For the love of God, stop donating canned goods to the food bank

For the love of God, stop donating canned goods to the food bank

By Tristin Hopper, National Post It's one of Canada's most cherished holiday practices, and it may also be unwittingly robbing resources from some of Canada's most important charities. You've seen it at the office. You've seen it at the library. You've seen it at your kids' Christmas recital.

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Yes... but no.

It really depends on the food bank. It also really depends on the food donated. The one I volunteered at actually relied on the canned food drives. It was a food and clothing bank, had two paid workers. Money donated went mostly to the following things: cost of the facility -- there was a warehouse, a refrigerated food section, a (supervised) play area for kids to be left in while their parents went through and got food and clothes, computers for volunteers to check people in and help them get set up with things like food stamps and medicaid. There was also a very small office in the back and a small breakroom for volunteers. This was a not small space, and all of these things cost money. The rest of the money went for things like bulk bags of rice and beans, and then large flats of peanut butter and tuna.

This particular food bank was an interfaith food bank. At the end of summer is Rosh Hashanah, when a lot of the synagogues have big drives. Then midwinter the churches do the Christmas drives. And then springtime comes and both the synagogues and churches do Easter/Passover drives. And those drives hopefully last through the summer. Towards the end of summer things get scary and that's when the money comes in handy the most.

Would pure monetary donations be more useful? IDK. It would certainly be more useful than squid. The way this was set up, it was more like a supermarket, except for things like the big bags of rice and beans, which were parcelled out into smaller bags, people picked out what they needed in particular. Refrigerated stuff was put into a family-size specific box. (You have five people in your family? You get this many fresh veggies, this much milk, etc...)

So check with the food bank in question and ask what they'd rather have.