On one of the cold days of winter this year, Des Moines Area Religious Council’s new CEO, Kathy Underhill, whose office is not far from the food pantry, heard the distinct sound of a newborn crying.

She went out to the pantry and there was a family with a newborn baby that had been born four or five days prior, premature.

“So just this tiny, beautiful baby,” Underhill said. “And the adults were looking for formula and diapers and just very basic needs for themselves and the baby, and so you think about putting yourself in that place of having a new baby and needing that kind of support.”

The pantry had formula and diapers to help the family.

“Some of the folks that access the food pantry have really struck deep chords with me, and they’ll stick with me for a long time, maybe forever,” she said.

The DMARC board of directors announced last year that Underhill would lead the organization as chief executive officer.

Underhill has spent over 20 years working on the issue of hunger at every level of the nonprofit and government landscape. Most recently, she oversaw nine federal nutrition programs working for the state of Colorado, managing the distribution of more than $80 million in American-grown food. Underhill was instrumental in the founding of Hunger Free Colorado, serving as the founding CEO of the state’s leading anti-hunger organization. She has continued to develop the next generation of advocates in the fight against food insecurity while teaching advocacy and policy at the University of Denver School of Social Work.

Underhill joined DMARC in June and worked alongside outgoing CEO Matt Unger until June 30. 

Underhill, who has a master’s degree in social work specializing in community organizing, has taken a collaborative approach between people in need of support and people supporting charitable food work. Her work has been recognized nationally, with honors including the Share Our Strength Innovator Award, Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Livingston Fellowship and the Dr. Wheeler/Senator Wellstone Award. She was named a Top Thinker for nonprofits by the Denver Post Editorial Board.

The following Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

What does DMARC do and who does it serve?

DMARC provides nutritious food to folks in need in the Greater Des Moines area. We do that through a network of 13 food pantries, including one that we run here on the south side. We work in partnership with 12 other nonprofits. We also do advocacy and education work, and our roots are in being an interfaith organization, so we work with a variety of faiths around the issue of hunger. 

Who are you serving right now? Who is the main demographic?

Across the network, it’s really about 40%, 35% kids under 18. It’s about 15% folks that are over 60, and then all the folks in the middle age-wise. A lot of the folks that we serve are either employed part time or full time or looking for work, and what we see is that people are just struggling to find work and also to find jobs that pay a wage that helps them be self-sustained.

You’ve been on the job for about seven months. What is the biggest insight you’ve gained so far about hunger in Iowa?

Hunger in Iowa doesn’t really look different than hunger anywhere else in terms of the root causes and the folks that are experiencing hunger. That’s pretty universal. What I’ve learned about hunger here, though, is really around the community response to it is so strong – that the community has been really dedicated to the issue and really cares deeply about the issue, which is not the case everywhere.

Give me an example of community response stepping up.

When the government shutdown happened in November, how the community stepped up with donations of food and funds and volunteerism was just a very striking and clear example of how people come together. Then I think that, beyond just crisis mode, just meeting some of the folks [who] have been affiliated with DMARC for many years. They’re like, ‘Oh, I volunteered here 20 years ago.’ They’ve been intertwined with DMARC for much of their lives. And that’s really cool to see that. I feel like the society we live in, people like quick bites of things, and then they’re on to the next thing. And for a lot of people, DMARC and hunger has been more of an enduring … cornerstone for them.

What bills at the Iowa Legislature are out there right now that are relevant for food insecurity in Iowa? 

We’re watching any legislation that’s proposed that would negatively impact people in need of food assistance or who are low income. That’s always our primary focus, and that could be related to the charitable food system, to the SNAP program, to school meals, summer food, anything in that arena is something that we’re going to pay really close attention to.

The Double Up Food Bucks program is looking for a $1 million appropriation. What do you think of that request?

I’m a very practical person, and so I always go, ‘What’s the highest use of these limited dollars?’ I always take that bigger view of, ‘Where do we want to go with this?’ I haven’t read the current Double Up legislation, but I think that generally speaking, fresh fruits and vegetables in particular, are very expensive, especially in relation to the amount of calories they provide. Conversations about limiting food choice and SNAP and that whole conversation – I just think it can become divisive really quickly, which is a shame, and certainly not where I ever want to go. I just step back and go, ‘OK, we all have this shared goal of [wanting] people to have enough to eat and to have healthy food to eat. What is the best way to get us there?’ And I think something like a Double Up Food Bucks is really helpful, because it makes fresh food more attainable for people from a price-point perspective.

Let’s go back to November during the government shutdown. You asked the community for a couple of things. You asked for more volunteers, you asked for money and for people to talk to their legislators. What response did you see? And do you still need those things?

We really need advocates. And I think that it’s something that most people don’t see themselves as advocates, and if they do, it’s generally related to a direct personal experience. But I think that when we think about basic human needs — food, shelter, clean water — these are the basics of life. We should all be advocates for it. We’re all intertwined. Advocacy can look like many different things. One of the most effective things is showing up to town halls and to meetings with your state legislators and saying, ‘I’m your constituent. Hunger is an issue that’s important to me, tell me about what you’re doing on it.’ You don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to be able to read Iowa code and administrative rules. You just need to care about the issue and ask that question as a starting point. 

How did you fare with getting volunteers and donations? 

It went well, we had some donations come in. Polk County gave us a sizable grant to help with the food supply, which was really instrumental. Volunteers, we definitely had folks step up. And since then, because we got quite a bit of food from grocery stores, doing [a] buy a pack, buy this sack of groceries, and so then we have to sort all that food, and we use volunteers to do that. And so that’s been really, really helpful.

Have there been any after effects of the government shutdown and the interruption of SNAP benefits? There was a big rush of people, correct?

And then it got quiet, because people then got their November and December benefits. So December was pretty mellow. And then January, we’ve seen [it] ramp back up, not to the government-shutdown levels, but the general increase in need that we’re seeing year over year.

Why do you think that’s happening? 

I think it’s about wages, the cost of housing, the cost of child care. If you have limited resources, you generally pay the bills that come in the mail, whether that’s paper, mail or email, first. So I pay my rent, I pay my utility and food is almost looked at as discretionary, like whatever I have left, I spend on food, because it’s not a bill that comes in the mail. So it’s hard.

What does DMARC most need from the community right now?

Donations are always helpful, in part because we can source food so well compared to someone doing a food drive and buying food retail. And so even if you are a group that really feels attached to a food drive, maybe do a can of soup and rubber-band a $1 bill around it. I think on volunteers, what we at DMARC-Ket really need is regular volunteers that can consistently show up every week or every month. So someone that either has VTO through their employer or is retired, or is a part-time worker, whatever the case may be, maybe a stay-at-home parent whose kids are now school-aged and have some hours in the middle of the day, whatever the situation is, to be able to come and say, ‘I’m a Tuesday person, and every Tuesday from 10 to 12 I can be here.’ That kind of regularity is really helpful for nonprofits.

One new requirement is SNAP recipients in Iowa can’t buy food that’s under the sales tax. What is your reaction to that?

If our shared goal is we want all Iowans to be able to eat enough nutritious food to lead a healthy and productive life, I would say that restricting specific categories of food as the first strategy or tactic may not be the most effective. And I’ll be really curious to see how the evaluation goes on the other side of the pilot. I think that, like most policy, when you talk about something really broadly, which is kind of the way that elected officials think about things because they’re not experts on everything and they’re not in the weeds on things, things make great sense, and they seem really clear. From 30,000 feet, everything is really clear and differentiated, and the closer you get to the ground, the more pixelated it becomes. An example of that would be the headline is, ‘No more soda and candy with SNAP.’ That seems really clear and really common sense, right? For most people, they would be like, ‘Yeah, that makes sense. I can get behind that.’ But how it plays out on the ground is a completely different thing. The nuances are incredible, and there is, to date, no comprehensive list of what products are not eligible for SNAP any longer. Folks are being pointed to the tax code of Iowa, and again, sometimes things are more clear cut than other times. There’s just so many nuances to this policy.

What impact is this having on people?

I can tell you that I went to a retailer over the weekend to buy those products. This is a major retailer, not an independent grocery store or a small mom-and-pop store. There were no tags on the shelves that said ‘SNAP-eligible,’ or anything that demarcated for me what I could buy or not buy. I asked the fellow at the bakery when I got something out of the case. He did not know. He was like, ‘Yeah, I know there’s restrictions, but I don’t know what they are.’ I went to the cashier, I said, ‘So I want to know, out of what I’m buying, what’s eligible and what isn’t?’ and he said, ‘OK, I’ll ring it up, you run your card, and then it’ll give you a balance of what’s not eligible.’ And I said, ‘Well, I want to know ahead of time.’ The cashier has no idea what is eligible or not. The only thing that you can do as a consumer is make your best guess of what you think might be eligible, go through the line and then have to have them give back stuff and take it off of your total. But again, if there’s no demarcation of what is eligible, I don’t even know how you would know what to give back. 

I’m not trying to point fingers at anybody. I’m just saying that this is a giant project that needed a lot more runway and and then I go back to again, given the administrative burden of this, given that cost, it doesn’t cost the state money, but it sure costs the retailer money to implement this, to train people to change their point of sale systems. Given all of that, is this the best use of time and money to obtain this goal about healthy food? That’s my question. Maybe yes, maybe no. March is when the grace period ends. 

Looking to the future for DMARC, what are some of your goals? What are some things that you need?

I have spent this time really doing deep listening and learning about what people need, both internally and externally —our food pantry network, the people we seek to serve, the staff – like really getting a good handle on that. I’m definitely a believer in getting information and input from people with direct experience. To that end, we have started an advisory council of people who access pantry services. Our first meeting will be later this month, and it’ll be a monthly gathering to really dig into not just how is the pantry doing, but how are you doing, and what supports you, getting to some of those root causes, and really learning in a deeper way about what’s going on related to hunger.

And will that inform your goals for the future?

I’m also big on doing surveys. I think that nonprofits often are in a position where they’re scrambling and reactive, and we do the best we can with limited resources. And I think, from a customer viewpoint, we need to act more like a for-profit. What I mean is if I want to buy something and I go to a store and they don’t have the right product at the right price, and they’re not open the right hours, they lose my business. There is not that same dynamic in the nonprofit sector. There aren’t those same market demands, so how do we flip that and give more power and more agency to the people that are accessing our services. Instead of just saying, ‘Well, we do this because that’s the way we’ve always done it.’ Does it actually meet the need?