Charity Guide To Being a Foodshare Recipient
From Foodshare wiki
Contents |
Joining Foodshare
If you are a charity that provides food to people you serve, Foodshare is here to help you. Typical examples include Care Homes, Hospices, Soup Kitchens, Food Distribution Programmes, Schools, Community Cafes, Food Pantries, Hospitals and Homeless Shelters. To join, simply register at Foodshare Charity Registration Form. Soon you will be able to search for local Grower groups (Schools, Allotments, Kitchen Gardener Groups etc) who you can contact to link up with. In the meantime, you can proactively kickstart food donations. Read on to find out how.
Promoting Foodshare
The quickest way to become a recipient of regular Foodshare hampers is to promote the Foodshare scheme through your established group of volunteers, supports and donors, many of who may be allotment holders, kitchen gardens or teachers in schools that have their own growing space (or may be inspired to start one to grow for you!) Below is some text you can copy, paste and customise to use in your email mailing list, newsletters, website, Twitter, Facebook pages. Alternatively you can download our example PDF used when promoting the Milton pilot Foodshare scheme. We will soon also put up a Press Release which you can edit quickly for your charity and distribute through your PR channels to put a call out to the local community to start a Foodshare team for you.
FOODSHARE - Calling all Food Philanthropists!
Are you a kitchen gardener, allotment holder or school teacher? We’ve just joined a new national scheme called Foodshare (www.foodshare.org.uk) which links charities with local growers (Foodshare groups) who either donate their surplus produce to charities or dedicate an extra growing area specifically to donate food. With rising food prices and an increasing need for seasonal and healthy local food, we’d like to invite you to set up a local Foodshare Group as a new way of supporting us. Some Foodshare groups have already saved charities thousands on their food expenditure, provided them with the freshest food they have ever had, and greatly reduced the charity’s food miles.
HOW CAN I GET INVOLVED?
It’s really simple to set up and we can even provide volunteers to collect the produce on a daily basis. To find out how to join or set up a local Foodshare Group, simply visit www.foodshare.co.uk. You can search for any local Foodshare groups already in existence or set up a new one. Why not invite a few friends to join you? There’s also a complete “How To” guide on the Foodshare site with lots of tips for your group.
“FOODSHARE BED”
Another initiative is to create a “Foodshare Bed” as part of the "Growing To Give" scheme which encourages growers to create a new patch or convert an existing one to grow food for their nominated charity. This is a brilliant way to donate food. We can guide you on the type of produce we’d really appreciate, so just get in touch!
www.foodshare.org.uk
Receiving Foodshare Deliveries
We encourage daily deliveries to keep fresh produce. If you have an appropriate space, you can leave a crate or container outside for Hamper Santas (people who deliver Foodshare donations) to drop-off the food. We only recommend this if the drop-off location is not public. Otherwise, provide Hamper Santas with available times when you can accept deliveries.
Surplus Food
If you are receiving too much to be able to use, store or freeze, please ensure that you have other routes for the food to be consumed. Here are some examples that some Foodshare charities have done:
- You may know of other charities who you can pass on the food to.
- You can ask volunteers if they can make dishes out of the produce that can be frozen.
- You can sell the produce to staff (at prices cheaper than the supermarkets) and have the money collected go into the main charity fund.
Food Waste
We encourage all charities to dispose of the waste from the food (off-cuts, peelings etc) in a sustainable and environmentally-friendly way. If you do not have your own compost or green bin facilities (or if the council charge you for removal of organic waste), please talk with your Hamper Santas. In the pilot scheme, Milton’s Children Hospice put all their food waste in a bin which was collected once a week by the Hamper Santas from the allotment who desperately needed more “green waste” for their compost.
