Here’s a great article about food drives, which are endemic this time of year, and why the traditional canned food drive is a really terrible idea.
The problem is that, economically speaking, it’s totally insane.
Here are the salient points, quick and dirty:
- All across America, charitable organizations and the food industry have set up mechanisms through which emergency food providers can get their hands on surplus food for a nominal handling charge.
- Dealing with sporadic surges of cans is a logistical headache. … Food dropped off by well-meaning citizens needs to be carefully inspected and sorted. A personal check, by contrast, can be used to order what’s needed without placing extra burdens on the staff.
- A lot of waste also occurs on the other side of the food-donation equation. Rosqueta observes that a surprisingly large proportion of food—as much as 50 percent—provided to needy families in basic boxes winds up going uneaten.
- From your perspective, it’s much easier to document a monetary donation for tax purposes.
Yglesias is right that we’ve been culturally conditioned to think that asking for cash is rude or gauche, and that non-cash gifts are always better. This may be true when selecting Christmas gifts for your grandchildren, but it’s far from the truth when it comes to feeding the hungry.
So, let me be rude on their behalf: Find well-managed charities in your community and trust them to know how to do their job. They have access to food at a fraction of the price. They know their clients, and they have better things to do than to sort through your canned goods. … Good intentions are lovely, but particularly in hard times it’s more important to make sure your charitable dollars go as far as possible. Can the cans. Hand over some cash.
