Foodbanks or just practical food help in the community

AnnieO1234 · 11 October 2016 at 1:01PM

I'll preface this by saying that our local food bank who was probably set up for all the right reasons has, in the last year, trebled its salary costs and now, for the first time, expenditure is exceeding income. The salary costs now represent approximately 66% of their total income compared with 23℅ there or thereabouts for the last few years.

Ethically, I don't trust them. I am driven to do something, I have a friend in a big city who is giving hands on, direct assistance to the homeless. That's given me some impetus, by we don't have a homeless problem here. We do however, being an ex mining town, have issues of poverty and deprivation.

So, does anyone have any suggestions of how/what etc it takes to do a food bank or food assistance programme?

I'm even considering just bags of groceries on Facebook.

Xx

Stevie_Palimo · 11 October 2016 at 1:10PM

Avoid Facebook as you will not know enough info on the people you are giving to and do need to see a certain criteria so that help is best placed to those that are in genuine need of it.

Factor in running costs like fuel, a place to distribute it from and bills if any then time taken to deal with it as this will all add up to a sum of money, You need to look at the criteria to and cover yourself by only offering to certain people as some will try to fool the system in the hopes of free food and then spend the money they have on drink and cigs whilst others will be of genuine need.

This would be quite hard to police and I think that there are certain costs involved as I said with any bills and then the checking aspect of a person coming in so that you only give food to the people that do really need it, The other main factor here is sourcing a regular supply of food to which will not be easy.

AnnieO1234 · 11 October 2016 at 1:22PM

My initial thoughts are a limit of how many times a household can come, but the rest isn't my call. Xx

Stevie_Palimo · 11 October 2016 at 1:49PM

I'd imagine it must be certain programme whereby people are limited to say one food parcel every fortnight or so, I believe a lot of theses places would have repeat visitors.

kingfisherblue · 11 October 2016 at 10:35PM

Do you have a Trussell Trust foodbank in your area? Many of the workers there are volunteers.

You could also find out if local churches or other places of worship run their own foodbanks, as these tend to be run by volunteers as well.

Savvy_Sue · 12 October 2016 at 2:37AM

Is there any option of becoming involved in the management of your local foodbank? If it has a management committee / trustees then are they looking for volunteers? It's one thing to say you don't trust them - and you may be right - but a critical friend can be very helpful.

mardatha · 24 October 2016 at 8:45AM

Salvation Army might be better?

Fireflyaway · 25 November 2016 at 9:52PM

You would need to have a referral system to ensure these people really are in need as unfortunately there will be people who will misue the service. You could try setting up a social enterprise. I guess it party depends how much time you have to spend on this. Alternatively approach a church or community centre to see if you can work together. They might allow you to use their place for free.

sheramber · 26 November 2016 at 5:55PM

The Trussell Trust website will give you an idea of what is needed to set up and organise a food bank.

https://www.trusselltrust.org/what-we-do/how-foodbanks-work/

knightstyle · 30 November 2016 at 12:15AM

It never occurred to me that Foodbank staff were paid a salary.
Here it is run by Church volunteers and the Sally Army organise the distribution.

Savvy_Sue · 1 December 2016 at 3:37AM

knightstyle wrote: »

It never occurred to me that Foodbank staff were paid a salary.

Many charities start off with just volunteers, but the need for effective administration sometimes makes this unsustainable in the longer term. I'd be surprised if any foodbank was not using some volunteers, but many do have at least one paid member of staff.

knightstyle wrote: »

Here it is run by Church volunteers and the Sally Army organise the distribution.

And Salvation Army officers are paid.

Foodbanks or just practical food help in the community

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