Make your donation go further this Thanksgiving

As we enter the season of giving thanks, many people are looking for ways to help their community. This annual outpouring of support is very timely, because as many of us look forward to a holiday season filled with cheer, others are focused on plummeting temperatures, rising utility bills, and bare cupboards. Thankfully, food drives are cropping up all across the state to help food pantries and meal sites cope with rising need during the winter months.

Food drives are a critical source of support for hunger relief charities. If you ever see a food drive happening in your local community, please consider making a donation. But if you’re not aware of a local effort and still looking for a beneficiary for your holiday season giving, let me suggest our Virtual Holiday Food Drive!

Virtual Food Drives are an efficient and effective way to maximize your giving. Here’s how it works: you simply go online to our
virtual drive and browse through the “aisles”. You can select various items, all while taking note of how far the Food Bank can stretch your donation. Virtual Food Drives are especially beneficial because:

• The virtual drive allows us to lower our costs because there are no transportation costs associated with picking up the food or volunteer hours needed to sort through donations.
• It saves you the inconvenience of organizing an in-person event and moving heavy food drive boxes.
• The Food Bank can use the donations to purchase foods that traditional food drives don’t bring in, such as perishable items like fresh produce.
• When purchasing food, we search out the best deals and buy in bulk, so the price we pay is well below retail. That’s why your donation goes further when you give cash!

The Food Bank would like to give special thanks to Bank of America, for kicking off our Virtual Holiday Food Drive with a $45,000 gift for purchasing nutritious food. With your help, we can add to this generous gift and meet our Virtual Holiday Food Drive goal of $200,000! These funds will allow the Food Bank to have healthy foods on hand all winter long for our partner agencies across the state.

New this year – Host your own Virtual Food Drive!

Want to make an even bigger impact this holiday season? Now you can sign up to host your own Virtual Food Drive. Simply register on our site – you can select a campaign name, write a short description, post a photo or logo, and set a fundraising goal. Then just share the link to your Virtual Food Drive with friends and family. The Food Bank will track your progress and put your donations to work feeding our neighbors in need.