State & Local Agencies - WIC NSA Study

Appendix C9

Recruitment Letter to County/Local SNAP-TANF Program

Appendix C9

Recruitment Letter to County/Local SNAP/TANF Program

[DATE] Spring 2014

Dear [County/Local] [SNAP/TANF] Director,

As you were recently informed by your State SNAP/TANF agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service has contracted with Altarum Institute (Altarum) and RTI International (RTI) to conduct a comprehensive study of WIC Nutrition Services and Administration (NSA) costs. As part of that study, FNS has asked Altarum to look at how administrative costs are handled in similar federal programs, such as SNAP and TANF We want to thank you for agreeing to participate in this study. This study will (1) collect cost information from state and local WIC agencies to examine the impact of administrative changes on WIC NSA costs since the last WIC Administrative Costs Report in 2000; and (2) establish a comparison between WIC administrative costs and administrative costs in other similar federal programs, such as SNAP and TANF.

Altarum and RTI have received final approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to proceed with the study. We are requesting your participation in the study and thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance in collecting the necessary data. Our plan is to interview officials at the [county/local] that are responsible for major program operations and budgeting. Our goal is to understand what factors contribute to program costs, how these factors may have changed over the past three years, and the extent to which any waivers (or waiver denials) have impacted program costs.

In order to plan our visit, please provide us with the name, title, email address, and phone number of the person at your [county/ local] agency with whom we can coordinate this effort. Working with one staff member to coordinate communications will help to streamline the process for addressing questions and providing information about the study. Please send this staff member’s contact information to [email protected].

This study is very important to USDA FNS and the WIC Program as it will help to explain the full range of valuable services that are performed with NSA funds. We thank you for your participation and look forward to working with you!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Diane Phillips at [email protected] or (202) 603-7142.

Regards,

Loren Bell, Project Director

Institute Fellow

Co-Director, Center for Food Assistance and Nutrition

Altarum Institute