A few tips on marketing to attract volunteers and donors. Target your audience. Who makes up your gleaning volunteers? At TCFB the main demographics are Generation Xers and Baby Boomers with extra time on their hands, whether they are retired, stay-at-home parents, or in between…
Volunteers are the most essential piece of a functioning gleaning program. Keeping a well-trained and supported group of gleaning volunteers will lead to its success. The first thing to remember is that volunteer recruitment is never done. Gleaning is physically demanding, subject to bad weather,…
Plant a Row for the Hungry (PAR) was launched in 1995 as a public service program of the Garden Writers Association. Garden writers encouraged their readers/listeners to plant an extra row of produce each year and donate their surplus to local food banks, soup kitchens,…
Why is self-care important? Caring for ourselves and making sure our own needs are met ensures our health. It can also set a good example for the people around us to advocate for their health as well. When we are healthy physically and mentally, it’s…
The same laws that protect commercial donors apply to individual donors. The Federal Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act protects all food donors and gleaners from criminal and civil liability. With the liability issue covered, the focus turns to program development and donor recruitment. For this, marketing materials are…
Garden Centers Establishing a relationship with local garden centers provides an excellent platform for promoting Plant a Row where gardeners are purchasing goods in preparation for and maintenance of their gardens. Some ways garden centers have promoted the program have been displaying posters and brochures…
To succeed in retaining well-meaning volunteers or donors you must be able to demonstrate the necessity of their participation by connecting them with a problem that has a mutually beneficial solution. In the development of a PAR program those solutions may look like this: Community…
The food bank, while not solely focused on nutrition education, should consider the opportunity to take compassion a step further. One way is to provide access to diverse foods of high nutritional value and the means to prepare them in an appetizing way. If anyone…
Alternative ways farms can donate to food banks with Farm to Community at Harvest Against Hunger. Through the partnerships made between food assistance programs and local farmers, our programs have seen a number of innovative ways that they can work together to increase the amount…
Nutritional Density with Farm to Community at Harvest Against Hunger Nutritional density is a factor that measures how nutritionally rich a food is, using the levels of 14 different vitamins and nutrients. This is a way to effectively measure how “healthy” a food is, “health”…