funds have had on organisations and, in turn, the people they serve, we will conduct a mixed methods, integrated process and outcome evaluation, involving site visits, qualitative interviews, and a survey of WFAF recipients.

Sample size

169 organisations received WFAF funding and were targeted for the survey. A targeted sample of 54 organisations that received and did not receive funding was also invited for interviews, with an aim to interview organisations in receipt of different combinations of BCC funding.

Recruitment

Organisations were recruited through email and phone calls over spring to summer 2024.

Data Collection

Organisations in receipt of WFAF funding were invited to complete an online survey. Organisations targeted for interviews were invited to complete interviews online via Teams.

Process evaluation

The process evaluation was embedded into the evaluation.

Governance

Data on organisations receiving funding from the BCC is available publicly. Organisations were asked to give permission for data provided as part of their application for BCC funding to be shared with the research team.

The Birmingham Food System Team were a partner on the research and assisted with data collection. All data analysis and interpretation was conducted independently, by researchers at University of Liverpool and University of Cambridge.

Ethics approval was obtained from the University of Liverpool Research Ethics Committee.

Proposed outputs

Peer-reviewed papers and a report on evaluation needs and opportunities in the community food sector in relation to interventions to support their provision during the cost-of-living crisis.

Resources needed

Cost of recruitment, data collection, incentives.

Team

Rachel Loopstra, Alexia Sawyer, Catherine Jackson, Rosemary H Jenkins, Isabel Nuñez Salazar.

Timescale

Until end of March 2026