Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Food Drive Ideas

Girl Scouts of the Colonial Coast host the Helping Hands Food Drive has a month long community service project in April, time when local food banks have the biggest need. Check out these ideas to make your food drive fun and successful:
  1. Place a food collection box at your school, place of worship, recreation center or a local business. Remember to ask permission first!
  2. Hold a traditional neighborhood food drive. Create fliers and distribute them to homes where you will go back to collect food the following week. Be sure to include the date and time you’ll be returning!
  3. Make posters about the food drive and post them in public locations. Include a list of items most needed by food banks and locations where donations can be dropped off.
  4. Hold a can building contest. Judges can award prizes to groups with the most creative construction and most cans. Be sure to be safe!
  5. Use door hangers to alert neighbors that you’re collecting food donations. We have a template for you to use here.
  6. Assign each girl in your troop a color of box or can. The girl with the most cans and boxes wins a prize!
  7. Pick a theme! Focus on collecting a certain type or group of food—breakfast foods, jars of peanut butter, healthy snack foods, etc.
  8. Plan a special event and "charge" a food donation for admission.
  9. Have a themed potluck dinner. Have everyone bring the recipe to share and a bag of the nonperishable food ingredients in their dish.
  10. Make thank you cards to give to people who donate food to your collection drive. We have a template to help you get started here.
Girl Scouts can also earn the Helping Hands Food Drive patch. Get more information here.