Food Donations... how much do you typically collect each year?

[ace_master]

This was my first year collecting for the food bank. I've managed to raise about 1300 LBS of food in just under a month. 250 pounds of that was on the Friday before Christmas Eve.

With it being my first year collecting, I'm satisfied with this result, but I'm wondering how much others typically collect when using your display to collect for your local food bank/pantry?

[grodq]

I just find it so much easier to collect money versus food. Easier to transport too. And even though they're called food banks (at least ours) they deal in more than just food. Formula for babies, diapers, etc. Do they really need 1000 pounds of beans?

How many passerbys or first time visitors just so happen to have a bag of groceries in their cars? Not nearly as many as those who have spare change.

We collect money for the local food pantry, let them buy what they need. We drop off several times in the month of December especially before Christmas. Our first year they were able to buy hams for 100+ families for their Christmas dinner with our donations. They were ecstatic to be able to do so. We're now in our third year of collecting and crossed the 10K mark yesterday.

This year we collected almost $5000 which will go a long way to buying food or whatever is needed. We also took in a couple sacks of canned goods.

Certainly don't want to take away from your good cause, but maybe give the visitors a choice. A tub for any food itmes and a locked box for monetary donations.

But still 1000+ pounds of food is an awesome first year total.

[ace_master]

I've seen well over 50 bottles of baby food come through in the donations.

There is also a cash donation unit out there for those that wish to donate cash... Funds will be split between the Food Pantry, and the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Thank you for your reply

[PaulXmas]

Not sure of the weight but last year I started collecting for our food bank and got one rubber maid tub.
This year we have well over 7 tubs! Plus a ham!
We will be going through our cupboards and adding to the total. I need to build something to collect money for next year(some little boy handed me over $2 in change).

[jimswinder]

Second year collecting food and cash donations...

Right now, just under 1200 lbs of food and just over $2700 in cash for our two charities..

West Seattle Food Bank and Northwest Parkinson Foundation...

Both are up a little bit over last year...though attendance is WAAAAY up...

I did notice that the giving went significantly up when I finally got around to putting in an announcement about our charities...

[George Simmons]

We seriously discourage food dropoffs. Like Kevin's voice-over says "Frozen peas are fine, but not when they come in a can." Still, we've collected about a hundred pounds of food.

Our first three years combined we collected just under $5000. So far this year we've collected over $3600, and with big crowds expected tomorrow and Saturday we're hoping to reach $4000. Might not sound like much to some of the big-city guys, but for Podunk, Minnesota it's huge.