Food is and always will be our greatest need at the Food Cupboard. The majority of the food that we give out to our clients comes from food drives run by individuals, schools, religious organizations, clubs, civic groups and businesses. These food collections are essential to keeping our doors open and our shelves stocked. Please consider doing a food drive to help us help others in our community. If you have submitted this food drive registration form and do not receive a confirmation email within 24 hours please send an email to the Food Drive Director ([email protected]).
How do I start a food drive?
- Get approval from your organization to host a food drive.
- Let us know about your plans by filling out the form below. We can help coordinate your food delivery to the Cupboard, let you know our greatest food needs and answer any questions you might have.
- Set up an organizing committee for your food drive.
- Set a goal to keep your team motivated.
- Track progress towards your goal.
- Promote your drive by using emails, social media and flyers.
- Ready to deliver food to the Cupboard? Remember these tips to help expedite your donation:
- Schedule your delivery to make sure adequate volunteers are available to accept and weigh in your donations by emailing [email protected].
- Sort donations into categories (canned vegetables, canned meats, boxes of cereal, jars of sauce, etc.). Pre-sorting donations helps get food into clients’ hands faster by speeding up our process of organizing available food. Click here for the sorting guidelines used by our volunteers.
- Pack sorted donations into reasonably sized boxes. Please be considerate of volunteers who must lift boxes onto our scale and to sorting areas and shelves; boxes that are too heavy to be lifted must be unpacked before items can be weighed.
- Did you collect more donations than can fit into a SUV with the seats down? Wow! Thank you! Please contact us at [email protected] to let us know to expect a large food drive donation and to arrange to deliver your donation on different days. The number of volunteers that can fit into our sorting space is limited, and we often have multiple donations to process. Thank you for helping us be prepared for you and thank you so much for your generosity!
- If you are holding a food drive for service hours, click here to see how we calculate your hours based on the food you collect.
Email any questions you might have about Food Drives to [email protected]. Thank you so much for helping our community!