Guidelines to help your food drive be successful.
Plan ahead
Who will be in charge of planning and coordinating? When will your food drive begin and end? Who will you be collecting food from-customers, employees, neighborhoods, etc? Will you need collection barrels? How will you get the food collected to the food bank?
Set a goal
How many pounds of food do you want to collect? How many items would you like for individuals to donate to the food drive?
Get Group Leaders Involved
If a food drive is being held at a local place, encourage leadership to show their support by sending email, or letters. Ask companies to match employee donations, such as a $1.00 per pound of donated food. Challenge the boss or club leader to perform an outrageous activity if your goal is met, i.e. kiss a pig.
Promote your drive, Build Awareness and Visibility
Organize a kickoff event to build enthusiasm. Hand out shopping list of items most needed. Hang food drive posters around your school or office. Distribute food drive flyers in employee mail boxes or send them home with students. Include food drive details in your groups newsletters. Take photos throughout your drive of items collected and post them on social media to keep your group informed and motivated. Tag the Brazos Valley Food Bank in your social media post using hashtags like #bvfb, #cannedfooddrive, #FightHungerintheBrazosValley
Utilize Exciting Competitions and Creative Themes
Create competitions with lots of categories-largest individual donation or most protein. Competitions against departments, men against women, juniors against seniors, etc.
Think about creating a theme.
“Food of the Day” drive and have participates bring certain foods for each day of the week. Macaroni Monday, Tuna Tuesday or Peanut Butter week
“Food Groups” drive and have individuals bring food from each food group, fruits, canned protein, breakfast food, vegetables, and grains.
“Can struction” food drive. Have teams build a structure out of the cans they donate. Recruit a few judges to pick the best structure and /or the most nutritious structure.
Celebrate your Success!
Have a party to celebrate your successful food drive.
Take pictures of your events, send them to laurenb@bvfb.org. We will put the pictures on our social media pages.