Food Benefits
Lena is a single mom with two children. She was working as a gig delivery driver when her car broke down, leaving her without transportation or income to cover repairs. She’s getting used to skipping meals so her kids won’t go hungry when she hears from a friend about SNAP: the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
She wants to apply, but she can only access the internet on her cell phone and the application requires a desktop computer. She goes to the library on Sunday, the only day she can get a ride, and finds that the application is closed on that day of the week. The following Saturday, Lena takes two bus rides back, determined to try again.
After nearly an hour spent answering confusing and repetitive questions, Lena finally hits “submit.” She doesn’t get a confirmation message, and is left wondering if the application even went through. Weeks later, she checks her P.O. Box and finds a letter about an interview, scheduled for the previous day. She calls the SNAP office, and after hours on hold, learns that her only option is to start over.
Lena’s story is a common one, experienced by millions of people across the United States. We believe that everyone should have an easy, dignified experience enrolling in and accessing their food benefits.
Our work to improve access to food benefits is anchored in five principles that inform the design of any social service or benefit program:
Many Welcoming Doors
Provide an equitable experience however people choose to access services
Easy to Understand
Enable access to information to understand case status and next steps at any moment
Informed Decisions
Informed decision-making presenting timely context and recommendations
Responsive to Changing Needs
Readily adapt to changes in user needs, technology, policy and budget
Simple Actions
Offer guided and actionable workflows that reduce burden and time
Let’s work together to improve government in meaningful ways
SNAP Service Delivery
In 2014, the landscape for digital access to food benefits was fractured for Californians with low income. Applying for CalFresh, the state’s version of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), required visiting one of three different benefit application websites, depending on the applicant’s county of residence. The online forms had a wide array of user experiences, but they often took hours to complete, weren’t optimized for mobile, and weren’t available in all the languages people across California use to communicate.
Code for America saw California was without a welcoming front door to food benefits—and the problem was clear in the data. In 2014, the state’s SNAP participation rate was 66%, and California ranked 48th out of 51 in participation (50 states and DC).
Code for America launched GetCalFresh.org, a SNAP digital assister that aimed to simplify the application and enrollment process for CalFresh. What started as a small pilot in San Francisco quickly expanded to include other counties across the state.
Through a partnership with the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), GetCalFresh scaled to become the single statewide access point for CalFresh, serving all California counties through major CalFresh policy changes in 2019 and throughout the pandemic. For more than a decade, Code for America helped tackle administrative barriers to unlock benefits and connect millions of people to SNAP. GetCalFresh, which centered client needs to address California’s persistent challenges in closing the participation gap, addressed four barriers that were significant drivers of the gap between eligibility and enrollment:
- We tackled the lack of awareness of eligibility through a robust digital advertising campaign that brought 1.2M applicants to GetCalFresh.org in 2024 alone.
- We dismantled the barriers to completing the initial application, including those around computer and transportation access, and the lack of child care, by using accessible, mobile-first designs that supported applicants to apply in 12 minutes on average from any device connected to the internet.
- We combatted stigma and misinformation by deploying a team of client success staff trained in trauma-informed care and CalFresh policy to field live chat, SMS, and email inbounds from applicants, as well as plain language informational pages in English, Spanish, and Chinese.
By 2024, the Federal Nutrition Service (FNS) found that California’s participation rate had gone up to 81%, bringing the state to 39th out of 51.
Today, Californians can submit applications for CalFresh and other benefits through the state’s new system, BenefitsCal.com. From 2021 to 2023, Code for America worked with California to support the rollout of the permanent, multilingual, multi-benefit application and client portal. Many of the principles that guided GetCalFresh—plain language, mobile-first design, streamlined document uploads—are now embedded in BenefitsCal, influencing how service delivery happens at scale across the state. We’re proud that GetCalFresh helped shape the next generation of digital service in California. We worked shoulder-to-shoulder with CDSS, county agencies, technical partners, and community organizations to ensure a thoughtful and user-focused transition.
We also launched a new GetCalFresh homepage that now serves as a central hub for guidance and directs clients to BenefitsCal for applications and case management.
6.2 million
people connected to SNAP
$12.8 billion
in benefits delivered
Code for America’s partnerships with county governments and state agencies have helped break down barriers to enrollment, given applicants empathetic resources to turn to when they have questions, and ensured more equitable outcomes for all Californians.
Why stop here? We’ve taken the GetCalFresh approach of removing barriers and applied it to our work across multiple benefits programs, in partnership with states across the nation.
People are at the center of everything we do
Read more about the stories of people we serve.
Stories
What people are saying about GetCalFresh
Can you help get food benefits to more people who need them?
Is your state ready to transform food assistance delivery?