Don't donate canned goods to food banks (2017)

This is not universally true. I&#x27;m sure its true for food banks where <i>That $1 you spent on tuna could have purchased $4 worth of tuna if put in the hands of non-profit employee whose only job is to buy food as cheaply as possible</i> is true, but in a lot of rural areas they don&#x27;t have the people to purchase this stuff or the time. They take what is given to them and put in on the shelves for the folks to take. Heck, many of the food banks around here cannot even process credit cards.<p>So, like all charity interactions, know the folks you are actually dealing with and what their needs and abilities are.

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.<p>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&#x27;t want to line a ceos pockets they want to help their neighbor.<p>Most of the foodbanks we went to were churches and local groups. They weren&#x27;t interested in managing accounts for foodbank replenishment they just did drives when the needed more. It&#x27;s immediately easier.<p>When you give a physical thing it has purpose. It&#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&#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.<p>Depending on the source they bought it from, that money also goes directly back to the community.<p>So there are a lot of benefits to donating food. If you want to donate money fine. But I&#x27;d wager if the only choice was donating money less people would donate.

They make some excellent points. I fully support the idea that the best way to help a particular cause is usually to give cash, not in kind goods.<p>But having done a lot of volunteer work over the years and also spent several years homeless, I would rather see a whole lot more emphasis on creating a world with less need for charity.<p>We will always need some charity. This article talks in part about charitable giving following a fire. Stuff happens. The world will never stop having crises.<p>But some problems would best be served by social justice, not charity.<p>&quot;Give a man a fish, feed him for the day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.&quot; We have a world in which we glorify giving away fish while often actively refusing to &quot;teach a man to fish.&quot;<p>Example:<p>Discussions of homelessness routinely dismiss the idea that such people can be meaningfully helped to resolve their problems. They get dismissed as <i>crazies</i> and <i>addicts</i> who simply can&#x27;t be helped.<p>Meanwhile, my efforts to develop useful websites while homeless and monetize them was snidely characterized by someone as me &quot;panhandling the internet&quot; and people generally didn&#x27;t want to hire me. I was clear I needed more earned income to get off the street. Charity wasn&#x27;t going to give me my life back. But I couldn&#x27;t seem to get taken seriously by anyone.

The author might be missing the main reason people donate canned food.<p>It isn&#x27;t just cash vs goods, they also want to feel like they have made a personal contribution. I loved eating canned corn as a kid, same thing for canned string beans (don&#x27;t judge!).<p>I, and others like me, want to feel like they are doing that personal act. Be it donating kids clothing that has been out grown, or our favorite type of canned goods.<p>When I was in college and had very little money to spare, I still donated canned goods because I wanted to help out. If I had been given an envelop and a form to fill out my CC details or drop cash in, I likely would have done nothing. And I suspect many other people are the same way. And honestly, back then as a poor college kid, spur of the moment I could go into my pantry and grab a couple of cans I got on sale last week. It&#x27;d be harder to donate money that has to be spent on future needs, which are much less certain than needs that have already been met[1].<p>Charities, and all human organizations for that matter, have to work within the bounds of human psychology, and humans are rarely creatures of optimal habits.<p>[1] I wonder how much of canned goods is new purchases versus existing purchases? I personally have gone out and bought canned goods specifically for a food drive. If the majority of donated canned goods are from existing supplies, than the article&#x27;s entire point is invalid.

I was under the impression that most people just donate existing food that they have in their pantries instead of purposefully buying food to donate. I probably wouldn&#x27;t directly donate unless I had a connection to the charity, but I would get rid of a couple of cans of corn that if I&#x27;m being honest will probably sit idle until they expire.

n.b. This argument is ~exactly the same for donating your time to charities. The current company which you sell your services to has a way to metabolize them and will pay you (presumptively high) market wages for doing so; a charity chosen randomly by you at a time convenient to you may have no infrastructure to metabolize your services nor a charity-perceptible need for e.g. web development.<p>If you&#x27;re feeling charitable you can virtually always find a charity amenable to you which has outcomes they&#x27;d like to cause in the world but for lack of money and help them vis the lack of money.

Huh. Very interesting, considering our local food bank itself sets up outside grocery stores with lists of food to donate, and canned&#x2F;preserved food fills some 80% of the page.<p>Sure, if it&#x27;s unasked for, huge donations of canned goods can be less useful than money. However it&#x27;s not as if they can&#x27;t use or don&#x27;t need canned goods.

I donate money, food and my wife&#x27;s time (time I would otherwise enjoy for myself instead of babysitting two kids)<p>The food is part of my pantry management. We don&#x27;t eat too many canned goods, so we regularly donate it after a few months (well before expiration). We keep canned food for, among other reasons, emergencies.<p>Also, we buy - and therefore donate - very high quality food. Mr. NationalPost might not taste the difference, but in our family, we do. Am I any better than the poor that I get to eat the fancy stuff?<p>The donation of food has an aesthetic appeal - I&#x27;m literally giving sustenance and therefore life to the less fortunate. When I donate money I give the mere possibility of sustenance. Assuming the charity is honest.<p>I would not donate more money if I didn&#x27;t donate food. I&#x27;m not <i>homo economicus</i> and the increased money signal from purchasing less canned goods doesn&#x27;t tug on my donation levers. I.e. I don&#x27;t take partial derivatives of my (woe me, undefined!) elasticity and demand functions.<p>I even keep wool Costco socks in my car to give out to panhandlers in the winter. Surely the $15&#x2F;pack could have been put to better use! But imagine the joy of a panhandler receiving a small package from a more fortunate.<p>Hopper was full of it when he posted this a few years ago. He&#x27;s full of it today.

Counterpoint: people usually donate canned goods that they bought thinking they would consume it, but no longer want. Oftentimes, if you go to costco or other large warehouse store, you buy a box of cans, and then you may get tired of it. These unused cans accumulate, and there is zero marginal cost to donating them. Otherwise, they&#x27;d just be tossed.

I&#x27;m often reluctant to donate cash because of organizational waste in nonprofits- how much of my donation is going to administrative staff?<p>This is why I donate dry goods, canned goods, and labor.

It was difficult to change my mind about it, and I still find the fact almost offensive, but I was confronted last year with hard evidence that the most efficient way to help people in need is direct no strings attached gifts of cash money. It doesn&#x27;t appeal to one&#x27;s ego but the reality is poor people generally use money to improve their lives and frivolous spending does not increase when given cash.

Giving to make the world a better place? Read about effective altruism [0].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Effective_altruism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Effective_altruism</a>

This might be more clearly worded as: don&#x27;t buy canned goods just to donate. Give money instead.<p>On the other hand, if you&#x27;re cleaning out your kitchen, it&#x27;s nice to have something useful to do with food that&#x27;s still good, rather than throwing it out. Better to have avoided buying it in the first place, but purchasing mistakes happen.

Canned food is harder to embezzle.

If a food bank didn&#x27;t want cans and would prefer money instead, why would they accept donations of cans? Whenever I offer to donate anything to a charity, wether physical goods or money, I assume they have agency and can refuse donations that they don&#x27;t want or need.<p>Am I so naive to assume that any organization that accepts cans must be OK with them and any that doesn&#x27;t want them wouldn&#x27;t accept them?

The ones here in Indy, specifically Gleaner&#x27;s, will drop palates off at businesses for you to donate non-perishable canned and boxed food. Food banks want stuff they can put in a box and send people home with usually to prepare themselves, not bulk food they have to break down into smaller portions and repackage.

Counter point: Donate in a way that encourages you to be generous.<p>If it&#x27;s letting your kids spend their allowance on canned tuna for the food-bank then so be it.

I know some sane, elderly homeless people. They generally prefer ready-to-eat, non-refrigerated foods, not canned foods.<p>1. Canned foods are heavy.<p>2. Canned foods usually aren&#x27;t very appetizing, especially the pantry and seasonal rejects people usually donate.<p>3. Canned foods usually require eating and opening utensils.<p>Canned foods aren&#x27;t what the homeless want or need. Instead of &quot;beggars can&#x27;t be choosers&quot; arrogant rationalizations, maybe donors should do some research to figure out what recipients actually want and&#x2F;or need?<p>As mentioned, shrewd food bank buyers will likely do far better at making use of funds on behalf of recipients than any consumer would buying small quantities not on sale at Whole Foods.

The author is missing the point of the canned food drive.<p>It isn’t about hampering the buying efficiency for the charity, it’s about the fact that it’s easier to convince people, who may not have much money themselves, to go into their pantry and donate food that they may never use or is close to expiration versus handing over cash.<p>This also provides the benefit of potentially less food waste in the community, which is always a plus.<p>Yes, buying in bulk is more efficient to stretching a dollar for charity, but if a person will never donate that dollar, but will gladly donate their food, then you aim for what you can get.

I work for a local church food bank. We don&#x27;t get these amazing rates they talk about. Does anyone have information on where we can go to get this? We run the food bank out of our local church and have a weekly meal where we buy the food for a fresh meal for 50+ people every week. We also provide a small food bank including toiletries, clothing, and blankets and would love the opportunity to do more.

I found this unusable on mobile. so <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;23nkx4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;23nkx4</a>

I think no one should blame people for donating canned goods to food bank as the action is most likely to be driven by the anchoring effect of the name &quot;food bank&quot;. When I first read about the title, I was thinking what other food I can donate, donating money wasn&#x27;t seem to be in the realm of option.<p>Simply change the name &quot;food bank&quot; to &quot;food fund&quot; will solve the problem.

People aren&#x27;t concerned about canned food being mismanaged, but they are so with money. That&#x27;s really it. It will be expended properly.

I volunteer at my local food bank. It is my best day of the week.<p>Monthly donated food pickups are important as are cash donations and especially grocery stores donating unsold fruit and produce. We have two paid workers and many of us volunteers. Everything seems lean and efficient.<p>My wife and I have donated to charities for ever, but it is so much better to show up and do some work. I am grateful for this opportunity.

It&#x27;s true that canned goods don&#x27;t have the impact that money does, but it&#x27;s infinitely better than some things people donate. Glass jars have to be carefully set aside for special handling, if they haven&#x27;t broken yet. Homemade or unlabeled food is simply thrown away. If you&#x27;re going to donate food, at least donate cans.

That&#x27;s curious. In many country, food banks plainly tell you they don&#x27;t purchase food. Their claims is that this way they get leftovers from supermarkets and such, who would otherwise think of selling it to them, and that they don&#x27;t want to focus on raising money over wasting less food.

I asked the director of the food bank for my area and she said they welcome both cash and imperishable food items; there&#x27;s a list of such items on their web site. So maybe there&#x27;s variation on how they work? just go and ask your local food bank what they prefer or how you can help.

I get the impression that food banks&#x27; needs vary greatly from region to region; and based on managerial style.<p>If you want to know what&#x27;s best for your food bank, perhaps ask them directly?

A foodbank at a local university ran basically autonomously because the donations were food. Walk in, close the door for privacy, and either give or take items at your leisure.

Keep donating canned vegetables, you can eat that stuff raw, it lasts for years, and it&#x27;s incredibly healthy even when you consider the high sodium levels.

after feeling the &quot;buyers remorse&quot; for every charitable act (small as $5 or large as $1K), I have given up on the concept of Charity. I either feed a person who is hungry, or I dont do any charity (other than volunteering to help).<p>(I&#x27;m just focussing on job creation and improving accessibility)

If you&#x27;re going to donate money then cut out the middleman and just give it to people directly.

I hesitate to call charity outright &quot;immoral&quot;, but it gives me the uneasy feeling that it does not really solve any deep problem. I&#x27;m sure most people do it in good faith, and it may be especially educative to do it in front of children (e.g., when you help a homeless person in the street).<p>I still think the need for charity is the hallmark of a deeply broken welfare system. In that situation, the person giving and the person receiving charity become happier, but this is a very limited effect and only servers to fool yourself that the problem is not solvable so you just do what you can. I pretty much prefer to vote for left wing policies that will raise the taxes and then <i>everybody</i> will get to be happier.

Please consider the source when you read this article. The National Post is Canada&#x27;s right wing &quot;newspaper&quot; filled with misleading articles and half-truths.

Money can be misused. Food cannot.

Don&#x27;t buy this article at all. The only thing a cash donation can be stretched into is salary for the &quot;non-profit workers&quot;.