Action Tips: 11 Food Drive Ideas

1 in 6 U.S. households don't know where their next meal is coming from. (Shocking, right?) You can do something about this. We've put together a list of food drive ideas for you. 

1.  Ask a local grocery store if you can setup a drive at the store. Have friends give out information about the collection as people go in. On the way out, collect the donations.
2. Setup a competition between grades or homerooms in your school to see who can collect the most food. 
3. Host a movie night and charge a food item as the admission price. Take it a step further: ask a local movie theater to host it. Now you can get hundreds of people and cans of food.
4. Have a pajama/dress down day. Set a goal like, if half of the students bring in food, you get to dress down.
5. Got an event coming up? Holiday party or concert? Big basketball game? Make a food item the price of admission.
6. Create a raffle and get great prizes donated. Price of a raffle ticket? Duh, an item of food.
7. Get Your Teachers Involved like Columbus High School in Iowa did. They put teachers on the school roof on a drizzly, cold day. (Seriously!) Each donated item added a minute of lock-up time. The result? Over 6 hours on the roof!
8. Have a lemonade or hot chocolate stand (depending on the season). Pick a good location and get people to work it. Advertise it with posters a few days before like, “Want some lemonade/hot cocoa? It’ll cost you a can of food!”
9. Pick a weekend day and have groups of friends compete to see how much food they can collect in their neighborhood in 2 hours. You’ll canvas your whole town in no time and probably get a good work-out too.
10. Make a theme for each day of the week and tell people to bring in cans that fit the theme, like Protein Monday or Carb Friday.
11. Offer to help neighbors with yard work in exchange for food donations.

For more ways to help fight hunger, check out our Action Guides section. GO