<story><title>Don&apos;t donate canned goods to food banks (2017)</title><url>https://nationalpost.com/opinion/im-begging-you-stop-donating-canned-goods-to-food-banks</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CodiePetersen</author><text>As a kid who grew up in a family that needed foodstamps and foodbank runs I guarantee you what you get at a food bank is a hundred times better than what you parents are going to have to invent with frozen peas mayonnaise and bread.&lt;p&gt;Also keeping the donations as food ensures the donations go directly to helping your community. Non profit ceos make 100s of thousands of dollars a year. That money comes from cash donations. People don&amp;#x27;t want to line a ceos pockets they want to help their neighbor.&lt;p&gt;Most of the foodbanks we went to were churches and local groups. They weren&amp;#x27;t interested in managing accounts for foodbank replenishment they just did drives when the needed more. It&amp;#x27;s immediately easier.&lt;p&gt;When you give a physical thing  it has purpose. It&amp;#x27;s not 5 dollars going who knows where. You know someone somewhere got a can of creamed corn. Most of these people donating I would say aren&amp;#x27;t going to go out and buy a bunch of stuff. But they will look in their pantry and see if there is anything they are not using.&lt;p&gt;Depending on the source they bought it from, that money also goes directly back to the community.&lt;p&gt;So there are a lot of benefits to donating food. If you want to donate money fine. But I&amp;#x27;d wager if the only choice was donating money less people would donate.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rgbrenner</author><text>1. If you spend $5 on food, and the foodbank could have bought $25 with that same money, but would instead buy $15 worth of food and $10 spent on salary for the person buying food, management, etc... it was still more efficient to give the $5.&lt;p&gt;2. Margins on food are VERY thin. The local supermarket makes a few percent in profits. Unless you&amp;#x27;re buying directly from the farmers (most arent), that money isnt staying in your community. It&amp;#x27;s going to go thousands of miles away where it&amp;#x27;s being grown.. and then the remainder is going to go to Kroger&amp;#x2F;Walmart&amp;#x2F;etc corporate bank account so that they can pay their managers that 100k+&amp;#x2F;year that you so oppose charity workers making.</text></comment>
<story><title>Don&apos;t donate canned goods to food banks (2017)</title><url>https://nationalpost.com/opinion/im-begging-you-stop-donating-canned-goods-to-food-banks</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CodiePetersen</author><text>As a kid who grew up in a family that needed foodstamps and foodbank runs I guarantee you what you get at a food bank is a hundred times better than what you parents are going to have to invent with frozen peas mayonnaise and bread.&lt;p&gt;Also keeping the donations as food ensures the donations go directly to helping your community. Non profit ceos make 100s of thousands of dollars a year. That money comes from cash donations. People don&amp;#x27;t want to line a ceos pockets they want to help their neighbor.&lt;p&gt;Most of the foodbanks we went to were churches and local groups. They weren&amp;#x27;t interested in managing accounts for foodbank replenishment they just did drives when the needed more. It&amp;#x27;s immediately easier.&lt;p&gt;When you give a physical thing  it has purpose. It&amp;#x27;s not 5 dollars going who knows where. You know someone somewhere got a can of creamed corn. Most of these people donating I would say aren&amp;#x27;t going to go out and buy a bunch of stuff. But they will look in their pantry and see if there is anything they are not using.&lt;p&gt;Depending on the source they bought it from, that money also goes directly back to the community.&lt;p&gt;So there are a lot of benefits to donating food. If you want to donate money fine. But I&amp;#x27;d wager if the only choice was donating money less people would donate.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>patrickyeon</author><text>This is extremely wrong-headed. To begin with, you&amp;#x27;re stating &amp;quot;downsides&amp;quot; which the original article specifically said &amp;quot;hey, people think this and they&amp;#x27;re wrong&amp;quot;. Downthread you bring up worries like &amp;quot;spending money on advertising&amp;quot;, but as I understand it most advertising that charities get, especially non-national level charities, is donated by the companies that own the advertising space (in-kind donations), so they&amp;#x27;re also not spending money on that.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve volunteered at the Alameda County Community Food Bank. Do you want to know where your churches and local groups get their food? They come to a central food bank like the ACCFB, where they can load up. The ACCFB does not directly distribute food to people in need, instead trusting smaller groups to know their community&amp;#x27;s needs better, so they invite those groups to come get food. Staples, fresh produce, baby food and formula at exactly zero dollars all day long, more &amp;quot;premium&amp;quot; products at a heavily subsidized price.&lt;p&gt;Do you know what the ACCFB spent money on that wasn&amp;#x27;t food? A gi-fucking-gantic walk in fridge and freezer, so that they don&amp;#x27;t have to worry about bulk donations&amp;#x2F;purchases spoiling. And a large warehouse so that they can take in fresh produce from farmers (often stuff that cosmetically won&amp;#x27;t sell well) and re-sort it in a way that local organizations can use.&lt;p&gt;You can see what the executives of non-profits make. The Executive Director of the ACCFB was paid $256K in 2017, for overseeing an organization with $64M in revenue. The rest of the individuals on the Form 990 were in the $103K-$150K range. For full-time Chief&amp;#x2F;Director work IN THE BAY AREA. In case you&amp;#x27;ve been living under a rock, that&amp;#x27;s not a good salary.&lt;p&gt;Every &amp;quot;benefit&amp;quot; to donating food is that you get to feel like stopped someone from tricking you and you&amp;#x27;re smarter than &amp;quot;all of those rubes&amp;quot; who gave cash. Turns out you&amp;#x27;re actually being the least helpful donor, and now write smug comments bragging about how you&amp;#x27;re the least helpful donor trying to reduce the helpfulness of other donors.&lt;p&gt;ACCFB&amp;#x27;s Form 990 for 2017: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;projects.propublica.org&amp;#x2F;nonprofits&amp;#x2F;organizations&amp;#x2F;942960297&amp;#x2F;201920939349300417&amp;#x2F;IRS990&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;projects.propublica.org&amp;#x2F;nonprofits&amp;#x2F;organizations&amp;#x2F;942...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>