LTH Food Drive

As some of you may know, I've asked anyone coming to the gala LTH holiday party to bring canned food that I will bring to the Oak Park Food Pantry.

Well, I want to tell you. I was at the Pantry on Saturday and things are very sparse. I imagine that between the Thanksgiving holiday and the onset of winter, a bigger demand's been placed on the pantry. They need us more than ever.

I still hope everyone coming to Klas next Saturday brings food. I am also arranging more ways to get the food. On Thursday 12/8/05, the Condiment Queen and I will be at GNR award displayer, Freddy's in Cicero for a big lunch and the collection of food. I am also making arrangements to have a place downtown to bring the food. If none of these plans work, please tell suggest one to me. So, I hope a lot of people can contribute. I'll tell you what's especially needed below:

- Rice
- Cereal (Yes!)
- Spaghetti sauce
- Canned pastas with meat
- Canned salmon or other canned meats besides tuna
- Instant mashed potatoes
- Jelly (people bring peanut butter but not jelly, believe it or not).

Rob

Two notes:

First, for the week, you can also bring food to Ann Fisher's office at 188 W. Randolph, suite 2400.

Second, I forgot to give the time for Freddy's on Thursday. It's 11:30.

Rob

While giving food to a food pantry is superficially logical and viscerally satisfying, it is a very bad use of your charitable contribution dollar and is, in some ways, a scam perpetrated by the grocers. The point is a simple one. Your dollar, spent at retail, buys much less food for the hungry than your dollar, given to the pantry and spent at wholesale.

Certainly if you find yourself with excess food for some reason, giving it to a pantry is a good idea, and supporting your local pantry is a very good idea, but your money will feed many more hungry people than your bag of pasta and canned goods will.

Pantries typically won't tell you this because they can use the donated staples and would rather get food than nothing, but given a choice they would rather get money. It's sort of like buying interferon at Walgreens and donating it to the American Cancer Society.

cowdery wrote:While giving food to a food pantry is superficially logical and viscerally satisfying, it is a very bad use of your charitable contribution dollar and is, in some ways, a scam perpetrated by the grocers. The point is a simple one. Your dollar, spent at retail, buys much less food for the hungry than your dollar, given to the pantry and spent at wholesale.

Certainly if you find yourself with excess food for some reason, giving it to a pantry is a good idea, and supporting your local pantry is a very good idea, but your money will feed many more hungry people than your bag of pasta and canned goods will.

Pantries typically won't tell you this because they can use the donated staples and would rather get food than nothing, but given a choice they would rather get money. It's sort of like buying interferon at Walgreens and donating it to the American Cancer Society.

Chuck, both my wife and I (and also our eldest daughter) volunter at the Oak Park Food Pantry. I do not quite understand your post/point.

First, let me say, that if anyone wants to donate money instead of canned food, go for it. The food pantry would use the money to buy product from the Chicago Greater Food Depositry, something they occasionally do.

But, if they have donated food, they do not need to purchase food. The food donated goes directly to the clientele. There's no middleman, no market, no mark-up. The majority of the food provided to people comes from the donated food.

I hope people take advantange of the three drop-offs to share with those less fortunate.

Rob

VI,

I understand Chuck's point/post and even though he is a much better writer than I (or is it me), I will offer/suggest a correction of his word usage in the first part and over generalization in the second part here:

...it is a very bad use of your charitable contribution dollar and is, in some ways, a scam perpetrated by the grocers.

I believe Chuck should have said a "potentially less efficient use of your charitable contribution dollar" rather than "very bad use" in the first part. And, although the food pantry barrel at your grocery store may be suspect, I doubt grocers have perpetrated or need to perpetuate a scam to sell additional commodity type products at razor thin margins. Now, if your grocer asks you to donate items with higher margins, be wary.

I am conflicted about this, much the same as I am conflicted about giving the guy on the street a buck. On the one hand, I understand the efficiency argument, on the other I understand donations on the whole increase due to the psychological factor. There is also the selfish shellfish argument that you have helped that particular starfish.

I also concede, the absurd argument that someone else's dollar is going to the infrastructure costs of delivery, storage and handling, not to mention social services, while my dollar sits in someone's belly.

One of my favorite charities, Heifer, "sells" animals on the pretense they will go to families. The catalog disclaims the farce, as anyone with knowledge of simple economics can tell you, the monitoring and administration of their programs far exceeds the nominal cost of the animals. However, how many spare tires for relief workers do you think would outsell cute and fuzzy llamas. Our social conscience dollars are subject to the same marketing practices as any other purchase.

Finally, I will point out the one advantage of product over cash with which I am familar, involving a small residential social service agency (at which both Chuck and VI have dined). They do not have a full time sourcer or purchaser. Their purchase methods are also inefficient. However, they are able to "purchase" from the Greater Chicago Food Depository by donating volunteer hours, except that the GCFD is often low or out of items they need. These purchases are then made on an ad hoc emergency basis without gaining the efficiencies of wholesale or negotiated purchases or preferred suppliers. This is one example where your time and effort to purchase product can deliver more than your dollar.

In the end, I think giving is good regardless of whether it is cash or goods. I feel blessed to able to give rather than required to receive. Chuck is correct in that we all need to put more thought into how we make our community a better place....and that it should be all year long not just this time of year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

pdaane wrote:Finally, I will point out the one advantage of product over cash with which I am familar, involving a small residential social service agency (at which both Chuck and VI have dined). They do not have a full time sourcer or purchaser. Their purchase methods are also inefficient. However, they are able to "purchase" from the Greater Chicago Food Depository by donating volunteer hours, except that the GCFD is often low or out of items they need. These purchases are then made on an ad hoc emergency basis without gaining the efficiencies of wholesale or negotiated purchases or preferred suppliers. This is one example where your time and effort to purchase product can deliver more than your dollar.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Is this not, however, the same justification for giving canned food? Now, I suppose if you gave $100 (or $100,000) to a food pantry and said, go buy supplies at Jewel, it would be a better deal from an accounting sense, but in the end, that is just not how these people are set up/the marginal savings on profit would be wiped away by the extra costs associated with the purchasing. There is only so much that can be obtained by "buying" at the CFD. The quickest way to get food to people that need it, is to just donate some to a local food pantry.

vital information wrote:The quickest way to get food to people that need it, is to just donate some to a local food pantry.

If my comments came across as Scrooge-like, that was not my intention. Giving food to the hungry is good. No argument there.

But is your donation going as far as it could?

The pantry with which I am most familiar is Lakeview and while they are always happy to receive food, I know they would much rather receive money. With money, they can purchase in bulk (and, therefore, at significantly reduced prices) exactly what they (meaning, their clients) need. They can get the preferred sizes/quantities, they can even get what fits best on their shelves. They can take advantage of special promotions and they can pay necessary but less sexy expenses like gas and electric.

Even Vital Information's simple and seemly logical statement above is debatable. Donated food requires a lot more processing than donated money and while donated food is "there now," it takes very little time for a pantry to acquire food if it has the money to do so.

While there may well be entities that, because of their size or the way they are organized, can process "in kind" donations more efficiently than monetary ones, they are the minority. I guarantee that a entity like the Lakeview Pantry or the Chicagoland Food Depository would rather have $10 in currency than $10 in pinto beans purchased at retail, because they simply can make that money go further.

Food drives that literally collect food only make sense because, as I said before, they are viscerally satisfying. Someone is hungry so I give them food. What could be more sensible than that? So people give food where they wouldn't give money. That's fine. If you want to give food, give food, but I can assure you that any proper hunger charity would much rather have the cash, simply because they can feed more people with that money than you can.

Buying staples at your neighborhood Jewel, transporting them somewhere, from which place they have to be transported someplace else, then sorted so they can be redistributed, that approach is long on symbolism but short on sense.

In much the same way that starches fill the stomach and provide calories without providing much nutrition, giving a bag full of groceries feels more generous than the $20 it represents.

While I certainly did not mean to suggest there is some grand conspiracy among food retailers, you can't deny the food retailer has everything to gain by encouraging people to buy food at the full retail mark-up and give it to the needy. If the supermarkets were truly altruistic, they'd set up little "shops" where consumers could purchase recommended staple foods at reduced prices for immediate donation to a participating pantry.

My sole point is that the practice of buying food at retail to donate it to a pantry or other hunger charity is simply wasteful.

To judge by the stuff piled up on the table at my kids' school before T-giving, nobody was buyin' nothin' new for the food drive.

Let's try wrap this up:

1. Cash is generally more efficient than in-kind donations when taking into account costs of distribution and economies of scale.

2. Cash donations do not take into account the significant collateral benefits of in-kind donations or the costs of sourcing and purchase for smaller scale end-users.

3. Giving is good, everyone who is able should do it.

While I certainly did not mean to suggest there is some grand consipracy among food retailers, you can't deny the food retailer has everything to gain by encouraging people to buy food at the full retail mark-up and give it to the needy. If the supermarkets were truly altruistic, they'd set up little "shops" where consumers could purchase recommended staple foods at reduced prices for immediate donation to a participating pantry.

Meijers, a Michigan/Indiana Wal-Mart type store is selling "pre-packaged bags" of their generic products for $10 that you can drop off wherever you want. My first thought was "What a scam". Get people to buy your product and then donate it. Sort of like the "McDonald's Fast Donation Drive Thru".

I do think the canned goods drives are meant to teach children the value of donating and working to help others. Me, I'll give cash to the organization and cans to the children.

Rob -- If one did want to donate money, how would one go about that? Would you be willing or able to gather checks during the Klas dinner on Saturday? I know that I would prefer to give money -- IF IT IS WANTED -- and let the pantry buy exactly what it needs. Although I do have a half case of canned tamales gathering dust in my storage locker I'd like to get rid of ...

Today I ordered food from the Greater Chicago Food Depository for the food pantry I volunteer for. The pickings, aside from food under the no-cost USDA, FEMA, and TANF programs, were rather slim from the point of view of nutrition. In the donated items section for--which member agencies pay $.07 per pound-- thirty-nine items were available in the candy category; one (5-lb cans of white hominy) in the vegetable category. There were no canned fruits, peanut butter, dry pasta, or canned meats in this section except what you might find in the category called cases of assorted food or assorted food/no cans. I could have chosen, however, from among fourteen different kinds of pop and seventeen kinds of snacks. If you're curious about the menu at the GCFD, just call 773-843-6904 to have it faxed to you. (The USDA section is never correct, though, because each agency gets an individual monthly allotment of the items based on numbers of people served, those there is almost never enough of any given item for everyone who comes that month.)

Since the Depository isn't getting the donations of what I think of as "real" food from grocery chains and manufacturers that it once did, the GCFD is, if I understand correctly, using some resources to buy food that the member agencies can then obtain at what we hope is a discount. But what is available changes from month to month, doesn't help our planning. I was really hoping for/counting on getting peanut butter and pasta this month, but no dice. But there was rice, just not enough for every family to get one, based on last months statistics. Fortunately, what we can't get from the Food Depository, we can often get at a small discount from a local grocer with whom we've developed a relationship. But the discount used to be larger--times are tough for everyone.

From the point of view of our particular food pantry, we prefer money to in-kind donations, but we'll take anything non-perishable, even those dusty boxes, jars, and cans from the back of the cupboard mentioned by MikeG. The more arcane items can be difficult to give away, so we collect them for the occasional guess-what-this-is game and take-at-your-own-risk giveaway. My proudest moments were when I convinced a lady to take a jar of the very un-promising looking "coconut sport" and, later, marketing jars of gefilte fish as fish meatballs. Of course the definition of arcane will vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. Who knew that dried cherries would be such a hard sell!

That said, I would heartily concur with the list of suggested donations posted above, with the addition of cooking oil, [ground] coffee, and tea.

JimInLoganSquare wrote:Rob -- If one did want to donate money, how would one go about that? Would you be willing or able to gather checks during the Klas dinner on Saturday? I know that I would prefer to give money -- IF IT IS WANTED -- and let the pantry buy exactly what it needs. Although I do have a half case of canned tamales gathering dust in my storage locker I'd like to get rid of ...

I really think the pantry wants food right now. Let me try an analogy to see if this helps...

You're a lawyer and the bar association needs money for a capital defense. You're a great trial lawyer, better than F. Lee Baily, Dan Webb and Rusty Hardin rolled into one. Do you give money to the project or volunteer your time for the case?

My point is, you do what makes the most sense in the circumstances. Right now, the food pantries need food. Money is always appreciated, but the easiest way to help, as I and my wife see it, is with a can or two.

I'm still lost on the arguments. Everything foodwise that is donated, does not have to be purchased, especially if you donate stuff like suggested. As to whether you are giving the supermarkets undue profit; think of it this way, someone would be buying the food. It seems to me that the supermarket's profit is the same whether the LTHer buys it and gives it to the pantry or the person who uses the pantry bought it in the first place.

But if you want to make a monetary donation, I will be happy to take a check on Saturday night.

Rob

Bruce

Glad you mentioned Meijer.

They have been entering the Chicago suburban market for about 5 years now. The Meijer by me is one of the "older" ones at almost 5 years.

I have read the discussions here, and both sides have merit.

But I also have talked to, or rather "dealt" with a manager at Meijer. 2 years ago our church had a food raiser.

I asked the Meijer manager "What is the best sale price you could get me on a can of store brand corn?" He said "The best sale I saw was 4/$2" I then asked him the same on rice, beans (in the bag, not the can which is a waste) and on pastas and cereals. He told me what the best sale price he could recall was.

I then said, I want 2 cases of each staple, 4 cases on the veggies, if he gave me his best sale price. I explained I was buying for the local church. He said "deal" and walked me through the checkout.

Now $100 cash donation is alot, but if you can get your own "better than wholesale" pricing by talking to the manager, I would go for that. I know I bought more food than they could get at wholesale (or tax sheltered charge card)

Just "food" for thought

JanD wrote:Today I ordered food from the Greater Chicago Food Depository for the food pantry I volunteer for. The pickings, aside from food under the no-cost USDA, FEMA, and TANF programs, were rather slim from the point of view of nutrition. In the donated items section for--which member agencies pay $.07 per pound-- thirty-nine items were available in the candy category; one (5-lb cans of white hominy) in the vegetable category. There were no canned fruits, peanut butter, dry pasta, or canned meats in this section except what you might find in the category called cases of assorted food or assorted food/no cans. I could have chosen, however, from among fourteen different kinds of pop and seventeen kinds of snacks.

Granted, I don't know jack about how the CFD operates, but your post struck a chord as I recently participated in a "re-pack" at the CFD. Basically, half-opened or somewhat damaged, donated non-perishables were shuttled down a conveyor and re-packed into boxes. The vast majority of foodstuffs on this particular day consisted of prunes and juice boxes. Also numerous were boxes of chai. But very little with which you could make a real, nutritious meal.

As someone extensively involved, as variously an advocate, a volunteer, and a board member at all levels of this "food chain" (pantry, GCFD, America's Second Harvest network of food banks) I feel I need to chime in.

The claim that $ is more valuable than food is both right and wrong. On the national level, America's Second Harvest can procure 20 pounds of food for every $1 donated. This is how they're able to distribute nearly 2 BILLION pounds of food annually on a budget of less than $40 million. On a slightly smaller scale, this is what the GCFD does as well. Your dollar will indeed go farther at either one of these organizations than it ever will at a grocery store.

It's a little more complicated at the micro-level, where, as one poster pointed out, there is greater concern about providing well-rounded, nutritious meals, rather than simply "enough food." Oversimplifying the process a bit, pantries can "buy" food from GCFD at $0.07/lb. Again, a dollar will go farther here than it will at a grocery store. Additionally, a financial donation allows the pantry to use the money where it is needed most. Perhaps with the terrible cold they need to spend more on heat, perhaps with the rise in gas costs they need more so that they can get to GCFD or make deliveries to disabled or elderly clients. Financial donations will enable them to be the most efficient.

On the other hand, pantries also have "gaps" that they need to fill, items that are difficult to come by from GCFD because of high demand or lack of donations from major food manufacturers. This is where food donations can be extremely helpful. They are only helpful if you contact the pantry to see what they are in need of, and bring items that specifically meet this need!

These items typically include:
Peanut Butter
Jelly
Tuna
Personal hygiene items (deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, soap)
Baby food
Diapers
Mac & cheese
Soup

To put it more broadly, pantries need sources of protein. They need stuff for babies, which is often in extremely short supply. They need foods that picky eaters will like and that are shelf-stable.

Items pantries do NOT need and do NOT want:

1) Weird foods that you're cleaning out of your pantry (you know, those 'gourmet' items with odd flavor combinations). When clients have a choice over what food they get - and most pantries attempt to give them some control over what they get - they do NOT want quinoa. They do not want beet jelly. They do not want capers. Nothing wrong with any of these items, but if you donate them to a pantry, they WILL sit on the shelves, take up space, and end up being a bigger hassle to get rid of.

2) Anything expired/dented/rusty/home canned. Pantries cannot take these items. They are not safe, you are simply passing on the task of getting rid of them to an organization that could better use its time and resources doing other things.

3) Anything glass. If it breaks, that's another mess they have to clean up, and it can potentially ruin other items.

4) Cans upon cans of baked beans, or other very cheap items that people tend to buy in bulk for food drives. Think of what you would like to get, if you were dependent on a pantry for sustenance. Plus these are the items they are most likely to be able to get from GCFD or other sources.

Dear Ms. Paris,

Thank you for your concise and erudite analysis of the issue. I was mortified that my attempt to explain that giving cash or in-kind donations can both be good and efficient (under given circumstances) may have muddled the overall virtue: it is good to give.

The folks at all levels of the "food chain", in particular the beneficiaries, are lucky to have you as an advocate, a volunteer, a board member and wise steward. Aren’t we all?

And, thank you for answering the call to chime in.

Regards,
pdaane

I read a wonderful article somewhere (perhaps the New Yorker?) about America's Second Harvest. It included a conversation in which someone from America's Second Harvest was sitting down with a big agri-business corporation that had always been responsible for major donations of excess or damaged inventory. The representative asked the company what their goal was for donations in the coming year. The response, and I paraphrase,

"You have to understand--our goal is to give you nothing. We don't want to have excess or damaged inventory and we're always looking for ways to reduce it. When it does happen, our goal is always to sell it to the secondary market ourselves, not to give it away."

It makes perfect sense. It's what, as a profit-making enterprise beholden to their shareholders, they probably should be doing. But it's not good news for the hungry in America.

As a result, America's Second Harvest has now gotten into the processing business, because there are more likely now to be surpluses of fresh food, whether it's Alaska salmon or fresh spinach. God bless 'em, they do great work. But it's not enough.

When I was a pantry volunteer it used to drive me nuts that we got lots of food from local food drives in November and December and were reduced to giving out dry milk, baked beans, and a roll of toilet paper in July. It's a real bad sign that the Oak Park (Oak Park!!) pantry is low this close to the holidays.

People who can give money should give money. But lots of people who would never write even a $10 check to a food pantry feel good about pulling out a couple of cans of tuna and a box of Rice-a-Roni and putting it out for the Girl Scout food drive on their block. And the pantry needs that tuna and that Rice-a-Roni. And, as Ms. Paris noted, food pantry clients are always very grateful for the personal items--deodorant, shampoo, toilet paper, toothpaste, etc--that they can't buy with food stamps.

As a reminder, if it's convenient for you to make a food donation in the loop, you can bring it to my office, 188 W. Randolph, suite 2400. Be sure to mention my name since I haven't actually told the nice receptionist (say hi to Steve) that people might be doing this.

Ann Fisher wrote:As a reminder, if it's convenient for you to make a food donation in the loop, you can bring it to my office, 188 W. Randolph, suite 2400. Be sure to mention my name since I haven't actually told the nice receptionist (say hi to Steve) that people might be doing this.

Ann, thanks for the reminder that you are collecting food for the LTH food drive (and way thanks for helping collect). I hope people can take you up on your generosity.

In addition, for those who cannot drop off in the Loop or on Saturday, you can drop it off TODAY/THURSDAY at GNR winner, Freddy's on 16th and 61st in Cicero from 11:30 until about 12:30. Stay for lunch, it's a pretty good place!

Rob

Thanks, Ann, about the reminder for hygiene products in addition to food for the local pantries. I have a friend who has an annual Sukkah party in the fall. Her invitation always comes with a directive to bring at least one hygiene product for Respond Now, our local emergency pantry in the southern suburbs. Also, our local National Council of Jewish Women chapter has a hygiene product drive in the spring for Respond Now -- we bring bags to our neighbors and ask them to fill them before we pick them up a week later. People can usually be guilted into giving something, even if it is a 4-pack of toilet paper. They need that, too!

While dry staples of pasta and beans are always welcome, keep your eyes open for sales on protein items if you are shopping for those in need. Pantries generally get a very small percentage of tuna, canned meats and peanut butter compared to other items. Canned soups containing meat (not just tomato and chicken noodle, which are usually on sale) are also very welcome. I try to think of what I would like to find on the shelves if I were in a situation where I needed to use the food pantry to get food on my own table.

Rob, I hope you end up with a mountain of food by the end of the weekend!

Suzy

I am very pleased to report to LTH that our food drive was a roaring success. My wife and I dropped off the food yesterday, and as I have already noted, it was a HAUL. What especially pleased the Condiment Queen, who volunteers much more than I, was that the stuff was new and specific and especially things needed--not simply last year's smoked oysters that seemed like a good idea once. I'm not sure who mentioned it, or how they knew (at the time, I know now), but some people brought diapers and other baby supplies. These things seldom show up in normal food drives, but they are VERY much needed. All in all, it was a very impressive effort by our generous participants.

Rob

PS
If you want to donate still, I am sure I can make arrangements to get the stuff.

Ms.Paris wrote:...Personal hygiene items (deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, soap)
Baby food
Diapers

...They need stuff for babies, which is often in extremely short supply.

Rob and I discussed how a friend of our family that designs diaper manufacturing machinery donates "test runs" to all of the shelters in my home county and it is a huge demand. However, more specific to donations made by others, credit is due to Ms. Paris and her insightful post.