Where does it all come from?
Half of our current members are NEW. We have doubled in Size since January 1st. We get a lot of questions.
I wanted to share what the week looks like. Many folks don't know what happens the rest of the week. I would like to take the time to write this up and share where we get food, how it gets to us, etc.
Sunday - This day in my entirety with the program has never been a day at the site. Patty and any of our Advisory team members may meet to chat about the shopping and things to offer for the week, what we got into the site that is to go out, etc. Mostly, on Sundays we try to rest up. There could be a possible glean, but we really try to not do Sunday events.
Monday - Monday starts at about 9 am (8am during school). We have a member who goes to 2 Safeway stores and picks up donations. We have another member who picks up donations at Winco. In addition, we get produce from Gathering Together Farm. We have a crew that works diligently Monday morning to get everything setup and ready for shoppers to come. This is a very long day as the cleanup crew hasn't been finishing until about 6pm. Our last shopper is at 4:15. We can always use extra hands for cleanup on Mondays!
Patty and Alicia have a coordinator meeting we attend via zoom bi-weekly in the afternoon. There are 14 groups that are in the Linn Benton Counties and we have 1 person who coordinates for all 14 programs. She is amazing!
Tuesday - The only thing we have "schedule" is that someone needs to go down to the site when the food bank gets there and take the totes off the tables and stack them or put them in the can. The can is the big box outside the building. We do get calls for people who want to donate or occasionally will get our large donor request that we do Tuesday instead of Thursday.
Wednesday - Wednesday we pick up from Safeway and Natural Grocers. This is a team of 2 that go and do this pickup. We also pickup from the Corvallis Farmers Market bi-weekly. We currently have a volunteer doing this. Patty is at the site from 9 until Farmers market comes back. We are often organizing, cleaning the pig bins, cleaning the fridges.
Thursday - Prior to COVID19, we didn't have a large donor give directly to our program. We mostly only had food and once a month got a few items (think less than 1 pallet). The items that are out front (soaps, lotions, body wash, toys, etc) are something that is a privilege that Linn Benton Food Share allows us to pick up and be a HUB for the gleaning groups. We are a hub as Patty has created relationships with other gleaner groups and LBFS. We have other groups come to our site and are able to share items from this donation. This is a huge amount of work. It is sometimes as many as 4 truck loads. I am not talking about a pickup truck. I am talking about a 1 ton truck. We are told our pickup times etc from the donor and we must accommodate their schedule. This is a huge warehouse for the donor, and we do not have control of when they allow us to pull into the location. Please be mindful of this when volunteering. We can only guess the time that the truck will arrive for unloading.
We pick up KFC on the 3rd and 5th Thursdays of the month. We have a team that does this currently.
Friday - We pick up from Safeway and Trader Joes's on Fridays. There is a crew on Friday who help setup for Saturday distribution. There is also open slots on the volunteer form for folks to sign up to help on Fridays with this! If we have the opportunity to order food from Linn Benton Food Share, we will also have what we call a warehouse order. One of the members will drive the van to Tangent and pick up the order to bring it back to be unloaded. Thanks to the Siletz Grant and Ann Morgan our Siletz Grant writer, most of the costs of the food is covered by grants.
Saturday - Distribution day again. Saturday is the larger distribution day. The morning crew picks up from 3 Safeway stores, Winco, and bi-weekly at Costco. The buzing of feet are running quickly to get the space setup for members to shop. This day starts as early as 6:30am. Shopping ends around 4 and then cleanup after. Folks are welcome to come help cleanup at the end of Saturday always to ease the work for all.
In addition to this, there are funding committee meetings to attend, PCS meeting to attend, phone calls to make, computer work to do, the blog to keep up to date, food orders to make, etc.
Summer and Fall, we squeeze in gleans when we can. We typically don't know when we will get a call for a glean or even a produce pickup. Gleans are usually scheduled, but it is often the donor who chooses the time, the allowances of number of people, and children. If someone is interested in learning more about gleans and how to be a gleaner coordinator, we would be happy to train you. Often times we get a call asking if we can go do a pickup of produce right now. We just never know.
We are a super active and communicative group. We work very hard to keep folks informed.
