FNS Documents & Resources

This memorandum addresses inquiries regarding flexibility in determining the effective date of eligibility for students who are directly certified to receive free meals or free milk in the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, and the Special Milk Program.

This memorandum addresses recent questions about our April 15, 2014, memorandum relating to quality control errors and the establishment of claims against SNAP households.

The attached questions and answers are intended to address state agency concerns about the effects of the Agricultural Act of 2014 on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

This memorandum sets forth SNAP state outreach plan approval policies. This guidance is based upon a similar memo regarding SNAP Employment & Training Plans, issued May 30, 2012.

The purpose of this memorandum is to provide regional offices and state agencies with information that can help them examine and revise client notices of denial and termination to improve SNAP customer service and program access.

This memorandum provides guidance on the household status of same-sex married couples in light of the United States Supreme Court's June 26, 2013, decision in United States v. Windsor (Windsor) for purposes of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility.

This memorandum supersedes SP 25-2012, CACFP 12-2012, SFSP 10-2012, Disaster Response and provides an overview of ways state agencies, school food authorities participating can respond to situations resulting from damage or disruptions due to natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and flood as well as other exceptional emergency situations or man-made disasters. Allows state agencies to designate any appropriate facility, which is providing meals to displaced families who are being temporarily housed elsewhere, as a CACFP emergency shelter during a natural disaster or other emergency situation.

This memorandum provides revised policy guidance on certification periods pertaining to zero income households in FDPIR. FNS Handbook 501 provides that households who report zero income month after month must be asked as to how they sustain themselves and other household members.

In recent years, FNS has approved several innovative waiver requests that have afforded states new flexibility in administering SNAP. Because these waivers are relatively new, untested, and complex, FNS categorizes them as "novel" waivers.

Attached are Questions and Answers related to the final rule published in the Federal Register on February 6, 2014 titled, Independent Review of Applications Required by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.