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How We Feed America…

As we get into the thick of the holiday season, it is our hope that every person is able to have the food they need and are able to enjoy the festivities that many of us look forward to all year round.  However, the sad truth is, that there are millions of families across America who are unable to afford the food they need to prepare and enjoy healthy holiday meals. In fact, this time of the year is a painful reminder of what they wish they could have, but don’t.  However, it doesn’t have to be that way and you can help!  FeedingAmerica invites us all to engage with them for the month of December through participation in #GivingTuesday, #WhyIFeedAmerica, and/or Feed New Traditions.

On Tuesday, December 1, Feeding America recognizes #GivingTuesday—a global day dedicated to giving back. #GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable giving season and is observed on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday , and Cyber Monday. Did you know, with as little as $1, you can help Feeding America secure and distribute 11 meals to people facing hunger?  Pretty amazing!  What a wonderful way to not only spend your $1, but also a wonderful opportunity to help others during the season of giving.

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Are things tight for you this holiday season, but still want to help?  You can help out at your local food banks by volunteering your time.  While you are at it, encourage others to help by participating in #WhyIFeedAmerica.  #WhyIFeedAmerica is an opportunity to share your intention and reflect on why it is important to give back and support Feeding America.  Maybe you know someone who has been an inspiration, that you met who is or has battled with not being able to afford food for themselves or their family.  Sharing these stories helps get the message out and the awareness of real issues in our country surrounding hunger.   I am thankful that I always have been able to have food on my table, growing up, and now as an adult.  The fact that this isn’t the case for so many, is not only heartbreaking, but you wouldn’t think it would be as prominent as it is in a developed nation such as ours.  Shouldn’t every American be able to afford the food they need?

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Lastly, take the time to participate in Feeding America’s Feed New Traditions this holiday season.  Feed New Traditions is a content series built to share stories about the people FeedingAmerica serves, and to show you, their volunteers and donors, the impact that you have. With all of our testimonials from #WhyIFeedAmerica and experiences about why this issue is so important, we will be able to inspire more people to help one another in need to have the means to celebrate new traditions this holiday season.

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So, whether you choose to donate or volunteer, by bringing attention to hunger you can make a new tradition with your own family by supporting hunger relief this holiday. We hope you are encouraged to contribute to Feeding America’s efforts, and enabling more families access to the food they need to enjoy a happy holiday season.

How to Grow Your Nonprofit or Charity Food Pantry

Running a nonprofit charity is not easy, one that focuses on helping people get fed is even harder.  We all need to do our part to help end hunger, nothing is sadder than thinking of someone in your community who is going hungry.  Thinking that “someone else will help” is never a good plan, so we have to support the outreach programs in your area.  We’ve proudly partnered with Feeding America for years and they have grown tremendously over the last decade.  But even with Feeding America, there’s thousands of local and regional shelters and food banks that help connect the supply chain with those in need.  Sadly, most don’t know what programs are in their community, it’s one of those out of sight out of mind problems.  If they are doing their jobs, no one notices.

 

These organizations are very busy, and often scrape to make ends meet, so generating awareness or even trying to raise donations locally becomes an afterthought.  Fundraising is a critical part for most of these organizations.  Endowments support some, which helps with this side of things, but for the rest of them they rely on the community to pitch in, and outside of Thanksgiving and Christmas it’s often forgotten.

 

One thing that I learned working with these organizations is that there are two distinct groups of homeless people, the chronic homeless and the situational or temporary homeless.  The second group makes the majority of homeless people, they look just like you or me, but due to a bizarre string of events, they ended up homeless for a period of time.  It can range from no family in the area or alive, losing a job suddenly then get into a car accident and next thing they know they are on the street with no time to prepare.  The scenarios are endless, these people just need a little help to get back on their feet.  Fate handed them a bad hand and they just need a few weeks or a few months to get back to a productive life.  This could be your cousin, your former roommate, a work colleague…bottom line, anyone can be down on their luck very suddenly.  The first group, the chronic homeless, this is who you see on the streets with signs week after week, the “face” of homeless.  These people generally have substance abuse problems, abuse throughout their life, and sadly often have mental health problems which cause a lot of their hardships.  These people need help too, but the short-term homeless are who your help will impact the most, they just need a little assistance to get back to a normal life.

 

One trick we’ve found that helps these foodbanks and soup kitchens get food to those in your community is a Google Grant.  What’s a Google Grant you ask?  It’s a program where Google will give free Google Paid Search credit to nonprofits.  In turn the nonprofit can use this to increase awareness of their charity to the community, generating more awareness, donations, volunteers, and supporting events.  Google Grants run through Google Ads and require a lot of consideration to maintain compliance you should consider an agency to help with your Google Grant Management we’ve found great agencies that charge as little as $399/month to manage and optimize the $10k/month in free paid search dollars.