Food banks do more than store food. They also connect surplus to need. To help you serve more people facing hunger, here are some of the most effective food bank fundraising ideas and strategies to try.
According to Feeding America, more than 50 million people in the U.S. turned to hunger relief programs for help in 2023. At the same time, rising food prices and supply chain issues continue to stretch food banks and pantries thin.
Food banks play an important role in catching surplus food before it’s wasted, and getting it to the people who need it most. Whether it’s from farms, distributors, grocery stores, or local businesses, that food is collected, sorted, and shared through a network of community agencies.
With 1 in 5 children across the country affected by food insecurity, food bank fundraising is as important as ever.
To help your food bank serve as many food-insecure individuals and families as possible, we share some of our top picks for the most effective food bank strategies and fundraising ideas.
The “Give a Gift” fundraiser turns standard donation requests into something more meaningful by tying each amount to a specific impact. Instead of just asking for $10 or $50, you show your donors exactly what their gift will provide – making their support feel tangible!
Start by choosing your most-needed items, then create donation levels based on what different amounts can supply. For example:
If you’re using Donorbox Pro or Premium, you can take it a step further by adding images to each donation level. You’d be surprised at how much a photo alongside the donation amount makes the gift feel more real, and motivates donors to give more generously.
Have a look at how Dunedin Cares makes donations feel more tangible:
Food collection is not a novel fundraising idea, but it’s a solid staple for food banks around the world. If you’re not capitalizing on food collection, you might be missing out on a huge chunk of donations.
Reach out to local restaurants, cafés, resorts, and more for food donations. Stop by those locations in person if and when possible and explain that you’re leading a food bank. Ask if they regularly have any food items that, rather than throwing away, they could donate to the bank. Many will likely be willing to donate items that are reaching their sell-by dates, surplus items, and other leftover foods.
If you’re reading this during the restrictions imposed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the situation might look a little different. In most countries, restaurants and similar establishments have been ordered to close. However, while this certainly makes things harder – there are still ways.
For example, in Singapore, a large resort complex was closing for a month due to the coronavirus lockdown. The resort arranged for the restaurants on its premises to donate bread, vegetables, fruit, meat, dairy products, and 3,600 eggs to The Food Bank Singapore.
If you’ve missed out on this opportunity as restaurants, hotels, and air companies in your area have been closing down, not all is lost. Many are still doing deliveries and might still have surplus food to give. Make sure you reach out, connect, and see if they can donate to your food bank.
Fill the Bucket is a simple but effective fundraiser where individuals collect donations in person using branded collection buckets or tins. Your supporters can place these in their workplace, shopfront, or even walk around with them at community events.
To help your supporters get started, make branded buckets with secure seals available for order.
Also ensure that your fundraisers are well-informed when it comes to all the legal regulations, as well as any of your organizational policies (e.g. whether you approve of door-to-door fundraising or not). Ideally, you’d also send your fundraisers t-shirts, stickers, and more to help them grab people’s attention, all fully branded with your colors.
If in-person fundraising isn’t possible, consider inviting your supporters to launch an online peer-to-peer fundraiser instead! This lets them raise money on your behalf by reaching out to friends, family, and co-workers. It’s like a bucket collection, but shared via social media or email!
If your food bank gets a lot of traffic or takes part in community events, make a big impact by offering cashless ways to give.
Tools like Donorbox Live™ Kiosk make it easy to accept contactless donations anywhere and anytime. Donors can give instantly and securely with credit/debit cards, smartphones, and smartwatches.
We recommend starting with two kiosks:
Your check-in area probably sees new faces every day, so your kiosk will get a lot of exposure there. Engage with the community at local events and offer a quick, easy way to give.
Pro tip: Add suggested donation amounts to your donation kiosk and customize the on-screen messaging (e.g., “Your $10 donation will help feed a family of four for one week”) to encourage instant giving from supporters who are already in the mindset to help.
Here are some other ways Donorbox Live™ Kiosk helps elevate in-person fundraising.
Food drives are one of the main methods that food banks use to collect donations.
Although food drives are not as cost-effective as monetary fundraising, they do serve as a tool for raising awareness and building community support.
Encourage your supporters and website/social media visitors to organize food drives on your behalf in local schools, churches, office buildings, gyms, or wherever they’d be able to host. Specify which types of food you would like to collect (e.g. canned goods, bread and pasta, etc.).
Make sure you provide your fundraisers with the necessary information about your food bank so that donors know where the food is going.
There’s a lot of potential in food drives. To get the most out of them, help your fundraisers (or advise them) to create a theme for their food drive. For example, “Make Every Bean Count” could be a fundraiser aiming to collect beans and legumes, “Whole Grain Wednesday” fundraiser would aim to gather healthy grains and cereals, and “All Cleaned Up” could focus on collecting basic hygiene items.
For supporters who can’t host a physical drive, suggest starting a peer-to-peer fundraiser instead. This way, anyone (near or far) can help you reach your goals.
Tools like Donorbox Peer-to-Peer empower volunteers to create their own fundraising pages and rally support.
Food bins located in supermarkets – where supermarket customers directly donate food items – have long been employed as a fundraising strategy by food banks.
However, since there can be a great mismatch between demand (what food banks need) and the donations that shoppers drop off at those collection points, this might not be the best option for food banks and their beneficiaries.
Instead, consider partnering directly with supermarkets.
For some supermarkets, directly partnering with food banks remains core to their corporate and social responsibility.
In the UK, for example, Tesco (one of the largest supermarket chains in the country) has a long-standing national partnership with The Trussell Trust (which oversees the running of some 1,200 centers in the UK). The partnership involves permanent collection points in its stores and the annual Tesco Food Collection – a three-day event in November that sees volunteers gather additional food in the run-up to Christmas, typically the busiest period for food banks.
Pro tip: As a food bank, you can also advocate for better solutions. A grassroots campaign in France – led by shoppers, anti-poverty campaigners, and those opposed to food waste – resulted in a law that bans supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food, forcing them to donate it to charities and food banks instead.
With the large expansion of fresh produce offerings at food banks and pantries in recent years, creating a farm-to-food bank program has become more important than ever.
While plenty of food waste happens in our homes, 16% of it actually happens at the source: farms. Much of this waste has to do with logistical issues, but some food is also wasted due to cosmetic reasons. “Ugly produce” is often too “unattractive” to sell – whether it’s bruised, larger or smaller than ideal, or oddly shaped – so it ends up getting tossed.
In recent years, farm-to-food bank programs have expanded around the country to recover hundreds of millions of surplus and so-called “ugly” produce for those in need.
The main goal of creating or joining such a program is to enable your food bank to pay significantly below-market prices for produce surplus and produce seconds, or ugly produce (otherwise delicious and nutritious food).
Feeding America and state-level organizations have historically recovered millions of pounds of farm-fresh product through farm-to-food bank partnerships. However, recent federal funding cuts have threatened the stability of these programs, making local partnerships more important than ever!
Pro tip: You don’t have to rely solely on large-scale farm partnerships.. Get creative with community-driven initiatives, like Edmonton’s Plant, Grow, Share a Row program. This program invites local gardeners to grow an extra row of vegetables for donation to their food bank. While these donations might be smaller, they add up and are a wonderful way to engage the community from the ground up!
Partner with local and national businesses to raise funds for your food bank. The sky’s the limit when it comes to this one.
For example, you could have the business you’re partnering with run a challenge where whoever is late to a meeting donates $1 to a jar/account or pays $5 to dress down for a day. As a bonus, ask upper management to pay double and/or match the donation. This is one of the easiest and most effective ways to raise money in the workplace.
Ask the boss to join in the fun! For example, if their employees can raise X number of dollars for X pounds of food, the boss will shave/cut their hair, buy lunch for everyone, give everyone an afternoon off, etc.
What about developing an “adopt-a-month” program? This would allow civic organizations/churches/businesses to select a month when it is their responsibility to provide food to your food bank.
Top tip: Make use of monthly contributions. Get businesses, churches, clubs, or organizations to pledge a certain amount to your food bank on a monthly basis. Donations could also be in-kind, wherein a group may volunteer to stock shelves or sponsor a food drive once a month.
Competitions are a great fundraising tool for food banks!
For example, you could partner with a business and have their different departments challenge one another to see which can bring in the most food for a food drive. Have management keep a running tally posted in visible areas and offer a pizza party or breakfast to the winners.
With schools, plan a penny war between classrooms. Each class collects change in a container. Students throw dollar bills into the container of another classroom to “cancel out” that class’s change. In other words, change in the container equals “positive” points, while bills equal “negative” points. The team with the most positive points at the end of the war wins!
You could organize a contest between classrooms or grade levels with different categories (e.g. most protein, most diverse food, raise their weight in food, and more). Set it up with the school so that for one day or several, the school library allows students to “pay fines” with canned fruit or other food items.
Whether you’re working with a school, a church, or a business, you could do a Stuff-a-Bus, Fill-a-Truck, fill the Principal’s office, gymnasium, truck, bus, or another designated area with food. Outline a map and have the participants fill in the area with food.
Food banks are committed to feeding the hungry and aiding and nourishing our communities. But getting the resources you need often isn’t easy.
We know that your fundraising needs are changing rapidly. Whether you’re collecting donations online or in person, we hope this article gave you some ideas to engage your donors and raise much-needed funds.
Looking for a fundraising partner? Join the over 100,000 organizations who have used Donorbox to raise a collective $3 billion.
Ilma is a content writer with over eight years of experience, specializing in nonprofits and social impact, marketing, language, and psychology. She draws on years of volunteering in the nonprofit sector to craft thoughtful, research-informed pieces. Ilma is also a therapist passionate about mental health and often weaves this perspective into her writing.
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Ilma Ibrisevic