What is a Food and Fund Drive?
A food and fund drive is an excellent opportunity for practically any segment of the greater San Antonio community to become direct partners with the San Antonio Food Bank in our fight to end hunger. A food and fund drive can be conducted by churches, neighborhoods, businesses, unions, service clubs, schools, military units, scouts, sports teams, or any group of dedicated people who realize it takes local initiative to solve a local problem.

How Does a Food and Fund Drive Help the Food Bank?
Food and fund drives are critical to the ongoing mission of collecting and redistributing millions of pounds of food to poor and hungry individuals and families in Southwest Texas. Cash donations are equally important and are used to operate the SAFB’s warehouse, to pay for utilities to run our huge freezers and coolers, and to cover fuel and maintenance for our refrigerated trucks. The food and monetary donations you raise during your drive will be quickly reinvested into many Food Bank programs. Kids Cafe, for example, provides a hearty meal five times a week for hundreds of children living in low-income neighborhoods throughout San Antonio. This year, the SAFB will distribute more than 27 million pounds of food and grocery products to 380 human service agencies, including soup kitchens, church food pantries, neighborhood centers, orphanages, and family crisis shelters.

Do Food and Fund Drives require a lot of time?
The San Antonio Food Bank makes the process of coordinating a Food and Fund Drive as easy as possible. We provide several resource tools to make your Food and Fund Drive successful. The SAFB will provide you a contact who can answer any questions you may have about collection barrels, goal setting and marketing your event. We will also provide you a Food and Fund Drive Manual as a reference guide.

The SAFB also has a Virtual Food Drive component that allows you to coordinate and run a Food and Fund Drive straight from your computer! With easy-to-use technology, your group can organize a Virtual Food Drive with the fun, point-and-click simplicity that you would find with online shopping. Transactions can be completed within minutes. Donors may use any major credit card for payment on a secure site and receive an e-receipt immediately. To encourage participation, you can even arrange a friendly Virtual Food Drive competition with another department, office location or rival company.

SAFB staff can help you set-up your Virtual Food Drive, which employees access by clicking on a link in a company distributed e-mail. Each Virtual Food Drive can be customized with your company's logo. The program administrator can track the progress of the Virtual Food Drive in real-time and send out updates.

Where you’re utilizing the SAFB’s signature red barrels as a means of fighting hunger in your community or blasting out an e-campaign on the web, SAFB staff are here to help you every step of the way.

Start Early
You can begin by promoting your food and fund drive now! Share information throughout your community to raise involvement early in the process. You can also promote your food and fund drive in community and church bulletins, through local TV, radio and newspaper media outlets, at neighborhood grocery stores and many other locations.

Set A Goal
No matter what your approach, it helps to have a specific goal for your food and fund drive. This gives participants something to work toward and a benchmark for success.

Have Fun
Your food and fund drive can be more fun and successful if you decide upon some creative approaches together. Use cans as entry into a sporting event in lieu of tickets or hold a CAN-struction sculpture contest among teams or groups of people. Check out some ideas you can use.

Set Up A Central Location
Collect donated food and grocery items at a central location throughout your drive. This will make it easier to load your food at the completion of your food drive. Assign one or two individuals to be responsible for financial contributions to the Food Bank.

Make It Educational
Participating in a food and fund drive is an excellent opportunity to educate your neighbors, friends and family about the meaning of community sharing, hunger and nutrition, economics and volunteerism.

Make the Delivery!
At the completion of your successful food and fund drive, contact the San Antonio Food Bank to schedule a drop-off of your donated items. If your event gathers large amounts of food, arrangements may be made for a Food Bank pickup. All the food donated helps us in the fight against hunger in South Texas. Whether you decide to bring in a bag of groceries to the Food Bank, organize a food and drive, or participate in the Virtual Food Drive, you can be assured that your contribution will be put to use.

Additional Information

Current Food and Fund Drives
Food and Fund Drive Application
Food and Fund Drive Themes
Coordinator's Manual
Guide for Schools
 

Most Needed Food Items

Peanut Butter
Chili
Canned Stews
Canned Soups
Canned Luncheon Meats
Full Meals in a Can/Box
Tuna
Beans & Rice
Macaroni and Cheese
"Pop Top" Food Items
Full Meals in a Can/Box

Questions? Contact
Monica Borrego
Food and Fund Drive Coordinator
210-431-8310
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it