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

“Ultimately, the most important thing we can do in this country is get SNAP back online,” said Propel CEO Jimmy Chen.

Sharnette Collins

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Sharnette Collins

Propel CEO Jimmy Chen knows what it’s like to be hungry.

When he was growing up in Kansas City, his parents sometimes struggled to put food on the table. Now his Brooklyn tech company is creating a free app for people receiving the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Anti-Hunger Program, or SNAP.

About 5 million people use the Propel app to check their SNAP balances and get coupons and discounts on groceries. That gives Chen a pretty good idea of ​​how they’re affected by the federal government’s unprecedented delay in sending out November payments.

“Their budgets are already extremely tight. There’s usually not a lot of wiggle room,” Chen says. “So a delay of a few days on an expected filing ends up being a really, really huge deal.”

Now his company is trying to close that gap, join other private businesses, nonprofit organizations and individuals who are scrambling to make up for delayed SNAP payments from the government. On Saturday, Propel began paying $50 to people using its app, prioritizing 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 them with an amount that gives them some relief.”

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

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Propel also rounded up some donations from its corporate partners, including New York anti-poverty nonprofit Robin Hood and e-commerce platform Babylist. It also launched a crowdfunding campaign with the nonprofit GiveDirectly, which runs similar programs around the world and has previously worked with Propel.

GiveDirectly says it has raised a total of $6 million so far, including contributions from Propel.

“The scale and volume of this need is immense. We’re talking about millions of low-income Americans who are at risk of not receiving this assistance,” says Sarina Jain, senior manager of the GiveDirectly program focused on disaster responses in the United States.

Although they rushed to launch this donation program, Chen and Jain recognize that all the efforts of nonprofits and private companies can never replace the federal government, which spends $8 billion every month on the nation’s largest hunger-relief program.

“Ultimately, the most important thing we can do in this country is get SNAP back online, making deposits on a predictable schedule for the people who receive it,” Chen said.

42 million SNAP recipients face payment delays

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

After two federal judges ruled that freezing SNAP payments was illegal, the Trump administration announced Monday that it would resume partial SNAP payments.

But the government added that states would only receive about half the amount of federal funding they usually receive. He plans to use money from an Agriculture Department contingency fund, which contains only $5 billion — far below the $8 billion it costs to provide full SNAP benefits each month.

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

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

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

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

Melton also says many groceries at these food banks are expired.

“I’m a little afraid of giving my children expired food,” she says. “But sometimes you have to do what you have to do.”