Background

When the City of San Francisco faced an unprecedented disruption to SNAP benefits in late 2025 due to the government shutdown, the city found itself at the edge of crisis. Nearly 112,000 residents — families, seniors, workers, and low-income individuals — were suddenly at risk of losing access to the food assistance they depend on every month.

Instead of allowing a freeze in federal benefits to become a food insecurity disaster, San Francisco mobilized a response within days. The City tapped into an emergency reserve fund and garnered support from key partners such as a local foundation, Crankstart, and the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, and leveraged GiveCard’s payments infrastructure to launch one of the fastest and largest assistance programs in history.

GiveCard’s platform was the backbone of this program — enabling the City to authenticate recipients, securely distribute the benefit via prepaid debit cards, and ensure funds reached recipients immediately. This program became a model for how governments can rapidly distribute aid at scale, securely, and with dignity.

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How a Federal SNAP Freeze Put San Francisco Families at Risk

A budget stalemate in the federal administration caused the government to shut down, causing a disruption in SNAP and the monthly benefit that nearly 42 million Americans rely on to put food on the table. For the first time in program history, local governments were informed that November SNAP benefits would not be disbursed on schedule due to the shutdown.

The City of San Francisco immediately began planning for the potential downstream impact- that the roughly $20 million in CalFresh (California’s version of SNAP) benefits that typically arrived at the beginning of the month would NOT come in November- families would be left without the ability to purchase groceries, feed their families, or maintain access to essential nutrition.

With mere days to solve this challenge, the City partnered with GiveCard, who provided them the fully developed card issuing and disbursements platform needed to distribute tens of thousands of cards a day, while keeping the experience fraud-resistant and recipient-friendly.

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Key Partners

The success of San Francisco’s emergency grocery benefit program was not the result of one organization alone, but a coordinated effort across public and private partners- government agencies, philanthropy, food banks, community-based organizations, and technology providers. 

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San Francisco Human Services Agency (SFHSA)

SFHSA developed an equity-based program design and served as the operational backbone of the initiative. SFHSA staff executed a mass outreach campaign, sending letters informing tens of thousands of CalFresh households citywide to claim their stopgap benefit. They managed community communications, provided essential on-the-ground support, and trained hundreds of eligibility workers and dozens of community-based organizations on how to help residents redeem and use their cards.

SFHSA’s deep institutional knowledge of their CalFresh population made it possible to:

• reach monolingual residents, seniors, and individuals with disabilities
• prepare CBOs to support activation
• maintain exceptional redemption rates throughout the initiative

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The San Francisco Office of the Mayor

The City’s foresight in setting aside funds for emergency preparedness made this initiative possible. The Mayor’s Office was able to utilize this set-aside specifically for crisis response, allowing San Francisco to act immediately when SNAP benefits froze. And in setting a clear vision for a rapid and compassionate response to this crisis, the Mayor’s Office successfully engaged philanthropic partners to amplify the City’s impact through private investment.

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Crankstart 

As the philanthropic partner in the initiative, Crankstart contributed half of the funds that powered the emergency grocery benefit. Their swift commitment to supporting low-income families, seniors, and individuals at risk of hunger allowed the City to scale its relief efforts quickly. Crankstart’s involvement exemplified the power of public–private partnership in moments of crisis.

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San Francisco-Marin Food Bank (Disbursement Channel Organization)

Designated as the program’s official Disbursement Channel Organization (DCO), the San Francisco–Marin Food Bank served as the hub for the program funding to flow through. Their central location and community reputation made them an ideal anchor partner.

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Community-Based Organizations (CBOs)

Local community-based organizations in the city were essential front-line partners, helping residents navigate activation, verification, and card usage — especially those who would otherwise struggle to access digital or English-only systems.

One standout example was the Chinese Newcomers Service Center, which played a vital role for monolingual Chinese-speaking residents. Their staff helped drive activation rates significantly across Chinatown and surrounding neighborhoods and hosted SFHSA staff for several in-person support events- including a day in which they assisted over 500 residents. Their work ensured that language and technology barriers did not prevent residents from claiming their funds, proving the irreplaceable value of trusted community intermediaries.

Across the city, dozens of CBOs followed suit — volunteering their own teams to help residents activate their cards, supporting unhoused individuals in redeeming their benefits, and ensuring no resident was left behind simply because they lacked digital access or did not speak English.

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GiveCard

GiveCard served as the technological and operational infrastructure that made the entire distribution possible. The benefits were distributed through GiveCard — from generating unique redemption codes, to implementing fraud protections against identity theft, issuing virtual and physical cards, and delivering the millions of dollars in emergency grocery funds to verified recipient cards.

GiveCard also supported residents directly by:

• enabling secure activation through a redemption portal
• ensuring multilingual compatibility across portals, platforms, and cardholder support
• providing accessible card pickup options for residents without phones or email
• maintaining real-time oversight of crucial program data like redemption rates
• coordinating with CBOs and SFHSA to troubleshoot activation issues
• setting spending controls on cards to only work at grocery and food stores

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The Challenge

The overarching challenge with this program involved balancing the implementation of fraud protection against providing ease of access and use for the recipient. Not only that, but the core population was comprised of many elderly, monolingual, and less tech literate individuals, as well as individuals who were disabled or unhoused.

With a program of this magnitude on such short timelines, the City of San Francisco had to solve a series of operational requirements:

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Scale and speed

San Francisco needed to reach tens of thousands of individual beneficiaries — fast. Traditional government systems are not designed to mobilize that volume of new targeted financial relief in a matter of days. The challenge for the City was to stand up a system capable of managing tens of thousands of benefit redemptions for a new program and outreach communications simultaneously in less than a week.

Additionally, the pace of the program meant that all 112,000 eligible recipients would be claiming their benefit at the same time. This meant that the City also needed to think through how to provide on-the-ground support for recipients as they began to claim their cards. 

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Fraud Prevention

To distribute emergency funds responsibly, San Francisco also needed to ensure that each benefit reached the correct household. Yet during crisis response, the risk of fraud — mail theft, phishing attempts, or misuse by unauthorized household members — increases dramatically. The City had to balance speed with the need for authentication measures that protected both recipients and their funds.

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Accessibility for the Core Population

With a significant portion of CalFresh recipients being seniors, individuals with disabilities, or people who did not speak English as their first language, the distribution model had to accommodate both digital and non-digital access pathways, as well as provide multi-lingual capabilities.

Without considerations for accessibility, large segments of the beneficiary population would have been left behind. Combined with the large volume of residents concurrently claiming their cards, one of the other main hurdles to overcome was providing the support that older, disabled, or less tech-literate individuals needed to not only order their card online but also only unlock their card and navigate potential issues that might arise as they started to use their card at stores.

Another challenge involved ensuring recipients received clear communication — program details and expectations had to be conveyed clearly, quickly, and in multiple languages — about the new emergency benefit. Not only did messaging have to explain what was happening, who was eligible, how to claim relief, and what deadlines applied, this information had to be consistent across every recipient touchpoint. Any confusion risked overwhelming call centers, delaying aid, or causing thousands to miss out entirely.

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Engaging Core Community Partners

Coordinating government agencies, philanthropic backers, and local nonprofits added another layer of complexity to the program’s execution. Cities and counties often rely on core community based organizations to play a central role in program operations, yet nonprofits typically lack the infrastructure and bandwidth to manage millions of dollars in relief funding to a caseload that is many magnitudes of their typical caseload capacity.

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Building Trust with Recipients

Finally, trust building with recipients remained a key priority- especially in moments of governmental disruption, trust is fragile. Beneficiaries needed assurance that the City’s emergency benefits were legitimate, safe to use, and not a replacement for their regular CalFresh support. A misstep in transparency, accuracy, or rollout could result in residents losing trust in both this emergency program and future relief efforts or benefit programs.

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The Solution

GiveCard provided the City with an agile, secure, and accessible disbursements platform — one capable of delivering tens of millions of dollars in relief to residents in record time. Here is how GiveCard enabled San Francisco to solve each core challenge.

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Meeting Scale and Speed Requirements

GiveCard’s platform is built for rapid deployment at population scale. GiveCard enabled San Francisco to stand up a complete relief distribution system within a day — with no custom technology build, and no operational burden. The platform, once set up, was able to handle tens of thousands of concurrent redemptions seamlessly, ensuring residents received their benefits quickly and reliably. 

GiveCard was also able to leverage SFHSA’s broad network of eligibility workers to mobilize support both on the HSA side as well as from key local CBOs, to handle the large wave of activation requests coming in at launch. Within 48 hours, SFHSA provided training to over 400 eligibility workers, to allow them to troubleshoot issues for recipients, as well as help them activate cards over the phone and in person.

GiveCard developed ground-support tools specifically for agency and CBO workers, in order to enable them to provide support to residents trying to activate their cards. This was a massive technology and data security win- it allowed SFHSA to help clients efficiently, while keeping sensitive information like client data and access codes secure. This collaborative effort in building efficient and shareable systems allowed us to effectively shoulder the support burden within a matter of days.

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Providing Plug-and-Play Disbursements 

For San Francisco, GiveCard supplied a turnkey disbursements architecture necessary to deliver temporary grocery relief: fund delivery onto cards, physical and virtual card issuance mechanisms, card activation flows, and usage controls. This allowed the City to deploy a full stopgap benefits system within a matter of days, and begin issuing cards with funds able to immediately be used for groceries once recipients received them.

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Ensuring Data Integrity, Security, and Fraud Mitigation

GiveCard’s platform incorporates multiple layers of fraud prevention designed for emergency aid environments. By enabling the City to leverage unique activation codes among other security measures, GiveCard helped ensure that benefits reached the correct recipient. These lightweight but powerful verification steps protected both residents and program dollars, reducing vulnerabilities such as mail theft and phishing attacks.

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Serving Residents With Diverse Accessibility Needs

GiveCard’s platform is purposely designed to support both digital and non-digital pathways, ensuring that residents without smartphones, email access, or comfort navigating online systems were still able to access their funds. Residents could choose to instantly activate a virtual card or request a physical card mailed directly to them.

Additionally, GiveCard’s multilingual interfaces and multi-language support ensured that the city’s CalFresh population who spoke foreign languages could understand their benefits and redeem them with confidence. Residents were able to access dedicated support via hotline, live chat via the online portal, or via email. SFHSA also engaged GiveCard to establish in-person distribution for a subset of vulnerable clients who may not have reliable access to mail - in effect, people experiencing homelessness and other people who would typically use general delivery as their address of record or a PO box. 

By partnering with CBOs, SFHSA was able to mitigate barriers common to older and monolingual populations. They leveraged San Francisco’s extensive CBO partner network and equipped them with ground support tools, allowing them to help this population activate their card either over the phone, or by going into familiar community-centric locations to do so.

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Supporting Clear, Multilingual, and Urgent Communication

GiveCard collaborated with the City to design a simple, unified redemption workflow that made messaging clear and consistent: one code, one link, one process. Throughout card redemption, delivery, and engagements with support while using their card, recipients were able to access resources that reiterated why they received funds, where they could use it, and how this stopgap related to their typical CalFresh benefit.

This kept information clear and consistent, which reduced confusion, prevented call center overload, and enabled residents to have a clear understanding and reminders of eligibility, deadlines, and next steps without unnecessary friction — regardless of their level of digital literacy.

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Removing Burden on Partners

The City and its philanthropic collaborators were able to move millions of dollars into the community without absorbing the operational burden themselves. The GiveCard system provided financial controls, support, and reporting all in the same system, sparing nonprofits from infrastructure challenges they are not designed to handle. In addition to creating software tools that were leveraged by the agency and its partners to provide additional recipient support, this guiding principle allowed the initiative to operate smoother, faster, and more efficiently.

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Preserving Public Trust During a Moment of Uncertainty

Trust was an essential component of a program launching during a widely publicized crisis, which always attracts bad actors attempting to exploit recipients. GiveCard strengthened public trust by offering a secure, modern, and user-centered experience that ensured residents could easily understand what they were participating in, why they were selected, and what they could expect in the process.

Recipients did not need to share sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers or even addresses since the City did the initial mailing to recipients. They received benefits in a form that felt familiar — a payment card — and could monitor their balance, opt to receive cardholder notifications, request support, or select between physical and digital card types. This transparency in process reassured residents that the emergency benefit was safe, legitimate, and meant to complement — not replace — their stalled CalFresh benefits.

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The City was able to leverage some key technical advantages through using GiveCard:

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1. Rapid Infrastructure Setup

The entire system was set up with minimal manual work required from the City.

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2. Agile Delivery of Solutions

SFHSA was able to deliver on this initiative in part to the nimble technology partner in GiveCard, as we delivered fixes, adjustments, and other improvements as the program was taking shape and the City began to identify key areas that needed more security, more accessibility, or just generally a shift in operational flow.

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3. Instant Access for Users Opting for Digital Cards, but Flexibility to opt for Physical Cards

Once a recipient entered their code and passed verification, GiveCard issued a virtual card instantly, loaded with emergency grocery funds.

Residents without digital access could request a physical card, which GiveCard mailed directly and securely.

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4. Flexible Benefit Amounts

GiveCard’s infrastructure allowed San Francisco to distribute different amounts depending on household size — a crucial component of equitable distribution.

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5. Real-Time Spending Controls

The cards were restricted down to work only at food and grocery stores, mirroring the SNAP-like experience recipients were familiar with.

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6. Full Transparency and Recipient Support

Recipients received clear instructions, multi-language support both automatically and by humans, and accessible customer service. No recipients were required to provide sensitive personal data such as Social Security numbers.

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Why GiveCard Worked So Well for San Francisco — And Why Governments Are Paying Attention

What San Francisco accomplished is remarkable not just because it was fast — but because it was secure, equitable, and replicable.

Using GiveCard as the centralized infrastructure provided several strategic advantages.

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1. Quick Turnaround to Launch

GiveCard’s system was built for crisis response — not retrofitted for it. The platform’s capabilities existed before the SNAP freeze, allowing seamless execution.

Government agencies typically require months, if not years to set up technical capabilities like disbursements. With GiveCard, San Francisco was able to leverage that readiness to avoid a catastrophic delay in benefits to their residents.

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2. Protection against Fraud Vectors

GiveCard’s platform provided built-in fraud mitigation measures and allowed SFHSA to deliver mass benefits with minimal data sharing- this drastically reduced risks of mail theft as well as phishing and impersonation, and gave San Francisco the ability to control for a lot of the fraud vectors that typically arise in large scale, highly publicized programs like this emergency benefit.

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3. Streamlined Verification and Secure Access

GiveCard’s system features household-specific access codes, minimal data requirements, and built-in digital identity validation. These capabilities let residents confirm eligibility quickly and securely without an in-person visit. By removing manual checkpoints, the platform significantly reduces administrative burden and prevents bottlenecks during high-demand periods.

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4. A Dignified Experience for Residents

From GiveCard’s extensive work in running social assistance programs, successful ones always fulfill a couple of key criteria:

• The monetary assistance must be accessible.
• The monetary assistance must preserve the dignity of the recipient.

GiveCard enables both. Unlike paper vouchers, mass food distributions, or long in-person lines, residents could access and use their benefits without social stigma, logistical barriers, or expenditure of their own resources.  It also mirrored what SNAP beneficiaries were already accustomed to using.

For many low-income residents — especially seniors and individuals with disabilities — this dignity matters deeply in their continued engagement and participation with assistance programs. Being able to deliver on, but also adjust to account for gaps in accessibility that might arise from particular marginalized populations is crucial to creating long term sustainable models for benefits and emergency response.

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5. Long Term Scalability

GiveCard’s infrastructure is built to handle millions of card issuances, redemptions, and transactions.

Whether GiveCard were to be used for a small utility assistance program or 100 households or this emergency benefit for 100,000 individuals, the platform operates the same. This is increasingly important as governments prepare for future interruptions and freezes- the system that public agencies utilize should be both scale tested and widely applicable to the various types of programs that they run.

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Why This Matters Beyond San Francisco

This San Francisco CalFresh Stopgap program should not be viewed as an isolated response — it ought to be an exercise in effective mitigation of systemic failures that will undoubtedly appear again in the future.

States, counties and municipalities across the country are engaging with technology partners like GiveCard in blue-sky exploration, to prepare for future lapses in benefits, emergency disaster response efforts, and even just general social assistance programs that have experienced similar practical challenges.

This emergency SNAP benefit initiative set up by SFHSA and GiveCard marks just the beginning of what public agencies can achieve with public private partnerships- not only with funders, but with technology and infrastructure providers like GiveCard- and how quickly emergencies can be responded to effectively, to ensure those most vulnerable to these systematic risks can be properly supported.

Governments have a responsibility to protect public dollars, and it is for good reason that emergency responses must be comprehensively planned for. However, this response is a testament to the fact that even large, bureaucratic agencies do have efficient paths to mobilize and expedite aid when it’s most needed.

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The Growing Risk of Future Benefit Disruptions

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1. Rising Caseloads Without Matching Infrastructure

Most public agencies have outdated payment infrastructures that cannot quickly shift, scale, or deliver alternative benefits if federal systems freeze.

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2. In Emergencies, Both Funding and Distribution can be Bottlenecks to Solve For

While it is already evident to public agencies that the number one priority is to find the funding to respond to emergencies like these, What falls by the wayside is thinking through how to deploy that funding in a fast, secure, and compliant way, to turn those funds into accessible, spendable aid by recipients.

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3. Local Partners Cannot Absorb Systemic Failures

Organizations like Human Services Agencies, food banks, and community foundations remain essential — but they cannot (and should not) take on the operational burden that comes along with these types of large scale outages.

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4. Public Agencies are Engaging in “Blue Sky” Preparation

San Francisco’s success has become a practical example of what continuity planning can look like — a blueprint other governments want to replicate. Public agencies are becoming increasingly wary of what systems they need in place for when emergencies arise that place benefits in jeopardy.

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Why GiveCard Is the Critical Infrastructure for 2026–and Beyond

Governments are increasingly recognizing that aid distribution is a technical problem as much as a policy problem.

GiveCard’s platform directly addresses the technical gap.

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1. Instant Issuance Eliminates Delays

Virtual cards activate immediately. Physical cards can be printed and mailed at scale, or kept in backstock to be distributed in person.

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2. Secure Verification Protects Dollars

Governments must ensure:

• funds reach the right people
• data security is maintained
• fraud risk is minimized

GiveCard’s verification options (redemption code, data match, or layered security) give governments flexibility while ensuring protection.

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3. Compliance and Audit Trails Are Built In

Governments need real-time reporting on:

• who received funds
• how much they spent
• when/where they spent it
• how much funding remains

GiveCard provides clear, exportable audit logs for both funder transparency, and operational auditability.

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4. Accessibility for Residents With Access Barriers

Recipients can:

• receive a virtual card
• request a physical card
• access multilingual support
• get mailed instructions

This ensures equity and accessibility, core requirements for any successful benefit program.

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5. Governments Can Pre-Stage the Infrastructure

Agencies can set up now, so that when an interruption occurs, funds can be mobilized in hours.

This is especially crucial as agencies prepare contingency plans for 2026.

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A Blueprint for National Resilience: The StopGap Model

The StopGap model included in GiveCard’s toolkit outlines the full operational playbook for government partners:

• roles for cities and counties
• roles for foundations
• operational recommendations
• fraud mitigation
• recipient communications playbooks

To access the toolkit, please reach out to the GiveCard team here.

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The GiveCard Disbursement Toolkit

This all-in-one resource makes disbursement systems easy to deploy not just during SNAP freezes, but for:

• response to natural disasters and extreme weather events
• distributing housing, rental, and utility assistance
• managing social assistance programs
• running guaranteed income programs
• facilitating emergency shelter transitions
• responding to public health emergencies

GiveCard’s infrastructure gives public agencies something that has historically been missing: a ready, secure, and humane way to deliver monetary aid on demand.

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For access to more resources, please reach out to the GiveCard team here.

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San Francisco’s Leadership: A Turning Point for Government Aid Distribution

San Francisco demonstrated what happens when government, philanthropy, and private infrastructure collaborate rapidly:

• Residents received aid fast
• Key partners did not shoulder outsized burden
• The City maintained trust and transparency with its residents
• Vulnerable recipients were protected
• Federal uncertainty did not turn into local crisis

This program showed that with the right systems in place, benefits interruptions can be bridged.

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The Road Forward: Building Resilient Aid Systems With GiveCard

Food insecurity should never be collateral damage in administrative or political crises. San Francisco’s innovative, rapid response — powered by GiveCard — proved that with the right infrastructure, communities can remain protected even when federal systems fail.

GiveCard is proud to have played a central role in ensuring that 112,000 San Franciscans continued to access groceries in a moment of profound uncertainty.

As other cities and states prepare for future disruptions — especially the anticipated challenges surrounding January 30, 2026 — GiveCard is ready to provide the technology, security, and expertise needed to distribute aid quickly, safely, and with dignity.

This is the future of emergency benefits delivery: fast, fair, fraud-resistant, and built for real people with real needs.