Support your local food bank & pantries with your money, not food donations.
Food banks & pantries can use the money much efficiently than any individual donor.
Boost Appreciated:
@hacks4pancakes
@jerry
@sarahtaber
Hank Green video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwLaKBHIT7w
Pinned comment from the video:
@gabrielag9846:
Food banker here with an IMPORTANT MESSAGE: You listening? PLEASE DO NOT use your money to buy cheap food for the food banks or pantries. Just give them that money. I'm 100% serious. Food banks, especially the really organized ones, can get WAY more for the dollar than any individual can, unless you're literally ordering by the truckload from a manufacturer like we are. Feeding America has a whole purchasing network with negotiated prices that make this system work. Also, every time you buy and donate random food items, it creates work for the food bank/pantry. We need to inspect it for safety, sort it into categories, and then work it into inventory. If you donate money, we use it to buy much more food, and we intentionally purchase based on what kind of item is needed. It can also be used to put fuel in the trucks that gets the food to its ultimate destination.
We absolutely do appreciate every donation, and we use items donated from food drives and individuals every day. But look at it this way: You can buy a 5-lb sack of potatoes for $3.00, for example. I can get them for 50 cents per sack because my organization has negotiated the price with the distributor and ordered 10 pallets of them. We need every kind of support we can get right now, but PLEASE let us do the smart shopping