Reflecting on 10 Years of Food Assistance in California

GetCalFresh—one of Code for America’s flagship services and the longest running product in the history of our organization—started in 2014 with one question:

How do we take the frustration out of applying for food assistance?

Since then, more than seven million Californians have used GetCalFresh—a digital Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) application assister—to get help applying for SNAP (called CalFresh in California) benefits online. This month, we’re celebrating GetCalFresh’s 10 year anniversary and reflecting on the lessons we’ve learned along the way.

The challenge in 2014: accessing food assistance benefits in California

In 2014, a group of Code for America Fellows partnered with the San Francisco County Human Services Agency to address a big problem within the community: Applying online for SNAP benefits in California was incredibly difficult. At the time, legacy systems created barriers for clients to claim food assistance funds they were entitled to, which meant only 66% of eligible individuals were receiving benefits. California had the fourth lowest SNAP participation rate in the country that year. 

Working shoulder to shoulder with both government and clients, GetCalFresh offered a bridge to allow people to more easily access the digital front doors of the SNAP program and navigate complex government systems and policies.

SNAP can be a critical lifeline for people experiencing food insecurity. It’s known to be a powerful anti-hunger program as well as an effective tool to reduce poverty and improve health and economic outcomes. Students in SNAP households tend to achieve greater educational advancement, families with low income participating in SNAP have lower health care costs, and every $1 spent in SNAP benefits generates $1.50 in the local economy.

GetCalFresh launched in 2014 to offer a simpler and more human-centered solution. We envisioned an easy-to-complete SNAP application that could be submitted on a phone or computer. Working shoulder to shoulder with both government and clients, GetCalFresh offered a bridge to allow people to more easily access the digital front doors of the SNAP program and navigate complex government systems and policies.

Changing food access through GetCalFresh

At its core, our approach to serving GetCalFresh clients has remained the same over the past decade. We identify pain points and barriers to SNAP enrollment, pilot possible solutions within the GetCalFresh product, and measure the impact of those changes to determine new iterations or scalable solutions. We also elevate these methods and key insights to our government partners to systematically improve SNAP participation across the state. 

This process, grounded in our human-centered research and design principles, allowed us to uncover better ways to ask complex application questions, like those about income, and build new service offerings, like the ability for clients to submit their Semi-Annual Report (SAR 7) which is a required form to maintain benefits.

This has been generational work, with staff continuously learning and iterating through our product and service over the past decade.

By June 2019, GetCalFresh—which just the year before was available in only half of California counties—had become a statewide service. We also expanded language access so that applications and client communications were available in English, Spanish, and traditional Chinese. Before the end of that year, the program reached a major milestone: More than a million people had used GetCalFresh for help applying for SNAP since its inception. And in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented need for food assistance in California, our entire team was reminded of how consequential this work is and moved to meet the moment. Over the years, we’ve grown to become an integral part of the California SNAP ecosystem and reach approximately 73% of all online SNAP applications submitted across the state.

This has been generational work, with staff continuously learning and iterating through our product and service over the past decade. Over time, a few fundamental principles have guided our work:

• Write in people-first language that is accessible and easy to understand
• Create webpages in mobile-first designs with one question per page
• Translate into multiple languages
• Build specific services to alleviate administrative burdens where possible 

These principles help us focus on serving communities who face unique barriers to access SNAP, and improve upon our services or offer new solutions. By listening to our clients and observing data and research insights, we make informed decisions about every aspect of GetCalFresh—from webpage designs to client communication copy. This can include ensuring our translations are culturally appropriate and high quality, and providing new features like Later Documents, which makes it easier for clients to submit necessary verifications with their application. 

GetCalFresh’s working model offers a window into showing what’s possible to create a more human-centered safety net that serves everyone.

SNAP access in California 10 years later

Of course, it takes more than just one service like GetCalFresh to holistically change the landscape of access and participation in government programs like SNAP. But we are proud to have played a part in helping Californians access food benefits, and grateful for the trust our clients and partners have put in us to support them over the past 10 years. We helped usher in many pivotal milestones for California to expand and improve access to SNAP, including when Supplemental Security Income recipients were newly eligible for food assistance benefits and when all 58 counties migrated to California’s first single statewide web portal for multiple benefits services, including CalFresh. All in all, more people can now apply for SNAP no matter where they live in the state.

GetCalFresh has also had an immense impact on Code for America’s overall safety net strategy and partnerships with other states across the country. Product principles, design elements, and research insights from GetCalFresh are leveraged in other projects ranging from the design of new online benefits applications to the way we build text message reminder campaigns. But it’s not just the technical recommendations that have been integral to our work strengthening the social safety net. GetCalFresh’s working model offers a window into showing what’s possible to create a more human-centered safety net that serves everyone.

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The iterative and data-driven mindset we’ve used to run GetCalFresh has been instrumental not only to helping more Californians apply for SNAP, but also to sharing evidence-based recommendations and proven frameworks that continue to move the needle on digital benefits delivery. Technology that was novel when GetCalFresh first came online 10 years ago—like mobile-first design and two-way live chat messaging—is now the norm across industries in providing quality web services. 

Over this last decade, much has changed, but one core component of Code for America’s approach has stayed the same: We’re human-centered. Without talented, dedicated members of our staff, government partners on the ground in California, and GetCalFresh clients who provided feedback, none of this would be possible. At every stage, people have been behind the product—and it’s with this human-centered approach that we’ll carry forward our work making safety net services more accessible to all. 

A special note of thanks to the many individuals who have contributed to the work of GetCalFresh.org over the past 10 years as well as our government and community-based partners across the state.