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Found out my local food bank gets way more corporate donations than I thought | Community Help - nhfree.com

Found out my local food bank gets way more corporate donations than I thought

I was helping sort donations at the Portland Community Food Bank last Saturday and saw a stack of receipts from a local grocery chain. Turns out they donated 12,000 pounds of food just last month. That blew my mind because I always assumed it was all regular people dropping off cans. Makes me wonder where the other food banks around here get their stock.

3 comments

3 Comments

betty_white394mo ago

Oh wow, I totally had that same picture in my head of food banks just running on what people drop off. This really opened my eyes, I figured the big grocery chains were mostly throwing that stuff away.

ramirez.blair6mo ago

Actually that's a pretty common mixup. People think food banks run on just canned goods from donation bins, but the truth is most of their volume comes from grocery stores and food distributors. Those receipts you saw are probably the norm, not the exception. The grocery chains have programs where they donate stuff that's close to expiration or has damaged packaging that still fine to eat. Regular people donations are more like the cherry on top, they cover the specialty items or things the stores don't have. You'd be surprised how much of that 12,000 pounds was probably produce and dairy that would have gone in the trash otherwise.

andrew_miller906mo ago

Exactly what @ramirez.blair said about the cherry on top thing. I've seen it firsthand when I was helping out at a local pantry one Saturday. That 12,000 pounds is mostly stuff from the back rooms of grocery stores, like the day-old bread and the bruised apples they'd normally toss. People seem to think food banks are dying for canned green beans, but the real heavy lifting is the fresh stuff that needs to move fast or it's gone.