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SNAP Strategy Funder Working Group: Advocacy Opportunities
November 14, 2025 @ 9:00 am – 10:00 am PST
Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders and Grantmakers In Health are forming a funder Working Group for a coordinated, strategic response to the SNAP cuts in H.R. 1. The Working Group comes as an actionable response to insights shared by field leaders in a SNAP-focused webinar earlier in October.
Recognizing the far-reaching implications of SNAP for food security, health, and economic equity, this Working Group will serve as an information hub and a strategic coordination space, designed to help funders act quickly, effectively, and in alignment with one another. We will organize three Working Group meetings to start and then assess next steps.
The first call will focus on opportunities for funders to support and engage in policy advocacy to protect SNAP on a federal and state level. In addition to connecting with peers, funders will hear from Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, who will provide a policy landscape update from D.C., and Joey Hentzler, Program Manager at MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, who will share about MAZON’s policy engagement and rapid response funding.
Upcoming Working Group Calls will focus on opportunities to support training and technical assistance and strategic communications.
This Working Group is open to all funders currently responding to or actively considering a response to SNAP cuts. Funders do not need to be members of SAFSF or GIH – if you are wrestling with the impact of SNAP cuts for your communities, this space is for you. Please register below.
Intelligence Gathering with Experts
Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America
Joel Berg is CEO of Hunger Free America, a nationwide anti-hunger 501c3 advocacy and direct service organization. He is also an internationally-recognized book author, researcher, media spokesperson, and thought leader in the fields of domestic hunger, food systems, poverty, national service, and American politics.
According to The Nation magazine, under Joel’s direction, the group “grew in one of the leading direct service and advocacy organizations on hunger and poverty” in the country. He currently oversees work of more than 50 diverse employees and a 44-person, nationwide, AmeriCorps VISTA team.
He has appeared on Morning Joe, All In with Chris Hayes, NBC Nightly News, The Beat with Ari Melber, NPR, CNN, Marketplace, Fox News, PBS Newshour, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Hardball, PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton, and the Kudlow Report. He’s also been quoted in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Daily News, New York Post, The Guardian, El Diario, BET.com, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal.
Joel authored two books: All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?, and America We Need to Talk: a Self Help Book for the Nation, which Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison called “important and entertaining.” Joel previously served for eight years in the Clinton Administration in senior executive service positions at including USDA, including Coordinator of Community Food Security.
From 1989 to 1993, he served as a policy analyst for the Progressive Policy Institute and as a domestic policy staff member for then President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition team. He holds a BA from Columbia University
Joey Hentzler, Program Manager at Mazon
Joey Hentzler is the Program Manager for MAZON. He leads and implements the organization’s grantmaking strategy and works to support state grantee partners to build their advocacy capacity and achieve their anti-hunger policy goals. He holds two undergraduate degrees from the University of Kansas in Political Science and Latin American Studies. Joey started political organizing with fellow college students in 2011 to push back against radical cuts to public education and the social safety net in Kansas. Most recently, he helped lead grassroots campaigns in his hometown to stop county jail expansion and to achieve comprehensive Sanctuary City ordinance. Before joining MAZON, Joey served as Director of Advocacy at Kansas Appleseed leading state-level advocacy campaigns focused on food safety net, foster care, and juvenile justice reform. He worked with MAZON during the 2018 Farm Bill fight to successfully protect SNAP by pressuring Kansas’s key Congressional leaders on agriculture and food policy. Throughout his career in his beloved Kansas, the state motto has become a mantra for Joey: Ad astra per aspera.
