Were you given a list of what to provide? If not:

Cooking oil
Crisco
shelf stable quarts of milk
evaporated milk
blocks of shelf stable velveeta (makes a good mac and cheese with evaporated milk and elbows)
canned pie filling
evaporated milk
graham crusts
iced tea and lemonaid mix
boxed pie crust and cornbread mixes

Anonymous wrote:PP and I do not want to be ungrateful; it’s just that we have demands and needs beyond Thanksgiving. You know when we’d love to have a food drive? The dead of winter, like late January. Or, summer! Everyone forgets that summer with children out of school is incredibly stressful for families barely scraping by and who often rely upon school provided snacks and meals.

I live in DC, where schools give free lunch all year around. They have so much to give away that a family can take multiple boxes, even if only one child is in school.

Are you working with an agency/food bank or pantry for the distribution? If so you could call and tell them you are open to doing food other than canned goods if there are foods their clients would prefer. In my area, I've seen 25lbs of rice as an option that seems popular and there is often a choice of turkey or pork for pernil. When people have a choice of grocery gift cards, they often choose pricerite/aldi/shoppers over Giant, which is so expensive. Would your donaters be open to giving more cash for gift cards? I've noticed that older people sometimes prefer the traditional thanksgiving basket, while younger people prefer to shop themselves-so the preferred opinion depends on a lot of factors!

Rice, dried beans, dried peas, pasta, tomato paste, tomato sauce, canned beans, vegetable broth, oatmeal, low sodium soup, dried seasonings, peanut butter, sardines, canned tuna, tea, instant coffee, these are staples that I always buy when the kids have food drives at school. For any drive targeted at adults, I give money.

Just as a PSA- people can donate their Opentable points to feed the homeless/needy. Just click on your account.

PP and I do not want to be ungrateful; it’s just that we have demands and needs beyond Thanksgiving. You know when we’d love to have a food drive? The dead of winter, like late January. Or, summer! Everyone forgets that summer with children out of school is incredibly stressful for families barely scraping by and who often rely upon school provided snacks and meals.

Longtime food pantry volunteer. Most of our clients are immigrants and do not want to serve their families unfamiliar foods like canned pumpkin, stuffing and green beans.

I’d urge you to instead purchase a Giant or Walmart or Target gift card. It’s far easier for the charity and the families this way.

One year, a smaller professional office decided rather last minute that they’d like to give our charity frozen turkeys and purchased maybe 25 and wanted us to give these out to our neediest families. It was tough going; first, many of our families live in small, shared space and even if living in a fully functional space, have never cooked a turkey nor would even want to try. Then, we needed to seek out families who would want a turkey and that was the hardest part.

All up against our own holiday schedules and arrangements. We ended up giving most of the turkeys to a food bank with available refrigeration. Anyway, another volunteer was stuck with making these arrangements.

So: please help by contacting the charity and ask what they might need right now or immediately after Thanksgiving.

Anonymous wrote:It's generally better to donate money than food for these things - the organizations can make your money go farther using their sourcing arrangements than you can make it go at the grocery store.

So true!

It's generally better to donate money than food for these things - the organizations can make your money go farther using their sourcing arrangements than you can make it go at the grocery store.

I always donate seasonings. Jars of sage, oregano, basil.

Like many on here, my workplace is doing a food drive. We will collect canned goods and money, with the money going toward a grocery store gift card for a turkey and maybe a pie.

Is there any way to make the collected foods better? We will do boxed Mac and cheese, boxed stuffing, instant mashed potatoes, etc. I wish the veggies could be frozen but they will have to be canned so as to be shelf stable.