Brazos Valley Food Bank: Is Equitable Distribution Truly Possible?

Name: Brazos Valley Food Bank: Is Equitable Distribution Truly Possible? (English version)
SKU: W24197

Manoj Vanajakumari, Jon Stauffer, Subodha Kumar

Product #:W24197

Supplier:Ivey/Temple

Discipline:Operations Management

Setting:United States, 2018-2020

Details:Case (PDF) • 7 pages • 2022-03-25

Subjects:

Equity financing Financing Business management Operations and supply chain management

Geography:

North America United States

Your Price:

$10.54

Purchase this material with a free Educator Account and enjoy more benefits:

Free Educator Copy
Free Teaching Notes
Build your coursepack
Discounted academic price

In 2019, the Brazos Valley Food Bank (BVFB) in Texas increased its distribution and food-storage capacity and was delivering food to food-insecure people in six nearby counties through its partner agencies. While the number of food-insecure people in each of these counties was relatively stable, the food distribution capacities of BVFB’s partner agencies and the food supply fluctuated. As a non-profit organization, BVFB needed to equitably distribute food across all the counties it served, but it first needed to decide how to define “equitable food distribution.” Which parameters, food needs, or costs should it use to calculate this? How could it ensure that its food distribution did not favour one county over another? Was equitable food distribution achievable for BVFB at all?

Learning Objectives

The case can be used in analytics, supply chain management, and non-profit management courses and modules at the undergraduate and graduate levels. This case study looks into equitable distribution, a complex and necessary part of many non-profit and humanitarian supply chains. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to:

discuss the meaning of equitable distribution in a non-profit setting;
develop strategies that enable non-profit organizations (food banks) to measure equitable distribution;
understand the data collecting and processing requirements that allow non-profit organizations to manage operations and systems efficiently;
develop appropriate key performance indicators for managing a non-profit supply chain; and
understand the use of descriptive and prescriptive analytics on non-profit data.