Banks typically avoid seeming political in their giving. But that changed when food aid became a political football. iStock photo

When this fall’s government shutdown cut off federal food assistance and government workers’ pay, local financial institutions stepped up to try and bridge the gap, regardless of the risk of upsetting customers.

The shutdown lasted from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, as Democrats in Congress tried to force their Republican colleagues to extend health insurance subsidies for people who buy insurance on Affordable Care Act exchanges. Their tactic: keeping Congress from passing a budget for the 2026 fiscal year.

With many government employees furloughed, neither they nor their peers who were deemed essential workers received pay, along with members of the military.

And the Trump administration refused to use an emergency fund associated with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, colloquially called “food stamps,” to make food aid payments, arguing the fund was only for severe storms.

It was an unprecedented step never taken by administrations of either party during previous shutdowns, and widely interpreted as an attempt to pressure Democratic lawmakers into giving in.

To make matters worse, the shutdown occurred just when SNAP eligibility requirements were changing.

“Those folks who may have been eligible were no longer finding themselves eligible,” Bristol County Savings Bank Senior Vice President Jeff Bradley said. “Maybe there [also were] federal workers that were on SNAP benefits, but now did not have a paycheck coming in.”

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Interest-Free Loans, Food Pantry Gifts

As the shutdown dragged on, banks and credit unions activated interest-free loan products for federal employees and military members. Hyannis-based Cape and Coast Bank even offered borrowers with government jobs the ability to skip a payment on mortgages, while Pittsfield’s Greylock Federal Credit Union offered government employees loan deferments on various products.

“Just because the government’s back open, and people received their funds and their food, they still had to make up for the time that wasn’t coming through, [for] those weeks that they really were struggling and panicking,” Greylock Federal Credit Union Vice President Cindy Shogry-Raimer said. A loan deferment “still keeps them current, keeps their credit where it should be, and then gives them a chance to breathe and get caught up and then they can get back on track.”

When SNAP payments ran out Nov. 1, and with little end to the shutdown in sight, Massachusetts lenders swung into action with gifts to food banks struggling to fill the gap left by the missing federal poverty aid.

The suspension of federal food aid during the Oct. 1-Nov. 12 government shutdown affected over 1 million Massachusetts residents, the Healey administration said. iStock photo

The Trump administration’s move affected around $240 million in assistance to over 1 million people in Massachusetts, including children, Gov. Maura Healey’s office said at the time. The scale of the shortfall was too big for the state to cover, Healey said, leaving many SNAP recipients to turn to local food pantries.

Ware-based Country Bank donated $160,000 to support food insecurity programs across Central and Western Massachusetts. Taunton-based Bristol County Savings Bank, through its foundation, awarded grants totaling $100,000 to four nonprofit organizations in response to the food crisis. Fall River-based BankFive gave $10,000 to 10 local food pantries across Southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod, and Southern Rhode Island.

Holyoke-based PeoplesBank donated $100,000 to local organizations as employees started asking for ways to help their neighbors.

“It came from our employees who sort of started to say, ‘This is going on, can’t we do something?’ Which is kind of rare that there’s sort of a groundswell behind something specific,” PeoplesBank Senior Vice President of Corporate Responsibility and Sponsorships Matthew Bannister said. “In hindsight, we know how things turned out, but at the time, we didn’t know how things would turn out at all.”

Bankers Were Primed to Act

Both PeoplesBank and Bristol County Savings made their gifts outside of their typical philanthropic budgets. For comparison, PeoplesBank’s donations totaled $1.8 million in Massachusetts and Connecticut over the past year. Bristol County Savings Bank’s foundation awarded $2.9 million to various organizations in 2024.

“We actually had some dollars already put aside to be able to do something sort of special and off-cycle,” Bristol County Savings’ Bradley said. “So, when this came about, we talked to our charitable foundation board, and they voted to approve the use of those dollars to address this issue.”

For community banks, community involvement is often part of their DNA. In effect, bankers interviewed for this story said, it primed their minds to spring into action when the shutdown hit, and then when SNAP benefits were suspended Nov. 1.

“It’s not like we’re just writing checks,” Country Bank Chief Marketing and Community Relations Officer Shelley Regin said. “We’re watching it in action. It’s just who we are. Our tagline is ‘Made to make a difference,’ and I think that we look for every opportunity to live and embody that tagline and what we stand for.”

While banks compete for customers and deposits, supporting the community is a collaborative effort, Bradley said, and that showed in how banks and credit unions responded to the SNAP cut crisis.

“Community banks are so critical to the local community and the local economy and supporting our local neighborhoods,” he said. “We’re lucky in this region of Massachusetts to have a number of great community banks, and we all try to lead by example. We may compete on rates and deposits and loans but when it comes to supporting the community, there is really a collaborative effort across the board.”

Unidentified Bristol County Savings Bank employees pose for a photo with some of the items collected in a food drive to benefit Our Daily Bread Taunton during the Oct. 1-Nov. 12 federal government shutdown. Photo courtesy of Bristol County Savings Bank

Polarized Politics No Deterrent

In today’s hyper-polarized climate, almost any action is at risk of seeming political – something banks typically avoid. But in trying to help provide the food aid the Trump administration withheld as an attempt to pressure Democratic politicians into ending the shutdown, bankers interviewed for this story said the potential of facing a backlash from customers never crossed their minds.

“I don’t think we looked at it as a political play,” Regin said. “I think we looked at it as a humanitarian play, and we don’t want people going hungry regardless of what’s going on in the political environment.”

At Bristol County Savings, staffers said they were driven by the bank’s mutual mission. Giving back is part of the bank’s structure, Bradley said, as the bank serves the community rather than shareholders.

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“Politics aside, when our neighbors and our community are hungry, we can’t just sit aside and not react and try to help where we can,” he said. “We understand that it wasn’t just necessarily SNAP benefits, but this was also federal workers who were going without pay, and these folks had to make decisions on how they could meet their bills and put food on the table, et cetera. We didn’t look at the politics of this. We looked at the fact that our neighbors were hungry and struggling to put food on the table for their families.”

PeoplesBank tries to take a neutral approach to issues, the bank’s Bannister said, but executives think food insecurity transcends the political divide.

“For every customer on this side of the political divide, you’ve got another customer on that side of the political divide,” he said. “So, we try to give to issues that are clear and obvious, regardless of the politics behind it. Hunger is an issue that we need to take care of, because it’s not a political issue – even though it is a political issue because we have more food than we need in America, and yet it’s not getting distributed equally. Somewhere within that kernel is not an easy problem, but a problem that could be solved.”