Foodbank Donations

PasturesNew

Anybody donated?

I went to a supermarket today and they had some old dears with a table - and were handing out leaflets with a list of food people could buy to donate.

As I was leaving, I went over and it looked like hardly anybody was giving; I handed over 3 full carrier bags. I must have been shopping in an area where everybody's tighter than me!

ash28

PasturesNew wrote: »

Anybody donated?

I went to a supermarket today and they had some old dears with a table - and were handing out leaflets with a list of food people could buy to donate.

As I was leaving, I went over and it looked like hardly anybody was giving; I handed over 3 full carrier bags. I must have been shopping in an area where everybody's tighter than me!

I've not seen them where we are but that's not surprising really as I rarely use the big supermarkets (Asda & Tesco), I use Sainsburys about once a month and other than that I use our local shops.

A church in Bracknell runs a foodbank - it's about 8 or 9.miles from us.

http://www.kerith.co.uk/Groups/105001/Kerith_Community_Church/Kerith_Community/Foodbank/Foodbank.aspx

There's another one in Slough - also run by a church.

If I saw them collecting when I shopped I would donate.

ash28

GOOD_GOSH_GOLLY_GHOULS wrote: »

I don't give to charity, apart from the yearly Children In Need appeals, as you never know where your money is being spent. I highly doubt all that food you donuted ends up just in the needy fridges.

Most of the food donated is non perishable - long life milk/long life juice/tea/coffee/tinned meat, tinned veg & fruit, pasta, rice etc. Nothing that anyone would particularly want to take home for themselves I would imagine.

Most of the foodbanks are run by churches and I'm sure they have the best of intentions.

A bit more about foodbanks in the UK.
http://www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-projects

In the US foodbanks or food pantries are common and most churches have their own version, the US also has larger nationwide not for profit organisations that do the same. Giving to charity (for home use not overseas) is much more common there than here - especially by people with money - could be something to do with the tax breaks. Or it could be to do with a tradition of philanthropy, in the early days of the US, the government was very distant for most people and they organised stuff like building schools, hospitals, starting a fire service etc, themselves and giving something back became the norm. Oh, and the tax breaks.

I'm not a big charity giver - RNLI is one I donate to, I was a diver (hobby) for many years and although I never needed their services myself - it was good to know they were there if I ever did need them.

Thames Valley and Chiltern Air Ambulance is another one - I've never needed their services - but it's good to know that if I did they are there.

LydiaJ

I haven't seen anybody collecting in a supermarket like that. but my church does quite a lot with homeless and vulnerable people. There's a team of people who provide free hot meals twice a week, and people who go to the meals can also get help and advice with other stuff - filling in forms for social housing, applying for jobs, etc. They have a cupboard where you can put stuff that might be helpful to people, and then it gets given to people who need it. That includes non-perishable food, but also clothes, shoes, toiletries, sleeping bags, blankets, anything really. Sometimes there's a notice in the church news sheet to say they're running short of something specific - food, for example, or warm coats (when it was snowy). Sometimes I get food for them, and also I 've given quite a lot of late-nearly-ex's clothes, and a box of his kitchen equipment plus plates etc, to be given to a street-homeless person that got sorted out with a flat but had nothing to put in it.

As far as giving money is concerned, yes, I do give money, but I'm very discriminating in what I give it to. I know how money's handled at the church where I belong (and I work there half a day a week too), so I'm confident I can give to that and it won't be misused. I also give to some other charities: a couple of big ones that provide quite detailed news about the projects they're doing, and some smaller ones that have been founded (and are still run) by people I know personally, and whom I trust.

Callie22

We have a box for the local foodbank at work and I regularly donate things - it's sorely needed at the moment as applications to the foodbank have increased a lot in the past six months.

Jowo_2

I've never seen food collections for food banks set up in supermarkets, just containers for people to donate pet food to pet care charities.

Without coming across this post, I would have assumed that food banks largely get their stock donated by retailers or purchase them via grants/cash donations.

Graham_Devon

Never seen them around here. Either that or I'm totally oblivious. But good on you for donating. Just hope it goes to the right people, as after seeing documentaries, it doesn't always happen that way (not this charity, but given lots of clothing before, only to find people were selling it on for profit, rather than it going to charity).

nickmason

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Never seen them around here. Either that or I'm totally oblivious. But good on you for donating. Just hope it goes to the right people, as after seeing documentaries, it doesn't always happen that way (not this charity, but given lots of clothing before, only to find people were selling it on for profit, rather than it going to charity).

Although I have no hard and fast evidence, having worked in the charity sector for the last decade or so, I can vouch for the fact that the vast majority of collections are honest and legal. There seems to have been a recent spate of rubbish documentaries which start from a newsworthy premise and then go out to "prove it".

Interestingly, one of the less well publicised reasons for hgh levels of charitable giving in the US is that the charities take the commercial view that spending say 90c to raise $1 seems perfectly sensible. Whereas in the UK we have a rough threshold of 20p (total governance/fundraising) in the £1. So we "hit" the marginal limit earlier. (Another major component is the higher level of giving through churches - it's still giving, of course, but the religious make-up of the US has a huge influence on their propensity to give.)

McKneff

GOOD_GOSH_GOLLY_GHOULS wrote: »

I don't give to charity, apart from the yearly Children In Need appeals, as you never know where your money is being spent. I highly doubt all that food you donuted ends up just in the needy fridges.

Just to point out, where do you think all the money comes from to get these celebrities out to raise funds, all the celebrities on the day on the telly, the hotel bills for the celebs who go over to Africa and other places - Out of the Chrildren in Need Fund, which is why I dont donate any more. One in particular springs to mind, Terry Wogan was paid thousands and thousands of pounds for his Children in Need Day.

I give food and money to my local homeless charity in Harrogate and i know it all goes to them. There are some admin staff but most of the staff are volunteers.

Why on earth would you think that these food bank things dont get to their intended destination?

PasturesNew

I was with somebody else at the supermarket - and they curled their lip up at the slip of paper listing appropriate types of donations (tinned foods, dried pastas). They said they'd want the food to go to people who hadn't run out of money as they'd spent it on DVDs/Sky/beer.

I said that I was buying stuff because I supported the concept - and I wish I could pick and choose who it would go to, but as I couldn't I'd just show my support of the concept by buying a few bits/bobs (which then got out of hand a bit).

If I ran a foodbank I'd try to encourage a bit of "Big Society" and let the people know it wasn't charity, but that at some future point when they're back on their feet they could donate back an equivalent amount to keep it going. Some would, just for having it suggested; I know some wouldn't as they're takers or simply lead chaotic lives.

I support the RNLI. I have been sitting on a great fund-raising idea for them for years - but I'll never divulge it because it's too good an idea to waste - and yet I know that it's about "who you know" to get heard and I don't know anybody. This'd need to come from the top, so I'd need to know a really influential person at the top of the fundraising organisation to lay the idea out - and it's not something that any individual/group could do, it is something only the Institute could do. But, I know it's "who you know", and I don't know anybody, which is a shame.

PasturesNew

The foodbank this was for is about 20 miles from me, that's the nearest one. This one's part of this lot: http://www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-projects