2021 GusNIP Awardees Announced

December 7, 2021
Patrick Jones-Project Assistant

For retailers interested in offering nutrition incentive programs to their customers, right now is the perfect time to get involved.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) yesterday announced the 2021 Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP) Award recipients. More than $34 million was awarded to 39 grantees in 24 states.

The awardees will be operating both nutrition incentive and produce prescription programs, which serve to increase healthy food access by helping low-income shoppers afford more fruits and vegetables.

The breakdown of the 39 projects is as follows:

  • 18 nutrition incentive projects ($22,661,314)
  • 11 nutrition incentive supplemental funding grants ($7,410,991) to further support existing projects
  • 10 produce prescription projects ($4,526,400)

With this announcement, awardees will be looking for retail partners to help them successfully execute on their awards and begin offering discounted or free fruits and vegetables to their customers. Interested retailers should work to ensure that they are “incentive ready” and reach out to the National Grocers Association Technical Assistance Center (NGAF TA Center) team at incentives@nationalgrocers.org to express desire.

The NGAF TA Center works in conjunction with the Nutrition Incentive Hub as the grocer’s resource for incentive programs. Amongst other responsibilities, the Center works to establish successful partnerships between grantees and grocers and support program implementation. We look forward to helping you get an incentive program off the ground and running in the next few months.

*The NGAF TA Center addresses the challenges grocers and supermarket operators face in establishing nutrition incentive programs and is a proud partner of the Nutrition Incentive Hub. The Nutrition Incentive Hub, funded through a cooperative agreement from the United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, is a new resource that provides training, technical assistance, reporting, and evaluation for those working to launch or expand SNAP incentives or produce prescription programs. The Nutrition Incentive Hub is led by Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition in partnership with Fair Food Network along with a coalition of evaluators, researchers, practitioners, and grocery and farmers market experts from across the country dedicated to strengthening and uniting the best thinking in the field to increase access to affordable, healthy food to those who need it most.