Second Harvest Food Bank
Overview
Project Partner: Second Harvest Food Bank
The project employs Tableau data visualization to create a comprehensive model estimating the cost of food recovery for SHFB and its partners, highlighting the hidden economic costs of volunteer labor. The Food Recovery Cost vs Yearly Pounds dashboard provides insights into the cost per pound of recovered food, aiding decision-makers in resource allocation and operational efficiency.
Project Description
Tech Tools Used: Tableau
The project utilized Tableau data visualization to create a comprehensive model estimating the cost of food recovery for Second Harvest Food Bank (SHFB) and its partner agencies. The initial model served as a foundation, highlighting the gap in the current cost estimation models of food recovery, and in the process calculated the true economic cost, impact, and sustainability of food recovery programs.
This project is situated at the intersection of social justice issues like environmental sustainability, community welfare, and data-driven decision-making. By uncovering the hidden costs associated with volunteer labor, the project deliverables were valuable for SHFB not only as a data visualization tool to support advocacy efforts but also to build a sustainable, data-driven culture within the organization and the broader community.
Project Deliverables
The project's primary deliverable was a set of interactive Tableau dashboards designed to illuminate the hidden costs associated with food recovery, with a particular focus on the volunteer support force. The first dashboard, named "Agency Dynamic Cost," employs three key functions—transportation cost, average staff cost, and average volunteer cost—to present a horizontal histogram. Each bar on the histogram represents the average yearly dynamic cost for individual partner agencies, with the X-axis denoting the total cost in USD and the Y-axis listing agency names. The calculated field for the average dynamic cost includes dynamic volunteer and staff costs, along with total yearly gas cost, providing a comprehensive view of the economic aspects associated with food recovery operations.
Project Outcomes
The project outcomes are multifaceted, addressing key issues stemming from the implementation of California's SB 1383 and focusing on sustainable solutions to food waste and food insecurity.
The Tableau data visualization tools developed by the Everett Program in collaboration with SHFB provide a robust and dynamic framework for estimating the cost of food recovery for different partner agencies. The "Food Recovery Cost [FRC] vs Yearly Pounds" dashboard serves as a powerful data-driven tool, offering decision-makers insights into the hidden economic costs associated with volunteer labor and other fundamental inputs like labor expense and transportation cost.
This tool has the potential for adaptation, allowing the inclusion of additional costs such as storage, utility, packaging, and insurance expenses (deemed outliers in the original model), enabling a more accurate assessment of partner agencies' current food recovery capacity.
Project Milestones
Identification of Challenges (Throughout): Continuous identification of challenges faced by SHFB and its 23+ partner agencies, including limited resources such as volunteer/people power, cold storage, and skilled personnel for data processing, in the backdrop of SB 1383's implementation.
Development of Technological Solutions (Ongoing): Collaborative efforts between the Everett Program and SHFB to develop technological solutions, particularly the Tableau data visualization tool. The primary focus was on estimating the cost of food recovery for partner agencies, with specific attention to the hidden economic costs associated with volunteer labor.
Tableau Data Visualization (Ongoing): The creation and evolution of the Food Recovery Cost [FRC] vs Yearly Pounds dashboard, serving as a dynamic tool to estimate the cost per pound of recovered food. The primary input function developed in the project has the potential for adaptation to include additional costs, providing a comprehensive view of partner agencies' food recovery capacity.
Lessons Learned
Heads
Through this project, I found the importance of active listening, collaboration, and incorporating feedback from community members. Much of the agencies’ food recovery and distribution work is done by those who have experienced or are actively experiencing food insecurity and other forms of systemic social oppression. Recognizing and amplifying the voices and experiences of these individuals engaged in the essential work of food recovery and actively integrating them into the decision-making and solution-building processes helps us ideate more inclusive and sustainable solutions to the challenges faced by the community.
One major issue that arose was learning the stringent reporting requirements associated with available funding opportunities, such as the 2021 CalRecycle grant, led some agencies, including SHFB, to pass up on these opportunities. This raised significant concerns about barriers to participation and access to financial support, particularly for organizations with limited capacity and resources to meet stringent reporting criteria.
Hands
My primary tech tools for this project were Survey Monkey, for data collection and Tableau, for data visualization. Both platforms were effective in serving the needs of my partner organization. Survey Monkey allowed me to include conditional branching questions on my survey that made my data more tailored to the specific responses of the participants, and more importantly accurate as the data source. Tableau, on the other hand, allowed me to include an interactive parameter in the absence of real data points (like staff wage per hour) and also served as a valuable communication tool for understanding the hidden economic costs associated with food recovery.
Upon reflecting on my journey of learning the tech tools, a significant challenge was not allocating sufficient time for pre-planning the outcomes, objectives, and parameters of my model. In hindsight, I recognized the value of ideating the model and its functions before launching the survey, which served as the primary data source. Ideally, I would have taken the time to learn the tech tool gradually while awaiting the survey responses.
Hearts
Working on this project gave me a deeper appreciation for acknowledging the lived experiences of people and underscored the importance of collaboration in addressing social justice issues. The intersectionality of food waste management with food security highlighted the importance of creating a zero-waste, sustainable food system in collaboration with community partners.
My biggest takeaway from this interaction was that volunteers do not just contribute their time, effort, skills, and passion to helping out families in need, but they also serve as advocates raising awareness about food waste and the importance of sustainable consumption within their communities. The most significant social innovation lesson I learned is the transformative power of leveraging technology for data visualization in addressing complex social issues. The Tableau dashboard facilitated data-driven decision-making and comprehensive analysis of various operational metrics, such as transportation costs and time investments.
Testimonials
“Food Recovery is a joint effort... our jobs all overlap a lot... I think there should be stipends for organizations that do food recovery. If businesses are going to be fined for not donating, then organizations that do food recovery should be rewarded."
Ashley Bridges, Pajaro Valley Loaves & Fishes, Executive Director
With SB 1383, "we had to start weighing food recovery product individually by store, so that increased our work five-fold... High-skilled personnel is the biggest need... if they were paid, [food recovery] would be super different.”
Danielle Wong, Grey Bears', Program Director
"We are run on volunteers; everyone here was getting food from us in the beginning, and they've joined to help... we've become this big family."
Celina Alejandrez, Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos' Distribution Program Manager
UCSC Team
