Reply to Is this a particularly uneducated take on food insecurity/poverty?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Longtime food pantry volunteer and board member. No two good outreach programs are alike.

Mine is all volunteer and provides non perishable food only but also can supply diapers, cleaning supplies and toiletries.

Our clients are nearly all working poor but make too much to qualify for EBT or food stamps. Typical client works seasonally, married with young children and renting an apartment or in shared housing.

Shared housing means limited storage space so we can’t give out industrial sized cans of tomatoes, for example. We request rice in 1 pound bags max. We can’t decant and repackage so donating your Costco sized bottle  of dish detergent/laundry detergent/ketchup/Mr. Clean/vegetable oil is burdensome for us. We have limited storage space too.

My charity partners with a farmers market and another local food bank to provide clients access to fresh produce, eggs and milk.

We keep an updated list of most needed items. 
Sometimes, we get specific and advice we have too much peanut butter so no thanks but really need jelly.

No expired foods. Prefer no glass jars. Nothing
opened or used.

All this said that the communication you received was terse and unkind. It’s frustrating dealing with unsolicited, unwanted food and donors who don’t understand that although they think they’re helping, sometimes they are making the work of the volunteers difficult.

I have had to deal with a literal pick up truckload of expired, dented, leaking boxes of canned goods dumped in our parking lot overnight. Had to pay extra for our trash company to haul it away - plus overfilled the dumpster with boxes the food arrived - huge unexpected cost to our little charity that operates on a shoestring budget.

[b]None of our clients have dishwashers, so we don’t accept not ask for dishwasher detergent.[/b]

[/quote]

Of course.   So if someone tried to donate dishwasher detergent, is it better to say "Unfortunately we are unable to use this because our clients don't have dishwashers.  Our clients could really use liquid handwashing detergent in smaller bottles?" or  
to say "Your detergent is useless?"[/quote]

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