At the start of 2026, AdkAction changed how the Fair Food Card project reaches families across the North Country. Instead of enrolling participants directly, we partner with Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) offices in Clinton, Essex, Hamilton, Warren, Franklin, and St. Lawrence Counties to support low-income families of young children. WIC offices identify eligible households, and AdkAction provides them with a card preloaded with $100 a month to spend locally on groceries at more than 20 approved farms, farmers markets, and retailers.

Fair Food began in 2021 as a short-term pilot testing whether a simple, direct benefit could improve access to local food for families who needed it most. Every AdkAction project follows the same pathway: we listen first, test a solution, watch the results, and refine before committing further. The WIC partnership is that refinement in action. It’s built directly on what we learned in the project’s early years, and it’s designed to put the card in the hands of families already engaged in nutrition support.

Six months in, that refinement is paying off.

The numbers so far

Ninety-eight households enrolled as this year’s cohort on January 1. Six months of data point to two clear conclusions.

First: when participants use their card, they use nearly all of it. For example, active cardholders used 98 cents for every dollar loaded on the card in June. That’s a strong signal the benefit is valued and being put to full use.

Second: not every enrolled participant uses their card each month, and participation rates vary widely by county. That gap, not the spending rate, is the real open question. AdkAction is working with WIC offices now to understand why some participants use their card consistently and others don’t, so we can adjust the model to close that gap.

Because full utilization was so consistent, we acted on it. As of July, the monthly amount loaded onto each card was increased through the end of the year.

June by the numbers

• Clinton County: 11 of 15 participants (73%) used their card, spending $992.70. Active users averaged 90% of their benefit.
• Essex County: 19 of 30 participants (63%) used their card, spending $1,859.58. Active users averaged 98% of their benefit, a strong rebound after two slower months.
• Franklin & St. Lawrence Counties: 3 of 7 participants used their card, spending $274. Active users averaged 91% of their benefit.
• Hamilton County: 17 of 30 participants (57%) used their card, spending $1,769.40. Every active participant spent 100% of their benefit.
• Warren County: 6 of 15 participants (40%) used their card, spending $600. Every active participant spent 100% of their benefit.

Hamilton and Warren Counties show the pattern at its clearest: every single active participant spent 100% of their benefit, even as overall participation in each county stayed under 60%. High spending, uneven use, the same story playing out at the county level.

What families are telling us

When we told participants about the July increase, one shared this with us:

“I wanted to thank you so much for this incredible opportunity to be a part of this program. It has already been a huge huge blessing! These extra funds will be so helpful as we are expecting another baby and is just another way we are being provided for. Thank you seriously doesn’t even come close to how grateful my family is for this!”

That’s exactly the kind of result we look for at this stage of a pilot: real evidence that a tested adjustment is landing with the people it’s meant to help.

Working through the bumps

Coordinating a benefit like this across six counties, multiple WIC offices, and more than 20 vendors is genuinely complex work, the kind of logistics larger organizations and government agencies wrestle with too. As a small organization, taking this on and running it well is no small thing. This spring, a participating vendor switched point-of-sale systems and was accidentally dropped from the approved vendor network, temporarily affecting card acceptance. We caught it and fixed it. In May, 17 Hamilton County cards expired and needed immediate replacement. Catching problems like these quickly and fixing them without disrupting families is exactly the kind of responsiveness this partnership model is built to support.

What we’re learning

Six months of data point to a few fundamental truths: Need remains high across the North Country. Rural grocery access is a real barrier, families here often live long distances from the nearest store, but the high spend rate shows that distance isn’t insurmountable once a family has the benefit in hand. Getting more households to that point of access is the work still ahead. And if there’s a broader bet worth making here, it’s this: digital benefit cards are the future of private food assistance.

AdkAction is continuing to work with WIC offices and our vendor network to reach more families and support participants through any card issues quickly. We’re also looking ahead. This year’s WIC partnership is more than a way to run our project better today; it’s building a framework we can document, refine, and share. As we learn what works, we’re shaping the model into a blueprint other rural communities, ones facing the same food access gaps and the same thin administrative capacity, can adapt for themselves. We look forward to sharing what this year’s partnership teaches us and how it shapes the project going into next year.

The Fair Food Card project is supported by a grant from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation.