Key Takeaways

  • The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is vital to alleviating senior hunger, but older adults are the population least likely to be enrolled.

  • This brief summarizes promising practices in outreach, application assistance, and follow-up to increase senior SNAP enrollment.

  • It includes examples of practices related to outreach, application assistance and follow-up, and advocacy that have been used to successfully increase seniors’ enrollment into SNAP.

The Senior SNAP Enrollment Initiative is designed to fight senior hunger by increasing the effectiveness of community-based organizations and agencies that help older adults enroll in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). With support from the Walmart Foundation, NCOA has distributed over $2 million in grants to more than 40 community-based organizations and agencies that conduct SNAP outreach and assist older adults with the application process.

About this brief

After awarding a second round of grants in 2015, NCOA engaged Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) to produce a brief that summarizes promising practices in outreach, application assistance, and follow-up, and may be replicated by community organizations seeking effective ways to increase senior SNAP enrollment and to alleviate senior hunger.

The practices selected were drawn from four grantees:

PDF File: https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/ffacfe7d-10b6-0083-2632-604077fd4eca/047e6917-979a-4b43-9281-b3807660d8bb/NCOA-SNAP-Promising-Practices-Brief.pdf