Every day in Utah County, nearly 74,000 people—or 12.8 percent of the population—don’t have access to enough food to be healthy. Of those people, more than 28,000 are children.
Luckily, we live in a community with a generous spirit—and a food bank—to help. That’s where you come in. Though some of our donations come through individual donors, food drives are the best ways to stock our shelves. For example, the big Boy Scout and Letter Carrier drives during the year help us get through lean times at the food bank. Here’s how you can host your own successful food drive:
Get together
Organizing as a group is one of the best ways to host a successful food-gathering drive. So here are some examples of ways to get together:
- Office: Challenge different departments or shifts to gather the most food, with an incentive or prize for the group that collects the most.
- Church: Religious groups already are motivated to help people in their communities, so congregations often host successful food drives.
- Neighborhood: Get your neighbors and kids involved in going door-to-door to collect food to help people in need.
- School: Create a contest between classes or grades to see who can gather the most items or pounds of food. The prize could be a pizza party or something unrelated to food, like taping the principal to the wall, a teacher dying his or her hair or even an extra recess.
- Friends group: Do you play bunco? Are you on a pickleball squad? What about a book club? Or do you have another group hobby? Get your friends and teammates together and make gathering donations a team or group effort.
Pick a theme
One way to get people excited about a food drive—besides fabulous prizes, of course—is to have a fun theme. Some ideas include:
- One Can, Toucan, We Can
- Drive Away Hunger
- Hunger Games
- Building Up Our Neighbors
- Together We Can
- Is Dinner Ready?
- Kick Hunger to the Curb
- Bat/Swat Away Hunger
- Pasta Patrol
- Take a Bite Out of Hunger
- Days of the Week (choose a most-needed item for each day)
Advertise
People need to know about your food drive for it to be a success. Luckily, you don’t need an advertising budget to spread the word about your themed food drive. So here’s what you can do:
- Post on social media
- Send emails
- Put up signs around the office, school, church or neighborhood
- Post on local free online classifieds—KSL, Craigslist, etc.
Organizing a food drive sounds like a daunting task. It’s not, though. All it takes is some simple planning. So get together as a group, choose a theme, and advertise. Now you’re all ready to go!
If you’d like some more ideas about how to get started, go here, contact our food drive coordinator at (801) 691-5202 or the main number at (801) 373-8200.