To find a location where you can get help with food, please go to our Resources page. Or, type your zip code in the box.
We are excited about your interest in helping to end hunger in our community. Our success and growth over the years can be directly attributed to individuals and groups like your own who volunteer their time and energy to help improve the lives of others.
This document contains information you will need to organize a successful food drive. Please keep in mind that we are always here to answer any questions that may arise. Just call our Food Procurement Manager at 303-652-3663 ext. 222.
Ball Corp. collected over 9,000 pounds of canned food during its food drive in November of 2011. They used a competitive format, where each department within the company tried to collect more food than the others. It worked wonderfully!
Thanks, Ball Corp.!
Organizing a food drive can be fun and exciting. The best way to ensure a smooth effort is to spend time planning the drive. The primary steps to include in your plan are:
Set dates: When setting the date, allow plenty of time to prepare and get the word out.
Set a goal: Decide how much food you would like to collect during your food drive. How many potential contributors do you have? How much can you reasonably expect to collect from each donor? Will you collect food or cash / or both?
Develop a Collection System: Determine how and where food will be collected. You can use boxes, barrels or bins. Small to medium-size boxes work best for food drives. They aren't too heavy when full and can be decorated with festive wrap or Community Food Share posters. We encourage you to collect your own boxes for food drives.
Food Delivery: Once collected, one of the best ways you can helps us is by delivering the food to the Community Food Share warehouse in Niwot, located at 6363 Horizon Lane. We are in the Monarch Office Park, off Highway 52 near the Diagonal Highway (Hwy 119) - please refer to this link for directions and operating hours. Your extra effort to deliver the food helps the food bank be more efficient.
If your drive has generated 1,500 pounds or less (up to 150 grocery bags), you might consider delivering the food directly to one of our Member Agencies (partial list below). Please contact the agency directly to see if they have the space to store it, and would like to accept delivery.
O.U.R. Center303-772-5529
Good News Center 303-678-9550
Emergency Family Assistance Association303-442-3042
Sister Carmen Community Center303-665-4342
The success of your drive will depend on how well you get the word out. Here are some tips to make it easier.
Come up with a fun slogan and theme for your drive. Some theme ideas include:
Make sure to include the following information in your publicity materials:
Develop materials: These include flyers, posters, banners for lunchroom, articles for your newsletter, interoffice memos or emails, public service announcements and press releases.
Food items that are urgently needed by our member agencies and clients include:
A successful food drive can also include monetary donations. Since we are a member of Feeding America, the nationwide network of food banks, we can obtain truckloads of food donated from the manufacturer, just for the cost of freight and packaging. We can also buy on the wholesale market. If people would rather donate money instead of food, we can use those dollars to obtain four times more food than your contributors could have bought with equivalent dollars at the grocery store. Donors can simply make a check out to Community Food Share. (and money is so much easier to carry than heavy boxes!)
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