Campaign for Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) Funding

Winter 2026

Please RSVP here for the next HIP Lobby Day at the State House: March 26, 2026!

The Campaign for HIP Funding Coalition

The Campaign coalition includes more than 300 farmers, farmers markets, nonprofit agricultural and food system organizations and businesses, faith institutions, healthcare institutions, individuals with lived experience with food insecurity, and more. The Campaign coalition holds regular, virtual meetings to collectively advocate to lawmakers and to keep each other updated about the program’s on the ground operation. See the members of the Campaign here!

Campaign highlights

Thank you to the hundreds of Campaign members who have advocated for the program over many years.

Together, we have successfully advocated for $111.6 million for the program since 2017:

• $1.35 million in funding for the program in the FY18 budget
• $2.15 million in a FY18 supplemental budget
• $4 million in the FY19 budget
• $6.5 million in the FY20 budget
• $2 million in a FY20 supplemental budget
• $5 million in CARES Act funding
• $13 million in the FY21budget
• $13 million in the FY22 budget
• $12 million in the FY23 budget, plus a commitment to carry forward $12 million of unspent funds from previous years.
• $5 million in the FY24 budget, plus a commitment to carry forward $8.8 million of unspent funds from previous years.
• $5.1 in a FY24 supplemental budget
• $15 million in the FY25 budget, plus a commitment to carry forward less than $1 million of unspent funds from previous years.
• $7.5 million in a FY25 supplemental budget, which is being carried forward into FY26.
• $20 million in the FY26 budget, plus a commitment to carry forward approximately $1 million of unspent funds from the previous fiscal year.

In addition to our budgetary success, the Campaign has successfully advocated:

• To make the HIP program more equitable; in 2020 we succeeded in efforts to make the program more equitable through advocacy when the Department of Transitional Assistance opened the program up to new farmers. 39 farmer vendors were authorized to fill geographic gaps in program coverage, many of them farmers of color committed to serving their communities with limited access to fresh healthy produce.
• For year-round funding; in 2020 the legislature passed and the governor signed a law making the program year-round, as a way of avoiding the annual suspensions that have undercut the program’s effectiveness.
• 100 new vendors were also added in 2022, to continue to make the program more accessible and equitable, especially for African American SNAP recipients and SNAP recipients with a disability, who had faced inequitably low access prior.
• The Campaign built significant support in the Massachusetts legislature. HIP is one of the top priorities of the Legislature’s bicameral and bipartisan Food System Caucus, which has more than 145 members and counting. Thank you to our legislative champions Representative Hannah Kane, Representative Mindy Domb, Senator Jo Comerford, and former Senator Anne Gobi.
• The Campaign has also built strong support among Massachusetts farmers, with more than 70 signing on to this April 2025 letter to the editor of the Boston Globe in opposition to the cut to HIP benefits, which deeply impacted their business.

We especially want to thank the Campaign Steering Committee; Leran Minc and Selecca Bulgar-Medina of Project Bread, Susan Murray of SEMAP, Kelly Coleman of CISA, Laura Sylvester of the Food Bank of Western Mass, Laura Smith of Lane Gardens and Oakdale Farms, Vickey Siggers of Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition, Lesley Melendez of Groundwork Lawrence, Enrique Vargas of Mill City Grows, Aiesha Washington of Action for Boston Community Development, and Liz O’Gilvie of the Springfield Food Policy Council and Gardening the Community, for their work strategizing and guiding our advocacy.

For more information about the campaign, please contact Becca Miller.