Feed our Friends and Neighbors
Food Bin Program
INTRO AND SUMMARY | What is this initiative?
We all know we need a sustainable approach to helping our local food pantries keep shelves stocked. Event-based food drives are great, but they’re a lot of work and the food runs out quickly. Therefore, we are launching the INW Feed Our Friends and Neighbors initiative. (Giving credit where due, this is modeled on an effort organized by our Red, Wine, and Blue “Childless Cat Ladies” friends in Fairfax. So, thanks to our awesome resistance allies for the great concept!)
It’s a simple premise:
INW members volunteer to put a collection bin for shelf-stable food outside their front door (on the porch, front walk, or wherever makes sense). These are our Bin Hosts.
Other people find the Bin nearest their house and help fill it up. These are our Bin Fillers.
Once the Bin is full, the Bin Host takes the food to their nearest food pantry or food distribution point.
We will also have a separate group (our Pantry Volunteer Corps) dedicated to two hours of hands-on volunteer help at local food pantries each month.
Simple, right? The idea is that this is not a one-time thing. Bin Hosts keep their bins out and the community keeps filling them up. And with more food and more people needing food assistance, we’ll also provide some much-needed additional manpower. Our plan is to keep this going throughout the winter. We know the need is going to be there, and we want to be there to meet the need. We’ll set goals, track our progress, and build community as we feed our neighbors!
MECHANICS | How does all of this work?
Well, it depends on the role you play! We are asking as many INW members as possible to consider taking on one of the three following roles:
Role 1: Bin Hosts:
Commitment: Keep a bin available for people to add food to. INW will be giving away a free bin to the first 20 people who volunteer as Bin Hosts, so sign up!!
How to sign up: Send an email to Advocacy@indivisiblenovawest.org with the following information:
➜ Name
➜ Address
➜ Whether you would like to have a bin provided (available to the first 20 volunteers!)
How to find your nearest food pantry or other donation location: Click here to find a list of locations in your county with contact information for each organization. It is up to you to reach out to your selected pantry to confirm the times and process for food drop-off. (If you know of an organization not included on this list, send an email to advocacy@indivisiblenovawest.org so we can add it!)
What to expect: Your address will be added to the Bin Host Map available so Bin Fillers can find your bin and make donations. (The only thing publicly available will be your address. Your name will NOT be included or otherwise publicly associated with the address.)
What to do: Whenever your bin is full, transfer the contents to bags and bring them to your food pantry or other donation center. We encourage you to report each delivery so we can track how many bins of food our team is donating each month! Use our Bin Delivery Tracker to let us know when you’ve made a delivery! (More details on that below.)
How to temporarily or permanently deactivate your bin: Please send an email to Advocacy@indivisiblenovawest.org so we can temporarily or permanently take your address off the Bin Host Map.
Role 2: Bin Fillers:
Commitment : Use the Bin Host Map to find a nearby Bin to put something in once a week, once every two weeks, or whatever works for you.
What to donate: If you need guidance about what shelf-stable food is in highest demand, check out this list!
Role 3: Pantry Volunteer Corps Members:
Commitment: Every pantry is telling us they are overwhelmed trying to keep up with demand. Each person in this group will commit to donating two hours each month to help out at a nearby pantry with whatever tasks needs doing and marking down their achievement in our Pantry Volunteer Corps Tracker. Many hands make light work!!
Locations: click here to find a list of food pantries and other organization involved in food collection. It is up to you to make contact and find out what support they need.
MEASUREMENT | How will we measure success?
We have two trackers set up to tally up totals each month, which we will report in the first Weekly Newsletter of the next month. (Please note that we will publicly report totals ONLY. No specifics about any individual will ever be published.)
How much food?
We want to know how much good we are doing, figure out what’s working well and what we want to improve in our system, and continuously challenge ourselves to keep it growing. So, every time a Bin Host brings a binful of food to the food pantry, they can report the delivery in our Bin Delivery Tracker so we can announce at the end of each month how many total Bins INW was able to donate in each county. This will also help us know where we might need more resources – either additional Bin Hosts or additional Bin Fillers!
How much help?
We’ll do the same type of tracking with Food Pantry volunteers. We’ll encourage people to mark down the hours they helped out one of our local organizations in our Pantry Volunteer Corps Tracker so we can track how many total volunteer hours the team dedicated each month.