FRAC honors Randy Rosso, Claire Lane for anti-hunger advocacy work

Randy Rosso and Claire Lane were honored in Washington as FRAC used its annual anti-hunger conference to underline a hard truth about food access work: the field moves when data, advocacy and lived experience move together. The awards were announced April 27 during the 2026 National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference, a three-day gathering at the Omni Shoreham Hotel that ran April 26 to 28 and ended with Lobby Day on Capitol Hill.

Rosso received FRAC’s Dr. Raymond Wheeler/Senator Paul Wellstone Anti-Hunger Advocacy Leadership Award. FRAC described him as a data-driven policy advisor to the anti-hunger community. Lane received the inaugural Amidei/Doherty Advocacy Award and was identified as the director of the Anti-Hunger & Nutrition Coalition. FRAC said the honors recognized people who help turn information into action, and president Crystal FitzSimons framed the awards around an ongoing commitment to ending hunger in the United States.

The history behind those awards points to how this work gets done. FRAC traces the Wheeler award to Dr. Raymond Wheeler, whose work in North Carolina and on Capitol Hill helped expand the Food Stamp Program in the late 1960s. The Amidei/Doherty award honors a career advocate focused on federal nutrition programs and poverty-related hunger, with Nancy Amidei held up by FRAC as a defining example of that kind of sustained policy work. In other words, the awards are not just about who speaks loudest. They are about who can move funding, SNAP rules and other nutrition programs far enough to change what families actually experience.

That distinction matters for A Simple Gesture, where policy shifts show up fast in the day-to-day mechanics of food recovery. As of December 2025, the Guilford County organization said it had helped donate more than 8,000,000 child-size meals, with a donated-food value of $13,000,000. It also reported more than 75 pantry partners, more than 3,900 recurring food donors and 200 monthly volunteers. Since 2015, A Simple Gesture has made donating food easy through doorstep pickups, corporate collections and food recovery runs, including surplus food from grocery stores and school cafeterias.

FRAC’s conference drew anti-hunger and anti-poverty advocates, government officials, child advocates and food rescue organizations, which is exactly the mix that shapes the work on the ground. Rosso’s data, Lane’s advocacy and the voices of people living with hunger form the operating model that keeps the field moving. For chapter managers and nonprofit leaders, the message is clear: numbers matter, but only when they are strong enough to change the rules and steady enough to keep pantries supplied.