Shelly’s post will be soon on her food bank in TX (Another 360 cans!!!!) Knowing Shelly the photos will be well worth the wait. If you have missed Cans for Comments and don’t understand what is going on, please just click on any of these links:

The food bank I chose is Daily Bread Food Bank,a member of America’s Second Harvest, a national organization whose goal is to end hunger.

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Please, check our their site. They give examples of how many people they can feed for certain dollar amounts. It is amazing. If we could all feed ourselves on those amounts, we would have so much money left over to donate, the number of hungry people we could feed would be staggering. Do the math. I nearly fell over.

Two examples they give:

  • $35.00 will keep TWO families of FOUR people from going hungry for EIGHT days
  • $75.00 and ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE families of FOUR can have a hot dinner at a local community kitchen

I already knew from this October post by Shelly about ways to “feed” people and from conversations with a food bank volunteer in Monroe that money stretched farther than we thought. And while you are here, check out the statistics from 2007 from the food bank in Monroe, the small town we lived in in WA.

Based on that knowledge and several conversations with both the food bank and Leon, we were faced with a dilemma. Do we go out and buy cans and take them over or do we donate the cash for them to use to buy in bulk at usually reduced rates over what we could buy? The food bank was open to either! Food is food is food.

The cash donation would stretch for them a lot farther than the number of cans we could get for the same money because of their ability to buy in bulk from many sources. Linda (at the food bank) had, also, mentioned that they have a really hard time getting protein like tunafish or canned hams donated and people are losing jobs right and left and the needs at the food banks have already more than doubled…. and the news keeps telling us how many more people will lose jobs and stretching the good from the donation became paramount.

Leon was adamant that the money go as far as it could; I wanted the food bank to have the option of buying the can goods, bread, etc. that it needed to round out a meal.So,the question on cans or cash for them to do more with became: if cash how much per comment from y’all?

Based on can prices in two neighborhoods, we chose to donate $1.25 per comment. I truly hope our readers are happy with that decision. Nigel and Susannah were agreeable. (thank you both for supporting this!!) So, in Florida, Daily Bread Food Bank received a check for $300.00 from our son and daughter-in-law and a check for $150.00 from Leon and I, all based on your comments. Thank you, Shelly for the push. Thank you to those of you who commented for pushing us further.

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But wait, there is more to tell. Some of you might be concerned about some of that money going to administrative costs. We’ve all heard stories about our money and how it is really spent by charities over the years. Well, yes, TWO percent of donations goes toward administrative expenses. BUT, two percent of $450.00 is only $9.00, so I decided to tack $9.00 on to our personal donation to “make up for it”, but Leon and I got caught up in the feeling of giving, and upped our preplanned donation from $100.00 to $150.00. Now, I wasn’t going to disclose our personal donation, but, Leon had a client meeting and we had to either rush our time at the food bank yesterday or wait for days until he had time to take me there… He won, I lost, so to speak. To hurry the process, both our donation for YOUR comments and our personal donation were put on one receipt, I have to show you the receipt, so, keeping our amount private was not an option, I am not that creative with a camera. In our rush, I can’t offer a lot of photos, some of them did not come out well, and that is precisely why I told Leon I didn’t want to do it in a hurry, but getting it done at all took precedence over photos.

But you can see there is food in those boxes (and probably my longer gray hairs shedding into the boxes, sigh) and then Linda Elget, Agency Relations Coordinator, hamming it up for the cameraman to show fresh bagels as well as canned goods.

Marcia perusing food

Linda hamming it up

I missed the photo of the food being distributed to other locations, of the man loading food, but the point here, I think is, that in spite of drives and donations, the warehouse looked a bit bare to Leon and I, so if you can squeeze out a can or change and have just been procrastinating or just busy, by all means do. If not, Shelly and I are going to donate cans for comments again this summer…your chance to donate even if you have no spare change! And I am searching for people to match our donations, or at least match up to a certain dollar amount!

And I might add that in previous years here, the huge drive around Mother’s Day in May, where Postal Carriers pick up cans by your mailbox to make it convenient for you: the millions of pounds of food were used up by June, just a month later. That is a scary thought… especially in the light of the current economy.

Get your fingers ready to comment. We are going to need you this summer!

Stay tuned for post on pride… one on a blog “award” to pass on… but first, thank you emails to get out..

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