Payments

CORE using prepaid cards to disburse funding

Image courtesy of iStock

March 12, 2021

In hopes of helping restaurant employees struggling to survive the coronavirus pandemic, the nonprofit, Children of Restaurant Employees, has been collecting donations over the past year. And its latest partnership with the global payments provider, Blackhawk Network, has made it even easier for those in need to receive funding.

"The emergence of COVID-19 resulted in an inbound surge of new applicants from all over the country needing support for their families due to sickness or medical orders to quarantine," Sheila Bennett, executive director of CORE, said in the release. "We went from five applications in a week to upwards of 10 per day and had to pivot our program very quickly. Thanks to Blackhawk's unique prepaid card fulfillment capabilities, we ramped up for this unprecedented demand in record time, avoiding unnecessary disbursement delays typically seen with more traditional options like store bought gift cards."

The agency's grant footprint is in all 50 states, and more than 540 families have received grants totaling nearly $1.5 million. Nearly 50% of those disbursements came via prepaid cards.

"We are committed to helping nonprofits like CORE deliver urgently needed assistance to the many individuals and families that have been so dramatically impacted by the pandemic — including those in the food and beverage industry," Jeff Haughton, senior vice president, incentives, corporate development & strategy, Blackhawk Network, said in the release. "Our cards are a flexible and remarkably easy solution for nonprofits and government agencies because they are much faster to issue and deliver than paper checks, while providing recipients with convenient solutions to make purchases in store or online. They also provide people who are unbanked or underbanked access to a resource they can use whenever and wherever they need to."

Since March 2020, Blackhawk has delivered more than $250 million prepaid gift cards on behalf of nonprofits and government agencies for people impacted by COVID-19 in the U.S., U.K. and Australia.