How U.S. Hunger connects leaders and data using Amazon Quick

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Artificial Intelligence
How U.S. Hunger connects leaders and data using Amazon Quick
For U.S. Hunger, feeding families takes more than delivering food to them. It takes understanding the people behind each request, the pressures they face, and the business that makes the mission possible. That means connecting information across the organization. Its mission is to feed families today and unite them to a healthier tomorrow.
U.S. Hunger reports delivering more than 250 million meals. Its work has reached 59 countries historically and is now concentrated primarily in the United States. The organization reports approximately 500 percent growth over four years, compared with only 15–20 percent headcount growth. For a lean team at that scale, every hour and every decision matters.
With Amazon Quick, U.S. Hunger can explore organizational data directly, colleagues can work from shared definitions, and leaders can examine financial information alongside the circumstances families report. U.S. Hunger’s experience shows how those capabilities fit into the daily work of a lean nonprofit.
From banking to feeding families
Rick Whitted spent 30 years in banking before making the leap to lead U.S. Hunger. His connection to food insecurity, however, began long before that career change.
When Rick and his wife were in their mid-twenties, he left his career to start a business. They lost everything. Even though he went to work every day, they relied on help from family to get by. He remembers coming home to find a pantry box on the table, left by aunts or grandparents. Seeing that box broke him.
More than 20 years later, when the board chair asked him to consider leading U.S. Hunger, his wife reminded him of those days, when their own family needed help putting food on the table. To her, leading U.S. Hunger was a chance to help families going through what they had experienced themselves. Rick cried, called the chair back, and accepted.
        “The families we serve today, their stories are my story.”
— Rick Whitted, President and CEO, U.S. Hunger
More than six years into the role, that personal connection remains at the heart of Rick’s leadership.
From data requests to direct exploration
U.S. Hunger first learned about Quick through an AWS Social Entrepreneur Accelerator event led by Kat Esser. Rick saw an opportunity to explore the organization’s data directly, following questions as they arose without asking the technology team for a new data pull each time.
Chief technology officer (CTO) Ezekiel Brooks helped make that possible by giving Rick access to core datasets from Full Cart, U.S. Hunger’s food-assistance program. Full Cart delivers donor-funded food directly to households in need. Quick gave Rick room to explore the information at his own pace and ask follow-up questions. The organization’s data became his sandbox.
The data comes from Impact Manager, U.S. Hunger’s proprietary cloud-based data platform supporting its food-assistance work. Quick pulls data from SQL Server into its in-memory engine, SPICE, through scheduled refresh jobs at 2 AM ET each night. The technology team and a colleague working with research data prepare the datasets and provide definitions to help Rick interpret the information.
Direct exploration was the starting point, but the moment when everything clicked came with a different discovery: Quick Spaces.
The moment Quick became an enterprise tool
For Rick, Spaces changed the role Quick could play in the organization. A Space gives colleagues a shared place to work with documents, definitions, and analyses relevant to a particular area of the business.
That matters when leaders need to understand one another’s work and make decisions together. Shared definitions of key performance indicators (KPIs) help them agree on what a measure means. Financial documents and planning tools provide context for discussions about the organization’s resources. Rick sees this as his a-ha moment: using Quick to help the leadership team run the organization together.
        “Quick provides a live connection to how leadership thinks through problems. I can pick up where our CEO left off in a financial model or see how he’s framing a KPI, without scheduling another meeting.”
— Sarah Aranguibel, Chief of Staff, U.S. Hunger
The leadership team brings together a shared document of KPIs, developed over more than a year while working across NetSuite, Salesforce, Impact Manager, and its payroll system. The document records definitions, where measures come from, and goals. Rick also uses Quick to develop definitions for client tiers and shares them in the same Space.
        “With all the knowledge and data we have, Space reduces as much noise as possible and narrows my discussion.”
— Rick Whitted, President and CEO, U.S. Hunger
Selecting the Space relevant to a question keeps the conversation focused on the right documents. The financial Space is shared with the CTO, chief operating officer (COO), and finance leadership, giving colleagues access to the tools and business context behind an analysis.
Together, these materials show colleagues what the organization measures and the business logic behind it.
What Quick does for the team, day to day
U.S. Hunger has given 17 colleagues access to Quick across its executive leadership, technology team, Full Cart program, Finance, Compliance, and supporting functions. For its CEO, chat is the primary day-to-day artificial intelligence (AI) workspace, and Spaces is the capability he uses most.
Improving call reporting
Using a Space containing Salesforce call reports, Rick is drafting instructions for the technology team: which measures to include, where the data comes from, and what each measure means. In Quick, he can comment directly on the generated draft and regenerate it with multiple changes incorporated. He can review and refine the instructions alongside the source reports, without spending time moving documents and comments between Word and chat.
After completion, the instructions will guide reporting improvements for the member-engagement team, helping the program’s operational leaders and COO monitor the team’s work.
Research and policy
U.S. Hunger uses Amazon Quick Research to investigate current events, inform communications, and connect policy questions with its survey data. The CEO is also exploring how that data could serve a wider audience. With the version history in Quick Research, he can revisit earlier versions as he refines an investigation.
Understanding food insecurity requires information about who is struggling and the circumstances behind that struggle. In September 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it would end future Household Food Security Reports. With that longstanding reporting series ending, access to other sources of evidence becomes especially important.
U.S. Hunger wants to make the information it collects available beyond its own organization. It envisions a national hunger-data resource where researchers and the public can explore the experiences of families seeking assistance. Alongside that access, the organization plans an enterprise offering that companies can purchase, helping fund its mission.
As Rick puts it, the goal is for “the very data we’re using to help people” to become “the flywheel that feeds the very people we’re trying to help.”
Executive insight and financial planning
The national dashboard brings food insecurity together with income, education, health, and social needs. Filters help leaders examine different populations and use those findings in conversations with prospective partners about why families need help.
For financial planning, Rick uses a Space containing audits, cash-flow information, and board budget views. A debt-service calculator and nonprofit financial-health worksheet help him share his banking experience with the COO. The financial documents provide context for drafting audit footnotes.
With over a decade of financial documents available in the Space, Rick can ask Quick to compare patterns over time and explore questions about current operations. His familiarity with the source material helps him check the answers and challenge conclusions the evidence doesn’t support.
Together, these workflows help Rick use Quick to explore both sides of the organization’s mission: understanding the families who need support and planning the finances that help U.S. Hunger provide it.
Technology as social impact
Putting food in an empty pantry meets an immediate need. Understanding what keeps that pantry empty means looking at the circumstances inside the home and the pressures around it, including income, housing, employment, and health.
U.S. Hunger combines structured survey responses with narrative testimony collected since 2020. Its records include more than 300,000 applicants. Behind those records are lives, lived experiences, and families.
Affordability is a central theme. Among respondents to the questions shown, 90.1 percent say they sometimes or often can’t afford balanced meals. Separately, 97 percent report difficulty paying for basics such as food, housing, medical care, and heating.
        “In reality, it’s about affordability.”
— Rick Whitted, President and CEO, U.S. Hunger
The team supplies business definitions alongside the data. U.S. Hunger uses classification codes known as Z codes to categorize reported social and economic circumstances, including food insecurity, low income, and housing difficulties. Together, these views form what Rick calls “an EKG reading on hunger.”
Food insecurity is the most frequently recorded Z code in this view, followed by low income. The other leading categories concern housing or financial circumstances. Leaders can examine the pressures accompanying requests for food, rather than looking at food needs in isolation.
Another view shows 44.7 percent of all applicants reporting illness and 79.1 percent enrolled in health insurance. In the employment view, 64.4 percent say they don’t need or want help finding or keeping work.
These findings show why requests for food assistance need to be understood alongside families’ wider circumstances. Having health insurance doesn’t necessarily remove financial pressure, and help finding work is not what every applicant is seeking.
U.S. Hunger has been working to organize its data to better understand the pressures families face. Quick helps the team visualize patterns in that information. Rick describes one pattern as an early warning signal: periodic difficulty obtaining enough food, before families reach daily or weekly food insecurity.
        “We were on that journey, but [Quick] really helped us visualize that and lay that out much faster.”
— Rick Whitted, President and CEO, U.S. Hunger
For Rick, this is where technology becomes a form of social impact. Quick helps U.S. Hunger look past a request for groceries to the pressures behind it. Feeding a family meets today’s need. Understanding those pressures is part of helping that family toward a healthier tomorrow.
A message to other nonprofits
        “501C is a tax designation. You’re still a corporation, which means you’re a business. And if you’re a business not embracing technology, you will get left behind – or your mission will cost you more.”
— Rick Whitted, President and CEO, U.S. Hunger
A nonprofit still has a business to run. Its leaders need to understand cash flow, agree on what performance measures mean, and connect operational decisions to their mission. U.S. Hunger uses Quick to bring that work together. Financial documents give Rick context for planning. Shared KPI definitions give colleagues a common reference. Dashboards help leaders examine the circumstances behind requests for food.
Getting started didn’t require every system to be connected. Historical financial documents and questions Rick already needed to answer gave him a practical starting point. Other nonprofits can begin with a question t

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