Increase Your Distribution Capacity 

Factors that may limit your distribution.

Your food transportation capacity may be limited.

For example, if one volunteer is able to pick up food from the program’s primary food source once per week, the carrying capacity of the volunteer’s vehicle multiplied by 52 weeks equals the food program’s carrying capacity.

Your food storage capacity may be limited.

Only a few charity food programs in America are housed in a facility designed for that purpose.

• Your distribution days and hours may be limited to a few hours or a few days per month.

In light of these typical constraints, the average charity food assistance program in America probably has an annual carrying capacity of about 40,000 pounds.

Create enough distribution to end hunger

Some communities have responded by increasing their agency's carrying capacity. That works. But in many areas, there is a need for more groups to get involved in distributing food aid to the needy.

Make sure that you know about other existing food assistance programs in your community. The easiest way to identify them is to check with the following organizations:

If you are researching an area larger than your immediate community, contact the company that produces your local phone directory and ask them to send you or to help you find phone books (yellow pages) for all communities not covered by your local phone book. Phone directory information may also be available online through a service like Swithboard.com. Search these directories’ under the headings “food,” “human services,” “social services,” and other headings you can think of for additional charity food aid agencies your other searches may have missed.

Recruit more distribution centers.

Contact every church, temple, synagogue and mosque by mail or by phone to see if you can recruit them into becoming a part of your charity food assistance system. Tell them about the size of the hunger problem, about the consequences of hunger and about the number of food pantries needed to end hunger in your area. If they weren’t willing or able to open or operate their own food pantry, get them to commit to at least helping support the pantries other groups were running.

Send out press releases to get media coverage of the pantry search and development effort, and seek out opportunities to present the subject to local civic clubs, United Way boards, ministerial alliances and other interested groups.

In most communities, the above efforts can get you 70-80 percent of the way to finding, developing and recruiting the number food pantries required to end hunger in your area.