21 ms·

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

175 points by subleq 7y ago

falcolas 7y ago
Huh. Very interesting, considering our local food bank itself sets up outside grocery stores with lists of food to donate, and canned/preserved food fills some 80% of the page. Sure, if it's unasked for, huge donations of canned goods can be less useful than money. However it's not as if they can't use or don't need canned goods.
- kentm 7y ago
  I wonder if thats just the food banks playing cultural norms to their advantage. All being said and done, and equal value cash donation would probably be better for them, as the article outlined, but the real result of asking for cash would probably be less donations overall. I can't speak for everyone, but for me there's something fundamentally more satisfying donating a thing rather than money.
protomyth 7y ago
This is not universally true. I'm sure its true for food banks where 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 is true, but in a lot of rural areas they don'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. So, like all charity interactions, know the folks you are actually dealing with and what their needs and abilities are.
- bluedino 7y ago
  We had a food drive once, around Thanksgiving time. The most common item was canned cranberry sauce. A lot of people don't eat it, or really know what to do with it. The other big failure was someone who donated 50 frozen turkeys. We had to give them away immediately, as we couldn't store them. Later on we had people tell us the turkeys didn't come out right, or they didn't have the right roasting pan or even oven to cook one in. You can't microwave a turkey or cook it on a hot plate.
  - javagram 7y ago
    https://fox8.com/2018/11/21/but-can-you-actually-microwave-a-turkey-butterball-says-yes/ https://fox8.com/2018/11/21/but-can-you-actually-microwave-a... But yeah, I get your point! I do know someone whose charity gives away turkeys every year for thanksgiving dinner successfully (along with ingredients for the rest of a thanksgiving dinner) but it’s planned in advance and families come knowing what they are going to get.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      I've been part of volunteer groups that have specifically been drafted to help cook and hand out these sort of holiday meat splurges - in Boston there was a good amount of warning and people would register their donations ahead of times so that we could make sure the turkeys get to shelters that can cook them and they didn't end up lying in a freezer because no one had the time to babysit them - or thrown out because a shelter over-estimated how much traffic they'd get. And, while a lot of time the safety of food that is consumed is questionable, shelters really don't want to hold onto meat beyond its shelf-life and end up giving everyone food poisoning.
    - bluedino 7y ago
      Also funny are the employers who give out frozen turkeys they day before Thanksgiving...they won't thaw so you have to save them for Christmas.
      - graywh 7y ago
        my employer gives them out 2 weeks after Thanksgiving
        giggles_giggles 7y ago
        The only thing any employer has ever given me on Thanksgiving was a shift on the help desk.
        7y ago
- karthikb 7y ago
  Sounds like a great idea for a tech nonprofit. All in one inventory and credit card donation solution, as well as a distributor function that negotiates with the food suppliers like Sysco, A&W etc in bulk. Frees up the smaller banks to focus on what can’t be automated like community outreach.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    > Frees up the smaller banks to focus on what can’t be automated like community outreach. Or Last-Mile delivery, getting the food to the people who actually need it. They're not always in shelters, and not always amenable to regular schedules or fixed feeding times.
    - karthikb 7y ago
      Exactly. The food banks should be able to focus on the high touch unique needs of their community, not trying to replicate the same backend process.
- tptacek 7y ago
  That's not the only reason he provides for not donating cans: * Cans have to be sorted and warehoused, which costs money. * Can donations are effectively randomized, which makes it harder to fit them into a coherent meal plan. It's really hard to see how cans could ever be better than cash.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    Cans last (almost) forever. High nutrient food in packaging that preserves it. A surge of can donations in 2019 can be used in a donation slump that occurs in 2025.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      The argument isn't against cans, it's against donations of cans. Instead, donate money, so the food bank can buy the cans it needs, rather than the cans you decide to throw at them.
      - falcolas 7y ago
        Fair - but isn't it better to donate cans than nothing at all, which is probably the more common usecase? Also, as I've noted in a separate comment, the food banks themselves often sit outside grocery stores with shopping lists that can be comprised of 80% cans.
        munk-a 7y ago
        That's actually exactly why they sit outside the grocery stores - they'd much prefer to get cash from people to spend as needed but a lot of the people who end up donating cans would never have donated cash.
        wccrawford 7y ago
        In our area, the charities actually ask people to put random foodstuffs in a certain bag and leave it on the porch for volunteers to pick up later. If they didn't want that food and would prefer money, it'd be a lot easier to ask for that. That leads me to think that they do want the food, but also that you're probably correct in thinking that people aren't likely to donate at all if it's not food directly.
- LoSboccacc 7y ago
  there's another effect, you donate food, it's food and it's most likely going to be used as food[1], if you donate money there's zero guarantee that those money will be used toward the purchase of food. it might be used toward a fundraiser, for a greater total effect in the best case scenario, but still, giving food is a statement of intent that a charity cannot convert in liquidity assuming the worst case scenarios. [1]there's a lot of stuff actually going on behind charity, for example here clothes bank don't donate clothes around to the poor, clothes get sold in bulk by weight and the earning go toward sustaining the charity operations first and what's left is sent to the poor in various ways. which is fine, as long as 'operations' are kept lean, but nobody really looks so there's a bit of everything going on.
- skybrian 7y ago
  If you know what they want and buy in bulk, this could be more of a "shop for charity" volunteer opportunity. The key is that someone is making a shopping list based on demand, rather than guessing.
- justin66 7y ago
  > in a lot of rural areas they don't have the people to purchase this stuff or the time. Do you know this to be true? Time spent purchasing seems like it would be dwarfed by stocking shelves, dealing with the public, and administrative tasks.
  - protomyth 7y ago
    Yes, I do know it to be true. I think people are thinking of some dedicated operation as opposed to operations run by churches or non-profits in the area. Frankly, they use money for other things like keeping the lights on and paying bills. The food (and other needs like children's items) is donated by the community.
    - justin66 7y ago
      > Yes, I do know it to be true. I think people are thinking of some dedicated operation as opposed to operations run by churches or non-profits in the area. sigh > Frankly, they use money for other things like keeping the lights on and paying bills. The food (and other needs like children's items) is donated by the community. Money is fungible. If people donate cash instead of cans, it becomes practical for someone to spend their time buying. (there is nothing evil about paying someone to do the work in addition to using volunteers, and plenty of churches operate that way) If the efficiencies sited in the article are anywhere close to being correct, it's worthwhile.
      - protomyth 7y ago
        They are only close to being correct if you are running a bigger organization. There is a rather large difference between large charities and community centered groups trying to help their fellows. People should know the actual situation and needs of the specific charity and skip following generic advice. Know what is really going on. I have no idea what the sigh was about.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- jseliger 7y ago
  One open secret of nonprofits is that donations of goods or time are usually much, much less efficient, desired, and effective than donations of money: http://seliger.com/2014/04/20/volunteers-nonprofits-really-want-their-money-not-their-bodies/ http://seliger.com/2014/04/20/volunteers-nonprofits-really-w.... Nonprofits still need to cultivate volunteers, as volunteers tend to also be donors and volunteers want a tangible sense of community, but if you're really looking at cost-benefit, focus on money.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Which really brings up the question of having a charity based social support structure instead of just delegating that to the government and letting a few hundred million required to run the entire thing be written off as a sig fig error of the military budget.
    - harryh 7y ago
      Annual donations to charity per year in the US are in excess of 400 Billion (so about 1000x more than your off the cuff estimate). Rather than being a rounding error in the military budget, this is about 2/3rds of total.
      - lmm 7y ago
        > Annual donations to charity per year in the US are in excess of 400 Billion Yes, but how much of that is "social support" versus, say, wealthy people structuring expenditures they were going to make anyway to be more tax efficient.
        harryh 7y ago
        There are some stats here on where the money goes: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=42 https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&... I'm not really sure what "wealthy people structuring expenditures they were going to make anyway" even means.
- mr_crankypants 7y ago
  I believe you may be conflating food banks and food pantries. Food pantries are places that distribute food directly to people. Food banks are centralized places that distribute to soup kitchens and food pantries, not to individuals. They exist to solve exactly the problem you're describing: Allowing a large number of small organizations to achieve economies of scale by pooling their resources.
com2kid 7y ago
The author might be missing the main reason people donate canned food. It isn'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't judge!). 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. 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'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]. 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. [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's entire point is invalid.
- mc32 7y ago
  Speaking of canned foods I liked as a kid were: the little peas in the silver can, tangerine wedges, Viennese “sausages” and spaghetti-os. All of them are barf inducing to me now.
  - com2kid 7y ago
    > the little peas in the silver can Canned peas are terrible. Canned mandarin oranges (Google turns up no results for canned tangerines?) are actually an essential ingredient in quite a few recipes, well unless one wants to peel a bunch of tiny orange wedges by hand. Canned Vienna Sausages likewise have their place, rare as that place may be, and there are actually higher end canned brands that are rather edible. So, fun fact about sense of taste over time. Kids have a more sensitive pallet, food tastes super strong to them, so it is often more bland or has simpler flavors. This is why kids can't eat lots of bitter or sour things, they taste really bitter or really sour. As we grow older, our sense of taste starts to die out, and so flavors are less intense. This means overpowering flavors become less overpowering, and we can taste more "refined" foods. And we can also tolerate pickles. (See: Tendencies for older adults and red wine[1]) Exact same goes for our sense of color and taste. Again, as we get older, brighter colors, and stronger perfumes become preferred. Back to food, simple kid foods either taste bland, or have one dominant flavor. In American famously it is mac and cheese. The texture is simple and the flavor is simple. [1] IMHO most red wines taste horrible, but at a certain age we just can't taste how horrible they are and they become tolerable.
ryanmercer 7y ago
The ones here in Indy, specifically Gleaner'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.
patio11 7y ago
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. If you're feeling charitable you can virtually always find a charity amenable to you which has outcomes they'd like to cause in the world but for lack of money and help them vis the lack of money.
- autarch 7y ago
  This really is not exactly the same. For nonprofits that do things like run big events, it's often a lot better to have 15 motivated event volunteers than 15 part-time temps hired for the day. They're about equal in skill, but one is free and actually cares about the cause. I say this as someone who was involved in organizing many large events for an animal advocacy org in the Twin Cities metro. Volunteers are also better at many other tasks such as outreach, for example handing out leaflets. For that sort of thing you need a lot of bodies, and people who care about the cause will do a much better job. I say this as someone who spent about 19 years helping run a local animal advocacy org in the Twin Cities metro. Ironically, what we could have spent money on was hiring staff to reduce the load on people like me ;)
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  As someone with a desk job, mindlessly sorting cans for an hour actually seems relaxing.
  - ianstallings 7y ago
    I pick through boxes of potatoes/carrots, throwing out the bad ones and bagging up the good ones, then throwing those bag into another box. I do things like this for 2 hours on the weekend at a local charity called harvesters.org. At the end I've worked up a sweat, but it's quite relaxing and I always meet friendly people there to chat with.
- jbob2000 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
MrLeap 7y ago
Canned food is harder to embezzle.
- siphon22 7y ago
  This. Goods are real, once they get it, they gotta do something with it. As soon as the donation model becomes money only, they can start filling their pockets wider while also buying less and lesser quality goods for those in need. Yikes.
imtringued 7y ago
If you're going to donate money then cut out the middleman and just give it to people directly.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  An organization may have an easier time finding people than you do. Needy people are informed about organizations and seek them out, they don't have to rely on having to know you.
- saltminer 7y ago
  The article explains: > 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. Charities can get the same goods for much cheaper than you or any needy person with no connections can.
benjohnson 7y ago
Counter point: Donate in a way that encourages you to be generous. If it's letting your kids spend their allowance on canned tuna for the food-bank then so be it.
Causality1 7y ago
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't appeal to one's ego but the reality is poor people generally use money to improve their lives and frivolous spending does not increase when given cash.
- monktastic1 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on what you find offensive about it?
  - VLM 7y ago
    There's a logical fallacy problem where everyone knows that people with (legal or illegal) addictions spend all their money on their addiction so giving money is just donating to the local liquor store or crack dealer. However the logical fallacy problem is, true, most addicts end up very poor as the addiction proceeds, but most poor people are not addicts. So giving money to an alcoholic merely means they die of liver failure a little sooner which is "offensive" but giving money to people who are generally poor mostly helps non-addicts. Note there are local issues. In big cities the working poor are too busy to take a monetary handout (panhandle) so virtually all opportunities for urbanites to hand out money, involve feeding an addiction, even if the vast majority of the poor people in the city are working poor.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    It's difficult to separate the concept of giving money away from the concept of being tricked or taken advantage of. It was not easy to give up the belief that welfare would be best tackled by shipping big boxes of essential supplies rather than a cash or a credit system.
- sdfsaf 7y ago
  I understand where you are coming from, but I've come to find it horrible to put judgments on a donation. Am I better than the panhandler that I know what he should receive? What should I give a panhandler? A sandwich? Maybe he's has celliac's. Or diabetes. A gift card to the coffee shop? Maybe he needs gloves. Money to buy gloves and a sugar free lunch? Maybe he's an alcoholic. Instead, just donate. Just help. Just see the person lying on the floor as a fellow human being fully deserving in dignity. If you're Christian, see Christ sprawled on the floor and make sure your right hand doesn't see your left hand.
pg_bot 7y ago
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'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'm being honest will probably sit idle until they expire.
- dade_ 7y ago
  Grocery stores love them, they even make bundles of money, er... bundles of canned food for people to buy with their groceries and drop off in the donation bin when walking out the door.
  - ASalazarMX 7y ago
    If the store made sensible bundles that combine into meals, that'd actually be much better than donating whatever scraps you find in your pantry.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  Indeed. My process is buy cheaply -> put in pantry -> consume -> donate old stuff but before it expires.
- efa 7y ago
  Correct. Or if I find a coupon getting canned item X for a nickel a piece I buy 50 of them for the foodbank.
quickthrower2 7y ago
I found this unusable on mobile. so https://outline.com/23nkx4 https://outline.com/23nkx4
JTbane 7y ago
I'm often reluctant to donate cash because of organizational waste in nonprofits- how much of my donation is going to administrative staff? This is why I donate dry goods, canned goods, and labor.
- rchaud 7y ago
  Nothing wrong with donating your time and labor. But if you're concerned about waste, why not visit the website and glance through their annual report? Nonprofits are regulated and their financial statements are independently audited, so you can see exactly what the aid to salaries/op expenses ratios are.
  - reroute1 7y ago
    Probably because that's a lot of extra work. And donating a can takes care of the obscurity problem and is dead simple.
  - JTbane 7y ago
    >why not visit the website and glance through their annual report? Number 1, I'm lazy and don't want to do that. Number 2, I'm not a business person and don't have any idea of what an ethical administrative budget would be. 5% of donations? 50%? I have no idea.
    - lalaithion 7y ago
      There are organizations which rank charities. https://www.charitynavigator.org/?c_src=WPAIDSEARCH https://www.charitynavigator.org/?c_src=WPAIDSEARCH https://www.givewell.org/main?utm_expid=.Mr3umtjnSuel86Mlr0lMEA.1&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F https://www.givewell.org/main?utm_expid=.Mr3umtjnSuel86Mlr0l... https://www.charitywatch.org/top-rated-charities https://www.charitywatch.org/top-rated-charities
    - exolymph 7y ago
      Okay, so the actual reason here is that you're lazy, it's not a lack of information. I get that — I'm lazy too — but don't cite vague concerns about administrative budgets when you could literally search "how much should a nonprofit spend on administration" and find 237947209847 articles about evaluating that. There are entire organizations like GiveWell dedicated to answering that question and they do in-depth research so that you don't have to. Chrissake, you have no idea how much we deal with this working at nonprofits. "You are nefariously concealing information from me!!!!!" "Have you tried looking at our website?" The answer is basically always no.
markvdb 7y ago
Giving to make the world a better place? Read about effective altruism [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism
skybrian 7y ago
This might be more clearly worded as: don't buy canned goods just to donate. Give money instead. On the other hand, if you're cleaning out your kitchen, it's nice to have something useful to do with food that's still good, rather than throwing it out. Better to have avoided buying it in the first place, but purchasing mistakes happen.
CodiePetersen 7y ago
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. 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't want to line a ceos pockets they want to help their neighbor. Most of the foodbanks we went to were churches and local groups. They weren't interested in managing accounts for foodbank replenishment they just did drives when the needed more. It's immediately easier. When you give a physical thing it has purpose. It'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'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. Depending on the source they bought it from, that money also goes directly back to the community. So there are a lot of benefits to donating food. If you want to donate money fine. But I'd wager if the only choice was donating money less people would donate.
- brlewis 7y ago
  >Non profit ceos make 100s of thousands of dollars a year. That money comes from cash donations. People don't want to line a ceos pockets they want to help their neighbor. Do you think this factor outweighs the efficiency factor from the article? Worst of all, the average consumer is buying their canned goods at four to five times the rock-bottom bulk price that can be obtained by the food bank itself. 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. The savvy buyers at the Calgary Food Bank, for instance, promise that they can stretch $1 into $5.
  - CodiePetersen 7y ago
    Yes considering depending on the nonprofit large percents of that one dollar donation go to other things like advertisements posters shirts etc. By the time you cut that out you are only going to get two cans worth. So what's more important getting someone off their feet to participate in their community or money.
throwaway3627 7y ago
I know some sane, elderly homeless people. They generally prefer ready-to-eat, non-refrigerated foods, not canned foods. 1. Canned foods are heavy. 2. Canned foods usually aren't very appetizing, especially the pantry and seasonal rejects people usually donate. 3. Canned foods usually require eating and opening utensils. Canned foods aren't what the homeless want or need. Instead of "beggars can't be choosers" arrogant rationalizations, maybe donors should do some research to figure out what recipients actually want and/or need? 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.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
RappingBoomer 7y ago
yeah, give money to the food banks..those food bank execs have mercedes payments to make...
gwbas1c 7y ago
I get the impression that food banks' needs vary greatly from region to region; and based on managerial style. If you want to know what's best for your food bank, perhaps ask them directly?
lazyant 7y ago
I asked the director of the food bank for my area and she said they welcome both cash and imperishable food items; there's a list of such items on their web site. So maybe there's variation on how they work? just go and ask your local food bank what they prefer or how you can help.
tathougies 7y ago
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'd just be tossed.
calvinbhai 7y ago
after feeling the "buyers remorse" 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). (I'm just focussing on job creation and improving accessibility)
- lazerpants 7y ago
  Why do you feel buyers remorse after making gifts to charity?
sxcurry 7y ago
Please consider the source when you read this article. The National Post is Canada's right wing "newspaper" filled with misleading articles and half-truths.
- sdfsaf 7y ago
  This article is BS, and the NP does have an editorial stance I sometimes find annoying (their anti-Trudeau stance, while understandable, is becoming pathological). But it is not ""newspaper" filled with misleading articles and half-truths." any more than any other leading Canadian newspaper.
Medicalidiot 7y ago
Keep donating canned vegetables, you can eat that stuff raw, it lasts for years, and it's incredibly healthy even when you consider the high sodium levels.
slothtrop 7y ago
People aren't concerned about canned food being mismanaged, but they are so with money. That's really it. It will be expended properly.
icebraining 7y ago
That's curious. In many country, food banks plainly tell you they don'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't want to focus on raising money over wasting less food.
sdfsaf 7y ago
I donate money, food and my wife's time (time I would otherwise enjoy for myself instead of babysitting two kids) The food is part of my pantry management. We don'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. 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? The donation of food has an aesthetic appeal - I'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. I would not donate more money if I didn't donate food. I'm not homo economicus and the increased money signal from purchasing less canned goods doesn't tug on my donation levers. I.e. I don't take partial derivatives of my (woe me, undefined!) elasticity and demand functions. I even keep wool Costco socks in my car to give out to panhandlers in the winter. Surely the $15/pack could have been put to better use! But imagine the joy of a panhandler receiving a small package from a more fortunate. Hopper was full of it when he posted this a few years ago. He's full of it today.
geggam 7y ago
Money can be misused. Food cannot.
spaginal 7y ago
The author is missing the point of the canned food drive. 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. This also provides the benefit of potentially less food waste in the community, which is always a plus. 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.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
I volunteer at my local food bank. It is my best day of the week. 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. 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.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
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. 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. 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. But some problems would best be served by social justice, not charity. "Give a man a fish, feed him for the day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime." We have a world in which we glorify giving away fish while often actively refusing to "teach a man to fish." Example: Discussions of homelessness routinely dismiss the idea that such people can be meaningfully helped to resolve their problems. They get dismissed as crazies and addicts who simply can't be helped. Meanwhile, my efforts to develop useful websites while homeless and monetize them was snidely characterized by someone as me "panhandling the internet" and people generally didn't want to hire me. I was clear I needed more earned income to get off the street. Charity wasn't going to give me my life back. But I couldn't seem to get taken seriously by anyone.
- misterprime 7y ago
  I 100% agree with your assessment. >They get dismissed as crazies and addicts who simply can't be helped. How can we identify which people are in which group? Is it simply a matter of advertising a path out, and those willing to try will follow up? Obviously, this assumes someone has a functioning path out, which I don't.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I think the best approach is make paths available, let people sort themselves by which path they prefer. I have a functional path out. No one cares and I can't get support for further developing it. I posted this to HN. It got no traction. https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-people-first-model-for-addressing.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-people-fi... I am actively working on developing additional resources, for example: https://genevievefiles.blogspot.com/ https://genevievefiles.blogspot.com/ Explanation: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/lgbtq-individuals-are-at-increased-risk.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/lgbtq-indiv... I would like to also put together information related to understanding and resolving our current housing crisis (because that's one of the root causes of homelessness). I've made multiple stabs at starting a website to gather such data. The latest was started yesterday: https://americanhomeworks.blogspot.com/ https://americanhomeworks.blogspot.com/ But ad income for websites generally has tanked in recent years and I get endless excuses and justifications for why writing shouldn't get paid at all and I get told I should get a real job and stop whining. I don't feel like rehashing that in detail for the umpteenth time on HN. Short version: there are enough people here with money to spare that it really shouldn't be hard to adequately fund my Patreon for me to be able to blog full-time instead of spending time trying to come up with money to survive doing writing of a sort that people here decry as "ruining the internet," but almost no one wants to put their money where their mouth is. They are all too happy to watch the world burn while loudly decrying how it can't be fixed and once in a while patting me on the head for making my life suck less but not actually taking me seriously as someone with anything of real value to offer cuz Reasons. Meanwhile, I'm nearly broke as usual and wondering how the hell I'm going to get through the rest of the damn month because doing low paid writing for clients is harder than doing quality writing on my own sites, but developing my sites mostly doesn't pay. Too bad, so fucking sad. It sucks to be me.
nkrisc 7y ago
If a food bank didn'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't want or need. Am I so naive to assume that any organization that accepts cans must be OK with them and any that doesn't want them wouldn't accept them?
- ridgewell 7y ago
  Donation bins for nonperishable goods are there for a few reasons. 1. Promote Awareness of the Food Bank, and to create connections with either potential clients or donors. Having a presence that you walk by on your way to buy lettuce can have a long term benefit on name recognition. 2. Improve store relations. Donors buy products from the store at full-markup, and the store has more incentive to continue to support its own community initiatives from the reminder that the store supports the food bank. Grocery stores tend to have some autonomy on the causes they can support. 3. Some people genuinely do not like the idea of donating money to the food bank. They prefer the physical act of buying something to donate, whether it be because they're worried about mismanagement of funds, the money going towards paying staff, or wanting to have a direct impact on the program itself (I only want my money to go towards food). Some people limit their contributions to stuff that's about to expire in a month from quarterly pantry clearing, or when they're about to move. On a side note, some people don't want to end up on a fundraising list or hassled for donations. Cans are effectively anonymous. A small donation of $10 to a food bank that sends out quarterly fundraising mailouts can mean $6 of your donation went into fundraising.
_zachs 7y ago
Don't buy this article at all. The only thing a cash donation can be stretched into is salary for the "non-profit workers".
ken 7y ago
It's true that canned goods don't have the impact that money does, but it's infinitely better than some things people donate. Glass jars have to be carefully set aside for special handling, if they haven't broken yet. Homemade or unlabeled food is simply thrown away. If you're going to donate food, at least donate cans.
Waterluvian 7y ago
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.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cannonedhamster 7y ago
I work for a local church food bank. We don'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.
- patrickyeon 7y ago
  Call the nearest large food bank (as in, the county food bank that serves a city with a population of X00,000+). I suspect they would be happy to share knowledge, there may even be a meta-organization you can join to get help running your organization. I don't know where you are or how it's done there, but as a single data point the food bank for Alameda County (a fair bit of "East Bay" in the SFBA) would work with an organization like yours by having you come in and pick out piles of food from their warehouse for free or hugely reduced prices.
  - cannonedhamster 7y ago
    Thanks I'll see what I can do with this information. I'm in Massachusetts so anyone with regional or local information would be greatly appreciated as well.
louis8799 7y ago
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 "food bank". When I first read about the title, I was thinking what other food I can donate, donating money wasn't seem to be in the realm of option. Simply change the name "food bank" to "food fund" will solve the problem.
hellenawaithera 7y ago
its good to donate it to the less fortunate and street children https://finance.uonbi.ac.ke/node/97519 https://finance.uonbi.ac.ke/node/97519
hellenwaithera 7y ago
its good to donate it to the less fortunate and street children https://finance.uonbi.ac.ke/node/97519 https://finance.uonbi.ac.ke/node/97519
enriquto 7y ago
I hesitate to call charity outright "immoral", but it gives me the uneasy feeling that it does not really solve any deep problem. I'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). 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 everybody will get to be happier.

175 points by subleq 7y ago

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

kentm 7y ago
I wonder if thats just the food banks playing cultural norms to their advantage. All being said and done, and equal value cash donation would probably be better for them, as the article outlined, but the real result of asking for cash would probably be less donations overall. I can't speak for everyone, but for me there's something fundamentally more satisfying donating a thing rather than money.

protomyth 7y ago

This is not universally true. I'm sure its true for food banks where 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 is true, but in a lot of rural areas they don'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. So, like all charity interactions, know the folks you are actually dealing with and what their needs and abilities are.

bluedino 7y ago
We had a food drive once, around Thanksgiving time. The most common item was canned cranberry sauce. A lot of people don't eat it, or really know what to do with it. The other big failure was someone who donated 50 frozen turkeys. We had to give them away immediately, as we couldn't store them. Later on we had people tell us the turkeys didn't come out right, or they didn't have the right roasting pan or even oven to cook one in. You can't microwave a turkey or cook it on a hot plate.
- javagram 7y ago
  https://fox8.com/2018/11/21/but-can-you-actually-microwave-a-turkey-butterball-says-yes/ https://fox8.com/2018/11/21/but-can-you-actually-microwave-a... But yeah, I get your point! I do know someone whose charity gives away turkeys every year for thanksgiving dinner successfully (along with ingredients for the rest of a thanksgiving dinner) but it’s planned in advance and families come knowing what they are going to get.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    I've been part of volunteer groups that have specifically been drafted to help cook and hand out these sort of holiday meat splurges - in Boston there was a good amount of warning and people would register their donations ahead of times so that we could make sure the turkeys get to shelters that can cook them and they didn't end up lying in a freezer because no one had the time to babysit them - or thrown out because a shelter over-estimated how much traffic they'd get. And, while a lot of time the safety of food that is consumed is questionable, shelters really don't want to hold onto meat beyond its shelf-life and end up giving everyone food poisoning.
  - bluedino 7y ago
    Also funny are the employers who give out frozen turkeys they day before Thanksgiving...they won't thaw so you have to save them for Christmas.
    - graywh 7y ago
      my employer gives them out 2 weeks after Thanksgiving
      - giggles_giggles 7y ago
        The only thing any employer has ever given me on Thanksgiving was a shift on the help desk.
        7y ago
karthikb 7y ago
Sounds like a great idea for a tech nonprofit. All in one inventory and credit card donation solution, as well as a distributor function that negotiates with the food suppliers like Sysco, A&W etc in bulk. Frees up the smaller banks to focus on what can’t be automated like community outreach.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  > Frees up the smaller banks to focus on what can’t be automated like community outreach. Or Last-Mile delivery, getting the food to the people who actually need it. They're not always in shelters, and not always amenable to regular schedules or fixed feeding times.
  - karthikb 7y ago
    Exactly. The food banks should be able to focus on the high touch unique needs of their community, not trying to replicate the same backend process.
tptacek 7y ago
That's not the only reason he provides for not donating cans: * Cans have to be sorted and warehoused, which costs money. * Can donations are effectively randomized, which makes it harder to fit them into a coherent meal plan. It's really hard to see how cans could ever be better than cash.
- falcolas 7y ago
  Cans last (almost) forever. High nutrient food in packaging that preserves it. A surge of can donations in 2019 can be used in a donation slump that occurs in 2025.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    The argument isn't against cans, it's against donations of cans. Instead, donate money, so the food bank can buy the cans it needs, rather than the cans you decide to throw at them.
    - falcolas 7y ago
      Fair - but isn't it better to donate cans than nothing at all, which is probably the more common usecase? Also, as I've noted in a separate comment, the food banks themselves often sit outside grocery stores with shopping lists that can be comprised of 80% cans.
      - munk-a 7y ago
        That's actually exactly why they sit outside the grocery stores - they'd much prefer to get cash from people to spend as needed but a lot of the people who end up donating cans would never have donated cash.
      - wccrawford 7y ago
        In our area, the charities actually ask people to put random foodstuffs in a certain bag and leave it on the porch for volunteers to pick up later. If they didn't want that food and would prefer money, it'd be a lot easier to ask for that. That leads me to think that they do want the food, but also that you're probably correct in thinking that people aren't likely to donate at all if it's not food directly.
LoSboccacc 7y ago
there's another effect, you donate food, it's food and it's most likely going to be used as food[1], if you donate money there's zero guarantee that those money will be used toward the purchase of food. it might be used toward a fundraiser, for a greater total effect in the best case scenario, but still, giving food is a statement of intent that a charity cannot convert in liquidity assuming the worst case scenarios. [1]there's a lot of stuff actually going on behind charity, for example here clothes bank don't donate clothes around to the poor, clothes get sold in bulk by weight and the earning go toward sustaining the charity operations first and what's left is sent to the poor in various ways. which is fine, as long as 'operations' are kept lean, but nobody really looks so there's a bit of everything going on.
skybrian 7y ago
If you know what they want and buy in bulk, this could be more of a "shop for charity" volunteer opportunity. The key is that someone is making a shopping list based on demand, rather than guessing.
justin66 7y ago
> in a lot of rural areas they don't have the people to purchase this stuff or the time. Do you know this to be true? Time spent purchasing seems like it would be dwarfed by stocking shelves, dealing with the public, and administrative tasks.
- protomyth 7y ago
  Yes, I do know it to be true. I think people are thinking of some dedicated operation as opposed to operations run by churches or non-profits in the area. Frankly, they use money for other things like keeping the lights on and paying bills. The food (and other needs like children's items) is donated by the community.
  - justin66 7y ago
    > Yes, I do know it to be true. I think people are thinking of some dedicated operation as opposed to operations run by churches or non-profits in the area. sigh > Frankly, they use money for other things like keeping the lights on and paying bills. The food (and other needs like children's items) is donated by the community. Money is fungible. If people donate cash instead of cans, it becomes practical for someone to spend their time buying. (there is nothing evil about paying someone to do the work in addition to using volunteers, and plenty of churches operate that way) If the efficiencies sited in the article are anywhere close to being correct, it's worthwhile.
    - protomyth 7y ago
      They are only close to being correct if you are running a bigger organization. There is a rather large difference between large charities and community centered groups trying to help their fellows. People should know the actual situation and needs of the specific charity and skip following generic advice. Know what is really going on. I have no idea what the sigh was about.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
jseliger 7y ago
One open secret of nonprofits is that donations of goods or time are usually much, much less efficient, desired, and effective than donations of money: http://seliger.com/2014/04/20/volunteers-nonprofits-really-want-their-money-not-their-bodies/ http://seliger.com/2014/04/20/volunteers-nonprofits-really-w.... Nonprofits still need to cultivate volunteers, as volunteers tend to also be donors and volunteers want a tangible sense of community, but if you're really looking at cost-benefit, focus on money.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Which really brings up the question of having a charity based social support structure instead of just delegating that to the government and letting a few hundred million required to run the entire thing be written off as a sig fig error of the military budget.
  - harryh 7y ago
    Annual donations to charity per year in the US are in excess of 400 Billion (so about 1000x more than your off the cuff estimate). Rather than being a rounding error in the military budget, this is about 2/3rds of total.
    - lmm 7y ago
      > Annual donations to charity per year in the US are in excess of 400 Billion Yes, but how much of that is "social support" versus, say, wealthy people structuring expenditures they were going to make anyway to be more tax efficient.
      - harryh 7y ago
        There are some stats here on where the money goes: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=42 https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&... I'm not really sure what "wealthy people structuring expenditures they were going to make anyway" even means.
mr_crankypants 7y ago
I believe you may be conflating food banks and food pantries. Food pantries are places that distribute food directly to people. Food banks are centralized places that distribute to soup kitchens and food pantries, not to individuals. They exist to solve exactly the problem you're describing: Allowing a large number of small organizations to achieve economies of scale by pooling their resources.

com2kid 7y ago

The author might be missing the main reason people donate canned food. It isn'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't judge!). 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. 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'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]. 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. [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's entire point is invalid.

mc32 7y ago
Speaking of canned foods I liked as a kid were: the little peas in the silver can, tangerine wedges, Viennese “sausages” and spaghetti-os. All of them are barf inducing to me now.
- com2kid 7y ago
  > the little peas in the silver can Canned peas are terrible. Canned mandarin oranges (Google turns up no results for canned tangerines?) are actually an essential ingredient in quite a few recipes, well unless one wants to peel a bunch of tiny orange wedges by hand. Canned Vienna Sausages likewise have their place, rare as that place may be, and there are actually higher end canned brands that are rather edible. So, fun fact about sense of taste over time. Kids have a more sensitive pallet, food tastes super strong to them, so it is often more bland or has simpler flavors. This is why kids can't eat lots of bitter or sour things, they taste really bitter or really sour. As we grow older, our sense of taste starts to die out, and so flavors are less intense. This means overpowering flavors become less overpowering, and we can taste more "refined" foods. And we can also tolerate pickles. (See: Tendencies for older adults and red wine[1]) Exact same goes for our sense of color and taste. Again, as we get older, brighter colors, and stronger perfumes become preferred. Back to food, simple kid foods either taste bland, or have one dominant flavor. In American famously it is mac and cheese. The texture is simple and the flavor is simple. [1] IMHO most red wines taste horrible, but at a certain age we just can't taste how horrible they are and they become tolerable.

ryanmercer 7y ago

The ones here in Indy, specifically Gleaner'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.

patio11 7y ago

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. If you're feeling charitable you can virtually always find a charity amenable to you which has outcomes they'd like to cause in the world but for lack of money and help them vis the lack of money.

autarch 7y ago
This really is not exactly the same. For nonprofits that do things like run big events, it's often a lot better to have 15 motivated event volunteers than 15 part-time temps hired for the day. They're about equal in skill, but one is free and actually cares about the cause. I say this as someone who was involved in organizing many large events for an animal advocacy org in the Twin Cities metro. Volunteers are also better at many other tasks such as outreach, for example handing out leaflets. For that sort of thing you need a lot of bodies, and people who care about the cause will do a much better job. I say this as someone who spent about 19 years helping run a local animal advocacy org in the Twin Cities metro. Ironically, what we could have spent money on was hiring staff to reduce the load on people like me ;)
Scoundreller 7y ago
As someone with a desk job, mindlessly sorting cans for an hour actually seems relaxing.
- ianstallings 7y ago
  I pick through boxes of potatoes/carrots, throwing out the bad ones and bagging up the good ones, then throwing those bag into another box. I do things like this for 2 hours on the weekend at a local charity called harvesters.org. At the end I've worked up a sweat, but it's quite relaxing and I always meet friendly people there to chat with.
jbob2000 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

MrLeap 7y ago

Canned food is harder to embezzle.

siphon22 7y ago
This. Goods are real, once they get it, they gotta do something with it. As soon as the donation model becomes money only, they can start filling their pockets wider while also buying less and lesser quality goods for those in need. Yikes.

imtringued 7y ago

If you're going to donate money then cut out the middleman and just give it to people directly.

pessimizer 7y ago
An organization may have an easier time finding people than you do. Needy people are informed about organizations and seek them out, they don't have to rely on having to know you.
saltminer 7y ago
The article explains: > 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. Charities can get the same goods for much cheaper than you or any needy person with no connections can.

benjohnson 7y ago

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

Causality1 7y ago

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't appeal to one's ego but the reality is poor people generally use money to improve their lives and frivolous spending does not increase when given cash.

monktastic1 7y ago
Can you elaborate on what you find offensive about it?
- VLM 7y ago
  There's a logical fallacy problem where everyone knows that people with (legal or illegal) addictions spend all their money on their addiction so giving money is just donating to the local liquor store or crack dealer. However the logical fallacy problem is, true, most addicts end up very poor as the addiction proceeds, but most poor people are not addicts. So giving money to an alcoholic merely means they die of liver failure a little sooner which is "offensive" but giving money to people who are generally poor mostly helps non-addicts. Note there are local issues. In big cities the working poor are too busy to take a monetary handout (panhandle) so virtually all opportunities for urbanites to hand out money, involve feeding an addiction, even if the vast majority of the poor people in the city are working poor.
- Causality1 7y ago
  It's difficult to separate the concept of giving money away from the concept of being tricked or taken advantage of. It was not easy to give up the belief that welfare would be best tackled by shipping big boxes of essential supplies rather than a cash or a credit system.
sdfsaf 7y ago
I understand where you are coming from, but I've come to find it horrible to put judgments on a donation. Am I better than the panhandler that I know what he should receive? What should I give a panhandler? A sandwich? Maybe he's has celliac's. Or diabetes. A gift card to the coffee shop? Maybe he needs gloves. Money to buy gloves and a sugar free lunch? Maybe he's an alcoholic. Instead, just donate. Just help. Just see the person lying on the floor as a fellow human being fully deserving in dignity. If you're Christian, see Christ sprawled on the floor and make sure your right hand doesn't see your left hand.

pg_bot 7y ago

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'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'm being honest will probably sit idle until they expire.

dade_ 7y ago
Grocery stores love them, they even make bundles of money, er... bundles of canned food for people to buy with their groceries and drop off in the donation bin when walking out the door.
- ASalazarMX 7y ago
  If the store made sensible bundles that combine into meals, that'd actually be much better than donating whatever scraps you find in your pantry.
cgriswald 7y ago
Indeed. My process is buy cheaply -> put in pantry -> consume -> donate old stuff but before it expires.
efa 7y ago
Correct. Or if I find a coupon getting canned item X for a nickel a piece I buy 50 of them for the foodbank.

quickthrower2 7y ago

I found this unusable on mobile. so https://outline.com/23nkx4 https://outline.com/23nkx4

JTbane 7y ago

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

rchaud 7y ago
Nothing wrong with donating your time and labor. But if you're concerned about waste, why not visit the website and glance through their annual report? Nonprofits are regulated and their financial statements are independently audited, so you can see exactly what the aid to salaries/op expenses ratios are.
- reroute1 7y ago
  Probably because that's a lot of extra work. And donating a can takes care of the obscurity problem and is dead simple.
- JTbane 7y ago
  >why not visit the website and glance through their annual report? Number 1, I'm lazy and don't want to do that. Number 2, I'm not a business person and don't have any idea of what an ethical administrative budget would be. 5% of donations? 50%? I have no idea.
  - lalaithion 7y ago
    There are organizations which rank charities. https://www.charitynavigator.org/?c_src=WPAIDSEARCH https://www.charitynavigator.org/?c_src=WPAIDSEARCH https://www.givewell.org/main?utm_expid=.Mr3umtjnSuel86Mlr0lMEA.1&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F https://www.givewell.org/main?utm_expid=.Mr3umtjnSuel86Mlr0l... https://www.charitywatch.org/top-rated-charities https://www.charitywatch.org/top-rated-charities
  - exolymph 7y ago
    Okay, so the actual reason here is that you're lazy, it's not a lack of information. I get that — I'm lazy too — but don't cite vague concerns about administrative budgets when you could literally search "how much should a nonprofit spend on administration" and find 237947209847 articles about evaluating that. There are entire organizations like GiveWell dedicated to answering that question and they do in-depth research so that you don't have to. Chrissake, you have no idea how much we deal with this working at nonprofits. "You are nefariously concealing information from me!!!!!" "Have you tried looking at our website?" The answer is basically always no.

markvdb 7y ago

Giving to make the world a better place? Read about effective altruism [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism

skybrian 7y ago

This might be more clearly worded as: don't buy canned goods just to donate. Give money instead. On the other hand, if you're cleaning out your kitchen, it's nice to have something useful to do with food that's still good, rather than throwing it out. Better to have avoided buying it in the first place, but purchasing mistakes happen.

CodiePetersen 7y ago

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. 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't want to line a ceos pockets they want to help their neighbor. Most of the foodbanks we went to were churches and local groups. They weren't interested in managing accounts for foodbank replenishment they just did drives when the needed more. It's immediately easier. When you give a physical thing it has purpose. It'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'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. Depending on the source they bought it from, that money also goes directly back to the community. So there are a lot of benefits to donating food. If you want to donate money fine. But I'd wager if the only choice was donating money less people would donate.

brlewis 7y ago
>Non profit ceos make 100s of thousands of dollars a year. That money comes from cash donations. People don't want to line a ceos pockets they want to help their neighbor. Do you think this factor outweighs the efficiency factor from the article? Worst of all, the average consumer is buying their canned goods at four to five times the rock-bottom bulk price that can be obtained by the food bank itself. 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. The savvy buyers at the Calgary Food Bank, for instance, promise that they can stretch $1 into $5.
- CodiePetersen 7y ago
  Yes considering depending on the nonprofit large percents of that one dollar donation go to other things like advertisements posters shirts etc. By the time you cut that out you are only going to get two cans worth. So what's more important getting someone off their feet to participate in their community or money.

throwaway3627 7y ago

I know some sane, elderly homeless people. They generally prefer ready-to-eat, non-refrigerated foods, not canned foods. 1. Canned foods are heavy. 2. Canned foods usually aren't very appetizing, especially the pantry and seasonal rejects people usually donate. 3. Canned foods usually require eating and opening utensils. Canned foods aren't what the homeless want or need. Instead of "beggars can't be choosers" arrogant rationalizations, maybe donors should do some research to figure out what recipients actually want and/or need? 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.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

RappingBoomer 7y ago

yeah, give money to the food banks..those food bank execs have mercedes payments to make...

gwbas1c 7y ago

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

lazyant 7y ago

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

tathougies 7y ago

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'd just be tossed.

calvinbhai 7y ago

after feeling the "buyers remorse" 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). (I'm just focussing on job creation and improving accessibility)

lazerpants 7y ago
Why do you feel buyers remorse after making gifts to charity?

sxcurry 7y ago

Please consider the source when you read this article. The National Post is Canada's right wing "newspaper" filled with misleading articles and half-truths.

sdfsaf 7y ago
This article is BS, and the NP does have an editorial stance I sometimes find annoying (their anti-Trudeau stance, while understandable, is becoming pathological). But it is not ""newspaper" filled with misleading articles and half-truths." any more than any other leading Canadian newspaper.

Medicalidiot 7y ago

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

slothtrop 7y ago

People aren't concerned about canned food being mismanaged, but they are so with money. That's really it. It will be expended properly.

icebraining 7y ago

That's curious. In many country, food banks plainly tell you they don'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't want to focus on raising money over wasting less food.

sdfsaf 7y ago

I donate money, food and my wife's time (time I would otherwise enjoy for myself instead of babysitting two kids) The food is part of my pantry management. We don'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. 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? The donation of food has an aesthetic appeal - I'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. I would not donate more money if I didn't donate food. I'm not homo economicus and the increased money signal from purchasing less canned goods doesn't tug on my donation levers. I.e. I don't take partial derivatives of my (woe me, undefined!) elasticity and demand functions. I even keep wool Costco socks in my car to give out to panhandlers in the winter. Surely the $15/pack could have been put to better use! But imagine the joy of a panhandler receiving a small package from a more fortunate. Hopper was full of it when he posted this a few years ago. He's full of it today.

geggam 7y ago

Money can be misused. Food cannot.

spaginal 7y ago

The author is missing the point of the canned food drive. 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. This also provides the benefit of potentially less food waste in the community, which is always a plus. 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.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

I volunteer at my local food bank. It is my best day of the week. 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. 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.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

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. 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. 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. But some problems would best be served by social justice, not charity. "Give a man a fish, feed him for the day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime." We have a world in which we glorify giving away fish while often actively refusing to "teach a man to fish." Example: Discussions of homelessness routinely dismiss the idea that such people can be meaningfully helped to resolve their problems. They get dismissed as crazies and addicts who simply can't be helped. Meanwhile, my efforts to develop useful websites while homeless and monetize them was snidely characterized by someone as me "panhandling the internet" and people generally didn't want to hire me. I was clear I needed more earned income to get off the street. Charity wasn't going to give me my life back. But I couldn't seem to get taken seriously by anyone.

misterprime 7y ago
I 100% agree with your assessment. >They get dismissed as crazies and addicts who simply can't be helped. How can we identify which people are in which group? Is it simply a matter of advertising a path out, and those willing to try will follow up? Obviously, this assumes someone has a functioning path out, which I don't.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  I think the best approach is make paths available, let people sort themselves by which path they prefer. I have a functional path out. No one cares and I can't get support for further developing it. I posted this to HN. It got no traction. https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-people-first-model-for-addressing.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-people-fi... I am actively working on developing additional resources, for example: https://genevievefiles.blogspot.com/ https://genevievefiles.blogspot.com/ Explanation: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/lgbtq-individuals-are-at-increased-risk.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/lgbtq-indiv... I would like to also put together information related to understanding and resolving our current housing crisis (because that's one of the root causes of homelessness). I've made multiple stabs at starting a website to gather such data. The latest was started yesterday: https://americanhomeworks.blogspot.com/ https://americanhomeworks.blogspot.com/ But ad income for websites generally has tanked in recent years and I get endless excuses and justifications for why writing shouldn't get paid at all and I get told I should get a real job and stop whining. I don't feel like rehashing that in detail for the umpteenth time on HN. Short version: there are enough people here with money to spare that it really shouldn't be hard to adequately fund my Patreon for me to be able to blog full-time instead of spending time trying to come up with money to survive doing writing of a sort that people here decry as "ruining the internet," but almost no one wants to put their money where their mouth is. They are all too happy to watch the world burn while loudly decrying how it can't be fixed and once in a while patting me on the head for making my life suck less but not actually taking me seriously as someone with anything of real value to offer cuz Reasons. Meanwhile, I'm nearly broke as usual and wondering how the hell I'm going to get through the rest of the damn month because doing low paid writing for clients is harder than doing quality writing on my own sites, but developing my sites mostly doesn't pay. Too bad, so fucking sad. It sucks to be me.

nkrisc 7y ago

If a food bank didn'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't want or need. Am I so naive to assume that any organization that accepts cans must be OK with them and any that doesn't want them wouldn't accept them?

ridgewell 7y ago
Donation bins for nonperishable goods are there for a few reasons. 1. Promote Awareness of the Food Bank, and to create connections with either potential clients or donors. Having a presence that you walk by on your way to buy lettuce can have a long term benefit on name recognition. 2. Improve store relations. Donors buy products from the store at full-markup, and the store has more incentive to continue to support its own community initiatives from the reminder that the store supports the food bank. Grocery stores tend to have some autonomy on the causes they can support. 3. Some people genuinely do not like the idea of donating money to the food bank. They prefer the physical act of buying something to donate, whether it be because they're worried about mismanagement of funds, the money going towards paying staff, or wanting to have a direct impact on the program itself (I only want my money to go towards food). Some people limit their contributions to stuff that's about to expire in a month from quarterly pantry clearing, or when they're about to move. On a side note, some people don't want to end up on a fundraising list or hassled for donations. Cans are effectively anonymous. A small donation of $10 to a food bank that sends out quarterly fundraising mailouts can mean $6 of your donation went into fundraising.

_zachs 7y ago

Don't buy this article at all. The only thing a cash donation can be stretched into is salary for the "non-profit workers".

ken 7y ago

It's true that canned goods don't have the impact that money does, but it's infinitely better than some things people donate. Glass jars have to be carefully set aside for special handling, if they haven't broken yet. Homemade or unlabeled food is simply thrown away. If you're going to donate food, at least donate cans.

Waterluvian 7y ago

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.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cannonedhamster 7y ago

I work for a local church food bank. We don'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.

patrickyeon 7y ago
Call the nearest large food bank (as in, the county food bank that serves a city with a population of X00,000+). I suspect they would be happy to share knowledge, there may even be a meta-organization you can join to get help running your organization. I don't know where you are or how it's done there, but as a single data point the food bank for Alameda County (a fair bit of "East Bay" in the SFBA) would work with an organization like yours by having you come in and pick out piles of food from their warehouse for free or hugely reduced prices.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  Thanks I'll see what I can do with this information. I'm in Massachusetts so anyone with regional or local information would be greatly appreciated as well.

louis8799 7y ago

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 "food bank". When I first read about the title, I was thinking what other food I can donate, donating money wasn't seem to be in the realm of option. Simply change the name "food bank" to "food fund" will solve the problem.

hellenawaithera 7y ago

its good to donate it to the less fortunate and street children https://finance.uonbi.ac.ke/node/97519 https://finance.uonbi.ac.ke/node/97519

hellenwaithera 7y ago

its good to donate it to the less fortunate and street children https://finance.uonbi.ac.ke/node/97519 https://finance.uonbi.ac.ke/node/97519

enriquto 7y ago

I hesitate to call charity outright "immoral", but it gives me the uneasy feeling that it does not really solve any deep problem. I'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). 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 everybody will get to be happier.