Don't donate canned goods to food banks (2017)
As a kid who grew up in a family that needed foodstamps and foodbank runs I guarantee you what you get at a food bank is a hundred times better than what you parents are going to have to invent with frozen peas mayonnaise and bread.<p>Also keeping the donations as food ensures the donations go directly to helping your community. Non profit ceos make 100s of thousands of dollars a year. That money comes from cash donations. People don&#x27;t want to line a ceos pockets they want to help their neighbor.<p>Most of the foodbanks we went to were churches and local groups. They weren&#x27;t interested in managing accounts for foodbank replenishment they just did drives when the needed more. It&#x27;s immediately easier.<p>When you give a physical thing  it has purpose. It&#x27;s not 5 dollars going who knows where. You know someone somewhere got a can of creamed corn. Most of these people donating I would say aren&#x27;t going to go out and buy a bunch of stuff. But they will look in their pantry and see if there is anything they are not using.<p>Depending on the source they bought it from, that money also goes directly back to the community.<p>So there are a lot of benefits to donating food. If you want to donate money fine. But I&#x27;d wager if the only choice was donating money less people would donate.