Welcome to Our Food Drives FAQ

The most important thing is to make sure the participants in your food drive or fundraiser feel valued for the gifts they share with their neighbors, whether that’s a can of food or a $5 donation.

We turn every dollar into three meals, thanks to our purchasing power and the community-minded food partners who offer us discounts for our food purchases.

Nonperishable donations are appreciated and help our food distribution partners meet the need in their communities.

Some groups only do fundraisers, some only do physical food drives, and many offer both options. Whatever works best for you, we’re here to make your organizing go smoothly.

There’s no set limit on how long you can host a Food/Fund Drive. However, we suggest keeping it to two to four weeks. This helps maintain excitement and momentum while keeping your everyone engaged.

Most food donations can be dropped off at our Detroit warehouse location between the hours of 7 am and 4 pm Monday through Friday. If you have a donation too heavy to lift by hand, please contact us at 313-308-0579.

To help us use our resources efficiently, we ask that all donation pick-ups be enough to fill two of our donation boxes or around 200 items.

All pick-ups are scheduled in advance and may take up to two weeks, depending on the season. For more information please contact a member of our team at communitygiving@gcfb.org or call 313-308-0579.

Since every $1 provides roughly three meals, it can be motivating to start with thinking about how many people you would like to try to feed and work your way backwards from there. For example, if you wanted to feed 2,500 people, reaching a goal of $833 would achieve that.

We recommend setting a goal of at least $500 and moving up from there based on the impact you’d like to make.

Setting up a virtual food drive lets your supporters see the fresh, nutritious food Gleaners can purchase at a discount with their contributions. It also provides an easy-to-use fundraising link where everyone can track progress toward your goal. To explore active virtual food drives and see if this is something you’d like us to set up, visit https://fooddrives.gcfb.org/events/.

Boxes: We're happy to lend you food drive donation boxes to help collect food. These sturdy boxes are 1.5 feet wide on each side and 3 feet tall. Each box holds about 100 non-perishable food items, making them perfect for larger collections.

Cash Canisters: If you're collecting cash donations, we're happy to provide donation canisters. These canisters are easy to use and help make collecting monetary contributions simple and secure.

Gleaners Stickers: Show your support with Gleaners stickers! They're great for labeling boxes, personalizing laptops or water bottles, handing out to donors, or even adding to notebooks to spread the word about your food drive.

Food Drive Posters: We can provide posters to help get the word out about your food drive. These posters make it easy to share the details with your community and encourage people to get involved in the effort to feed our neighbors.