Since 2015, The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice has documented the significant challenges basic needs insecurity poses to students enrolled in higher education. Like many systemic issues, these insecurities existed long before the pandemic but have only been exacerbated by it. The Hope Center's latest national data on student basic needs insecurity during the pandemic makes the magnitude of these challenges especially clear. Three in five students don't have a stable place to live or enough food to eat. More than one in ten have lost a loved one to COVID-19. Further, these impacts are not evenly felt. Significant gaps have been found between white students and their Black and Latinx peers across many of these alarming statistics. The pandemic also produced challenges and opportunities for institutions working to address basic needs issues. In Fall 2021, colleges and universities across the country entered the third academic year disrupted by the pandemic. With the availability of vaccines and boosters, mask mandates, and other mitigation measures, many staff, faculty, and students returned to in-person work and learning. Institutional spending of emergency federal aid, which was earlier scaled in unprecedented fashion, continued to support operational continuity and directly aid students. This report illuminates lessons learned by The Hope Center and many of their partners, especially the Institutional Capacity Building Cohort described below, about how colleges and universities can turn basic needs assessment into action and navigate common challenges. There is guidance and best practices on how to ground assessment plans in institutional priorities, get the right people at the decision-making table, and differentiate between short- and long-term action.