What Is a Data Lake and How Does FBM Use It?

What Is a Data Lake and How Does FBM Use It?

In FoodBank Manager (FBM), a data lake is a secure, centralized system used by the food bank to view reports and analyze trends across all partner agencies.

It collects depersonalized data from each agency’s private database and merges it into a unified reporting environment. This enables region-wide reporting without exposing any personally identifiable information (PII).

What is a data lake?

A data lake is a large, centralized storage system designed to collect data from multiple sources in its raw or lightly structured form.

Unlike a traditional database, it doesn’t require data to be uniform before storage. In FBM, this makes it ideal for pulling in data from many independent agencies with different configurations.

Why does FBM use a data lake?

• It allows regional and network-wide reporting

• It maintains agency privacy by using depersonalized data

• It supports funding and compliance requirements at the food bank level

• It enables unduplicated counts across multiple agencies

How does the data get there?

Each agency’s private database sends depersonalized data to the data lake. The system uses a secure, automated push process to sync this data periodically.

Hashing ensures that no names, addresses, or other PII are ever included.

What can the food bank see?

The food bank can run reports on visit counts, unduplicated households, demographic breakdowns, and other compliance metrics.

Because hashes are consistent across agencies, the system can recognize when a household has visited multiple locations — all without knowing who they are.

Summary

• FBM’s data lake enables centralized, depersonalized reporting

• It supports region-wide insights without shared client records

• The model protects privacy while meeting food bank reporting needs

Need help reviewing your agency’s contribution to the data lake or adjusting privacy settings?

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