As I was writing about the needs of a local food bank yesterday, news about the crisis in the food banks in New York City hit the Interwebs. Amanda Marcotte wrote about it on Slate. Bryce Covert wrote about it at Think Progress. The Daily Kos covered the story.
What can YOU do?
1. Call your local representatives and tell them that you support additional funding for food programs.
2. Send your local food pantry a check. Food drives are nice, but most of the food pantries would prefer cash. They can order items directly from suppliers, which means a lot less leg work for the workers. Driving around town picking up bags of cans is very time consuming. Food drives also don’t provide the sheer quantity of food than these food pantries require.
3. Volunteer your services. These food banks need help unloading trucks. If you’re around during the day, they will happily accept another set of hands. They also need other services. They can use legal help at times. They need help applying for grants. They need computer assistance (many volunteers are over 65 and aren’t digital natives). They need help with publicity.
4. Find out if your company provides matching funds or donates services.
People in your neighborhood are hungry. Let’s do something about it.
Apt. 11d 
Since I do have something substantive to say, I will comment on this post. Everything Laura said is great, and I just wanted to add a little bit more:
With money:
1) food pantries can get things cheaper than you can, so donating money actually gives more than donating the same dollar amount in canned goods
2) food pantries know which foods they need and can buy them with your money, instead of accepting whatever you feel like giving. They work very hard to make sure food baskets are nutritionally balanced with foods that will work together, and getting 100 cans of peaches might not provide anything useful for baskets if what they really need is peanut butter.
Other things:
3) If you do donate food, don’t donate expired cans or stuff you don’t like. It creates unnecessary work for food banks to throw out expired stuff, and it’s also offensive to assume that hungry people will gladly eat stuff you won’t. Hungry people also deserve appetizing food.
4) For other volunteer ideas, if you have the skills, see if your local pantry offers a cooking class, or volunteer to teach one. We have a family friend who is a chef, and she teaches cooking classes for low-income women based on food bank-type items and minimal kitchen equipment. She has the time, mental energy, and skills to plan and test out interesting and unusual one pot meals that a lot of people who are hungry and working full time just don’t have.
5) Also, check if there is a food bank distribution center in your area. Often times they need help too, and they often don’t get as much attention from casual volunteers since individual food banks are more visible.
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Also, this isn’t strictly hunger related, but other places that need donations are women’s homeless and domestic violence shelters. Donating money is also the best, but if you want to donate stuff, IIRC socks, sanitary napkins & tampons, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and deodorant are most needed.
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