“Everyone’s birthday is back-to-back,” the 32-year-old certified nursing assistant said. “You have holidays coming up. You have Thanksgiving. Everything is right there. And then, boom. No (food) stamps.”

Grant is among the nearly 42 million lower-income Americans who get help buying groceries from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. When the federal shutdown began in October, she wasn’t worried about losing her benefits — she said she is used to government “foolishness.”

But circumstances got dicey when the budget impasse entered its second month and President Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of freezing November SNAP payments. With one child who eats gluten free and another with many allergies, specialty items already drove up her grocery bill. Now Grant wondered how she’d put food on the table — especially with her youngest’s 6th birthday approaching.

Then Grant logged into Propel, an app used by 5 million people to manage their electronic benefits transfers, where she saw a pop-up banner inviting her to apply for a relief program. Within a minute she’d completed a survey and about two days later she got a virtual $50 gift card.

The total didn’t come close to her monthly SNAP allotment. But the Palm Bay, Florida, resident said it was enough to buy a customized “ Bluey ” birthday cake for her son.

Nearly a quarter of a million families got that same cash injection from the nonprofit GiveDirectly as they missed SNAP deposits many need to feed their households. The collaboration with Propel proved to be the largest disaster response in the international cash assistance group’s history outside of COVID-19; non-pandemic records were set with the $12 million raised, more than 246,000 beneficiaries enrolled and 5,000 individual donors reached.

Recipients are still recovering from the uncertainty of last month’s SNAP delays. Company surveys suggest many are dealing with the long-term consequences of borrowing money in early November when their benefits didn’t arrive on time, according to Propel CEO Jimmy Chen. At a time when users felt the existing safety net had fallen through, they credit the rapid payments for buoying them — both financially and emotionally.

“It’s not a lot. But at the same time, it is a lot,” Grant said. “Because $50 can do a lot when you don’t have anything.”

A ‘man-made disaster’ forces partners to try something new

It’s not the first partnership for the antipoverty nonprofit and for-profit software company. They have previously combined GiveDirectly’s fast cash model with Propel’s verified user base to get money out to natural disaster survivors — including $1,000 last year to some households impacted by Hurricanes Milton and Helene.

“This particular incident with the shutdown we saw as akin to a natural disaster,” Chen said, “in the sense that it created a really sudden and really acute form of hardship for many Americans across the country.”

The scope differed this time. The “man-made disaster,” as GiveDirectly U.S. Country Director Dustin Palmer put it, was not geographically isolated. The benefits freeze impacted more people than they usually serve. SNAP costs almost $10 billion a month, Palmer said, so they never expected to raise enough money to replace the delayed benefits altogether.

But 5,000 individual donors — plus $1 million gifts from Propel and New York nonprofit Robin Hood, as well as other major foundations’ support — provided a sizable pot. Palmer found that the issue resonated more than he expected.

GiveDirectly reports that the median donation was $100. Palmer took that response as a sign the issue hit close for many Americans.

“You and I know SNAP recipients. Maybe we’ve been SNAP recipients,” Palmer said. “So that was not a disaster in Central Texas where I’ve never been, but something in our communities.”

The greatest question revolved around the total sum of each cash transfer. Should they reach more people with fewer dollars or vice versa? Los Angeles wildfire survivors, for example, got $3,500 each from a similar GiveDirectly campaign. But that’s because they wanted to provide enough to cover a month’s worth of lodging and transit to those who lost their houses.

They settled on $50 because Palmer said they wanted a “stopgap” that represented “a meaningful trip to the grocery store.” To equitably focus their limited resources on the that would be missing the most support, Palmer said they targeted families with children that receive the maximum SNAP allotment. Propel’s software allowed them to send money as soon as the app detected that a family’s benefits hadn’t arrived at the usual time of the month.

Recipients decided whether their prepaid debit cards arrived physically, which might allow them to take cash out of an ATM, or virtually, which could be used almost immediately. The split is usually pretty even, according to Palmer, but this time more than 90% of recipients went with the virtual option.

“To me, that speaks to the speed and need for people,” Palmer said. “Just saying, ‘Oh yeah, I just need food today. I don’t want to wait to get it mailed.’”

Recipients lost trust when closely watched benefits were disrupted

Dianna Tompkins relies on her SNAP balance to feed her toddler and 8-year-old child.

“I watch it like a hawk, honestly,” she said.

But she said she entered “panic mode” when she missed what is usually a $976 deposit last month. She’s a gig worker, completing DoorDash and Uber Eats orders when she finds the time.

Her pantry is always stocked with non-perishables — canned goods, pastas, sauces — in case her unreliable van stops working and she can’t get to the store. But she couldn’t risk running out as uncertainty continued over the shutdown’s length and future SNAP payments.

GiveDirectly’s $50 bought her milk and bread — not much but a “big help,” she said. Her local food pantries in Demotte, Indiana, had proven inconsistent. One week they gave far more than expected, she said, but the following week they were “so overwhelmed” that it almost wasn’t worth visiting.

She said it’s “scary” the government “can just decide to not feed so many people.”

“At least I have my safety net but not everybody’s lucky,” she said. “I’ve never trusted the government and that’s just a new solid reason why I don’t trust them.”

Chen, the Propel CEO, said his company’s research suggests that November’s freeze damaged many recipients’ confidence in the government. Even with SNAP funded through the next fiscal year, Chen said, many respondents are concerned about another shutdown.

“Now it’s introduced this seed of doubt for people that this really fundamental thing that they use to pay for food may not be there when they need it,” Chen said.

The gap persists for many. Propel estimates that just over half of SNAP recipients got their benefits late last month. GiveDirectly launched an additional “mop-up” campaign to distribute cash retroactively for more than 8,000 people still reeling.

The delay disrupted the financial balancing act that Grant had going. She put off payments for her electricity bill and car insurance.

“Government shuts down and that just throws everything completely off,” she said.

___

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

Jason Furman, Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday pessimistic consumers have overlooked gas prices that have remained affordable, making Trump’s job of addressing the affordability crisis more challenging.

Gas prices in December marked the lowest they’ve been all year, according to data from motor club AAA, with unleaded gasoline $0.18 cheaper nationally this year compared to last. National average prices reached their cheapest on Monday, hitting $2.85 a gallon. That hasn’t stopped consumer confidence falling to its lowest level since April, and approval ratings indicating more Americans disagree with how Trump is handling the economy.

“I’ve been puzzled,” Furman said. “When you’re in government, you’re told, politically, the one price that matters is the price of gasoline. That’s the one price that’s been great this year. And I sort of feel a tiny bit bad for President Trump that he doesn’t get any credit for that.”

Trump has continued to offer his own mixed signals on the affordability crisis, including saying in a primetime address last week he inherited an economic “mess” from the Biden administration, offering to cut checks for millions of military personnel for housing supplements, while simultaneously calling the economy the strongest it’s been. 

According to Furman, Trump also has a bit of a tough crowd: Consumers have been concerned about inflation and the price of groceries, which have increased nearly 30% over the past five years, making it more difficult to assuage economic anxieties, even when there are other optimistic signals.

“Consumers are just in this sort of, whatever the highest price is, is the price they’re going to focus on and be upset about,” he said. “And that’s a really hard problem to solve economically or politically.”

Mixed economic signals muddy K-shaped economy

Conflicting economic indicators extend beyond prices, Furman said. The U.S. saw its strongest economic growth in two years last quarter with a 4.3% GDP growth, exceeding past analysts’ estimates. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate creeped up to 4.6% in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, markedly higher than last November’s 4.2% and above 4%, which is considered reasonable.

“If all you had were the jobs numbers, we’d all be doing our recession probabilities right now—Is it 30%? Is it 50%? Is it 70%?” Furman questioned. “But then we have this GDP growth number, and that just gives us our boom probability.”

Unlike many economists who see a lopsided, K-shaped economy of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer, Furman isn’t so sure. He noted that on top of some consistently low prices, such as gas, wage growth is still strong, a metric associated with increased spending and productivity. To be sure, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Fed indicates wage growth for the quartile of lowest-wage Americans went from a high of 7.5% in 2022 to about 3.5% today, its lowest in 10 years.

“I’m less convinced about this K-shaped recovery than other people are,” Furman said. “Everyone wants prices to be 25% lower. Nobody wants their wages to be 25% lower.”

Other economists, such as KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk, see the connection between economic growth, rising unemployment, and the K-shaped economy. Swonk told Fortune the strong GDP growth was indeed reflective of a K-shaped economy where—in addition to resilient consumer spending and skyrocketing corporate profits—businesses have learned to grow without hiring, padding margins without expanding their team, a trend that could be exacerbated by AI displacing jobs.

“We are seeing most of the productivity gains we’re seeing right now as really just the residual of companies being hesitant to hire and doing more with less,” she said.

Chu “defrauded Tricolor by using corporate funds to pay for lavish personal expenses and by forcing the company into paying him tens of millions of dollars in bonuses (on top of his executive salary),” trustee Anne Burns said in a court filing last week. That compensation was “premised on his ability to deliver exceptional financial results — results that were the product of the fraud.”

The payments helped finance what the trustee described as an extravagant lifestyle, including luxury homes in Dallas, Beverly Hills and Miami worth about $38 million combined, as well as private-jet travel and European vacations.

“Many of the allegations that have been made against Mr. Chu in recent days are inaccurate and seriously misguided, as will be clear when the real facts come out,” Matthew Schwartz, an attorney for Chu, said in a statement. “We look forward to a full and fair hearing in the courtroom.” 

US prosecutors charged Chu and the company’s former chief operating officer last week with running Tricolor through “systemic fraud.” Two other former executives have pleaded guilty to fraud charges.

Read More: Tricolor’s Excel Guy Failed to Fix Numbers in Alleged Fraud

Chu charged millions of dollars to his business American Express card over the years, the trustee alleged, including for skin revitalization treatment, vitamin infusions and dental work. He also frequented high-end restaurants including Nobu in New York and Carbone in Dallas, according to the filing.

He continued using corporate funds to pay for personal expenses even after it was clear to him the company was in financial distress, the trustee alleged. For instance, as late as August 2025 Chu charged $18,000 to his American Express card to pay for membership to Core Club, a social club in New York, according to the suit. 

In emails attached to the suit, Chu told an auditor and board members in 2023 that he was experiencing “over the top” stress, when questions arose over his personal spending. “So with respect to expenses for my family to accompany me on travel, household expenses like a nanny, or IV treatments, this is some of my context,” Chu wrote in one email.

“I do feel like I’ve exercised good judgment on these expenses,” Chu said in another email cited in the suit.

Compensation Fight

Chu pitched the board on compensation increases for years, citing the company’s revenue and sales growth since 2018, the trustee alleged.

In 2022, a consultancy retained by Tricolor’s board found Chu’s compensation to be in line with the average for private US companies. But Chu wanted to be paid on par with the 10th percentile of public companies, even though Tricolor wasn’t one.

The board pushed back, according to emails cited in the lawsuit. Chu called the compensation committee process “grossly mismanaged” and referred to one board member as a “top imbecile” for challenging the pay package, filings show.

Chu used his role as the sole manager of Tricolor’s majority shareholder to remove three board members that opposed his compensation requests, the trustee alleged.

Days after the board approved his compensation in February, Chu agreed to buy a ski chalet in Aspen, Colorado, for $25 million, according to the lawsuit. The deal collapsed after Tricolor filed to liquidate, with Chu forfeiting a $1.75 million deposit.

(Updates with detail on Core Club in seventh paragraph.)