Food drives are a valuable and venerable tradition at Food For Thought. They’ve always been one of the important ways the food bank acquires food, but in this economic climate, they’re more important than ever.

We hold approximately 60 volunteer-staffed food drives a year, at grocery stores all over Sonoma County.

(You can see the 2009 Food Drive calendar here.)

The food from these drives doesn’t offset the purchased-food budget, which will be approximately $260,000 in 2009. Nor is it offset by food donated by businesses, farmers, and home gardeners. Food drives are a necessary part of our operations, totaling into the more than  half-a-million dollars of food the food bank plans to give away in 2009.

The coordination and management of our food drive program requires a lot of effort, and that’s why we were particularly happy, in 2008, to hire  Neil Grosman, our Food Drive Coordinator.

Neil expresses his hope that the food drive program will grow in 2009. “I’d like to see the program bring in $140,000 in a mix of cash and food” he says. “That’s not a budgeted goal, it’s just a goal of mine.” He’s quick to point out that certain food items are always needed:

• breakfast cereals
• spaghetti sauce
• peanut butter
• canned chicken and tuna in water
• chunky-style hearty soups

However, cash donations are equally important. This is why our suggested shopping list that we hand to shoppers now includes a request for $20 in cash, explaining that this amount will allow FFT to buy a month’s supply of meat and poultry for 10 families, or 14 days of fresh produce for our Children’s Pantry, a program that supplies extra groceries for dependent children affected by HIV/AIDS.

Cash gives us the flexibility to buy the things people don’t always think of, or that we can’t easily collect and store – things like high-calorie nutritional supplements and perishable proteins such as cheeses, poultry, eggs, and meat.

Volunteers are always needed to staff food drives. “This is a great way to help if you like to greet the public,” Neil says. “And the time commitment is minimal. A shift at a food drive is only two-and-a-half hours long, at the most.” But Neil says that he already knows the best kept secret of food drive success:

“Working at a food drive is a really uplifting experience,” he says. “There’s a real rush that comes from asking people to do something so basic as feeding other people.”

He makes a point of calling volunteers after the drive and letting them know how much their drive collected.

“It’s important,” he says, “for people to know the result of their efforts.”

He says that when he called one pair of volunteers, Liza and Graeme Elliott (in the photo, above), to let them know the totals from their food drive, Liza delighted him when she said,

We never imagined how great we would feel doing a food drive.

If you’d like to help out with a food drive, you can email Neil at neilgrosman@aol.com or give him a call at (707) 869-8207.