Whether money is better or not depends on a lot of things - and one of them is whether we are talking about a food bank or a food pantry. They aren’t the same thing - food banks are large organizations that handle millions of pounds of food, have storage facilities, employees and trucks. If I give them $1 , they can almost certainly get a better deal than I will get at the supermarket because they won’t just have my dollar, they will have thousands. A food pantry on the other hand is smaller , and in my area, they are typically part of another , volunteer-run organization or a government agency. So for example, my parish church has a St Vincent de Paul Society and that organization runs a food pantry. If they get $100 worth of food donations, they have $100 worth of food. If they get $100 in cash, now they have to get someone to go out shop for the food and transport it back to the church to be stored - and the volunteer who is buying that food isn’t getting a better deal than I am , so it’s going to be the same amount of food. Oh and the reason pantries often don’t want fresh foods is because they are perishable- suppose you donate fresh fruit/vegetables today, and no one comes to the pantry for another week and a half ?
Recruiting volunteers and keeping volunteers engaged and continuing to work tend to be activities that consume a great deal of time and energy. It’s not necessarily cash money, but all of the effort spent trying to find and keep volunteers is effort not available for other projects, so don’t think of it as de minimus.
I think the argument is probably something along the lines of “people will clean out their pantries or add an item at the checkout who would not donate cash in the first place.”
Let me get this right JohnT. The SAFB would rather receive $2.2 million in cash and $72 million worth of canned chili, than just receiving $74.2 million in cash?
It’s really about the latter, rather than the former.
Yes, there are people who would never give money at all, but the OP is really pointing to the people who would rather buy $5 of goods specifically to donate rather than give $1.
So, yes, ‘something’ is better than ‘nothing’. The ‘good’ is getting people to give at all. The ‘perfect’ is getting people to donate money. The perfect is not the enemy of the good.
In the hierarchy of giving, it goes like this:
- Money
- Unused food sitting in pantries
- Buy food specifically to donate
- Nothing
The OP is pointed at people who do (3) instead of (1). But a lot of people, maybe most people, would rather do (3) than (1). They would rather spend an $5 at the market than give even $1 directly. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but people aren’t always rational.
Option (2) is ok, since that money was already spent but really leads to a separate discussion about waste and unnecessary consumption that is not relevant. Much of the angst in this thread has been about (2) but the OP has repeatedly stated it’s about (3) vs (1).
And of course all of the above are better than doing nothing.
Can’t like this post enough. Should be written in the sky in letters 10 feet tall.
The book food bank in Kansas city isHarvestersand they recently were able to expand their facility to be able to take in fresh produce. They even have a program where they ask gardeners to set aside a row and to plant items that will go to them called Plant a Row for the Hungry.
You mention the trouble with sorting all those cans?
Interestingly its also a great place to have your kids birthday party where they can do just that but also get educated on how these programs work.
Bolding mine.
Seriously?
Here’s what I do:
I help support a local food pantry. When I’m ready to donate again (I’ve been trying to kick something their way monthly) I call them up and ask “what do you need?”.
For the first half of this year it seemed to be mostly personal hygiene items. Lately it’s been cleaning supplies. They also need incontinence supplies for the elderly they help but that’s out of my budget.
So… call your local whatever and ask what they need. And yes, sometimes what they need most is money. If that’s the case, take the $10 you were going to spend on creamed corn and just give it directly to them.
Sure, lots of people donate food to them and they won’t say no to food (as long as it is not expired) - but I want to do more than just a rote exercise.
I like that, but it occurs to me there is a big piece missing. #1 should be the time and effort.
There’s another aspect that I think people are overlooking here, which is that option (3), especially for small local food distribution operations, gives donors the ability to have some input on what the recipients actually get to eat.
I do option (2) for the semiannual Post Office collections: whatever decent unexpired nonperishables happen to be sitting in my pantry go in the yellow bag left by the mailbox. But whenever I go to the grocery store, my shopping includes an option (3) of buying some item to drop off in the store’s donation bin.
That’s partly because it’s convenient—the store has a donation bin for food items, not a donation box for money—but also because it gives me a bit more choice as a donor. I don’t always want just to buy the cheapest most basic food for food pantry recipients, or donate money that is going to be used to buy the cheapest most basic food.
I think food-insecure people living off donations are entitled to a nice treat sometimes just like anybody else. So I might get a box of wild rice mix or a tin of good cocoa or canned/dried vegetables or fruit from a local grower. I know the food pantry wouldn’t want everybody to give nothing but cocoa all the time, but it’s nice if somebody every now and then can have something that isn’t just the same old boring rations.
Also, I tend to shop with an eye to sustainable and local food production practices, and I think that principle should extend to my food donations as well. Of course it would be irresponsible to demand that food banks themselves spend money on expensive versions of food that they can get far cheaper industrial-agriculture versions of. But if I’m the one spending the money on food they get for free, I’m able to take these other factors into account.
Maybe when one of the food recipients gets back on their feet financially and is able to buy their own groceries, they’ll remember that delicious whatever-it-was and buy some more of it, thus directing more food dollars to the sustainable/local producers I think we should support.
In short: Charity food donations don’t always have to be only about maximizing the most basic quantity and/or nutritional bang for the buck. And when you donate via option (3), you get a little more input into that choice.
My food pantry calls itself a food bank.
~Max
I have to donate some food for a drive at my kid’s school tomorrow. I’d happily give $10, but an open donation box is not the best place to leave cash. I checked on the food bank’s website, and they want frosting. That is excellent, as I know I have an unopened jar of frosting in my pantry. It makes sense people want treats for the holidays, but I’d have never thought to bring it if I hadn’t checked to see what they want.
I’ll try to include something else they want that at least pretends to be healthy. Hopefully I have an unopened jar of peanut butter, which is also on the wish list. If not, they’re going to get some beans and tomatoes, as that’s mostly what I have in cans.
As for expired food, it usually isn’t so much expired as past the “best by” date. We had some old packs of squeezable fruit squish that my kid didn’t like, and when it finally occurred to me to donate them I realized they were a just past the best by date, so I threw them away. It was only later I saw that the food bank would take food past the best by date, as long as it was sealed and in good condition. Anyway, I’m sure different places have different rules.
Our food bank always has packages of canned food set aside for people without cooking facilities. Canned food is highly valued, despite the sodium content. And people love canned chili.
“Pop Top Food Items” is anything that doesn’t require a tool to open, whether it’s a bag, package, or can.
We have one of these food donation drives going on at work. There’s a list of stuff that’s acceptable to donate. It lists dutifully healthy stuff like low sodium soups and whole wheat pastas.
One item caught my eye; unsalted nuts.
Good god! Do these people know how vile unsalted nuts are? You can’t tell me that they aren’t trying to punish the poor.
I’m contributing cans of tuna in water, but still. Unsalted nuts? That’s a call to Amnesty International, not a heathy snack.
The town I used to live in had to stop doing that, because the kids weren’t returning the backpacks, and usually not eating the food either, due to the “parents” trading it for drugs, usually meth.
Same here in Scotland. A decent proportion of folk who use our food bank have to make a regular choice: heat food, or heat a room. So canned meals are popular, and so are things like cereals and muesli (we can almost always provide long-life milk to go with that)
I volunteered at a food pantry one summer when I was in college. We had a closet for non-food items like laundry detergent, Kotex, diapers, pet food, etc. and would give those to people who asked for them, and a table in the lobby where people could take as many of those items as they wanted - things that didn’t have a label in English (very common in this college town, due to foreign students cleaning out their cupboards before going home) or that very few people could use, like a jar of pickled grape leaves or a gallon jug of ketchup with a squirt thing on it.
The biggest surprise for me was that the clientele were mostly senior citizens, which is why, if I’m buying for the pantry, I try to get low-salt items because that (and diabetic) was the most common special dietary need; they always asked about this during the intake interview because they didn’t want to give people things they couldn’t use.
Jesus that’s saddening. 
But not surprising, due to the region.
The homeless population in that town, that authorities knew of, was mostly teenagers couch-surfing because their parents were so strung out.
I actually prefer unsalted nuts.
And if you prefer them salted… well, you can actually add salt to them.