“For a long time we just basically kept politely quiet about the fact that food drives weren’t as helpful as people assumed,” explains Greg Bloom, a development assistant at Bread for the City in Washington, D.C., “but that changed when we became more diligent about stocking our pantry with healthy foods.”
Bloom explains that they tried providing a specific list of items for people to donate, but even so “we find that almost half of what comes to us in any given food drive just doesn’t meet our nutritional standards.” Under the circumstances, telling people that money is more helpful started looking like a more appealing option. Today, a large share of the remaining canned food donations that Bread for the City receives comes from federal government offices where, somewhat perversely, employees aren’t allowed to stage cash drives (though giving through the Combined Federal Campaign is an option).
Talk about making the perfect the enemy of the good, plus it seems a little presumptiuous to decide what people can eat, why not let people choose what kind of foods they want to take from the food bank, rather just wasting things you don't think they should be eating.
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