SCOUTING FOR FOOD/MANNA FOOD DRIVE COLLECTION DAY NOV. 11!
It’s time for the Potomac District Scouts’ annual Scouting for Food drive! I’ve taken on the role this year from the amazing Denise Schleckser. Please help your scouts step up to this food drive challenge with a generous grocery contribution yourselves, and help your scouts organize for the drive in your own neighborhoods. THIS FOOD DRIVE REPRESENTS 1/6TH OF MANNA FOOD CENTER’S FOOD DONATIONS EACH YEAR! Nearly half of all food collected goes directly to children. Last year, our overall district was considerably down from our 2012 high donation levels of 63,000 pounds donated. That means we served 250 plus fewer families in need last year than we did in 2012.
Manna is a lifeline to our neighbors who are hungry, and this food drive is poised to help so many in need. From now through November 6, I challenge us all to bring in at least one bag of groceries. If every family in our troop donated one bag, it would help so much. Asking neighbors to donate as well as multiplies our success! I will pick up donations and keep them in storage until our collection day on Saturday, November 10th.
New This Year: Acting on a tip, and after asking other councils, we found that many councils have eliminated using plastic bags, and are now using Post-it notes for promoting the drive, with good success. Neighbors provide their own bags and boxes for their donations. Scouts might also bring their own bags with them, in case some food donations need to be packed. The advantages of the Post-it notes are that they are easier to distribute to units and allow the note to be transferred from neighbor front doors into homes and kitchens as a reminder of the donation day coming up.
Saturday, November 3rd is the date Scouts should distribute their solicitation letters/Post-it Notes to their neighbors and friends (see two Word document samples for your use below – both a neighbor solicitation letter and a thank-you letter).
Saturday, November 10th is our collection day. Scouts can attach our brand new colorful 4X6 Post-it notes to their neighbor letters, or use the Post-it notes as a letter, and write their names in the blank space. (see the Post-it note graphic below).
Manna Food Center especially needs healthy, non-perishable items such as canned fruits and vegetables, tuna and other canned meat, whole-grain foods such as oatmeal, and organic foods. (Please do not encourage donations of perishable items.) Boxed and canned items, not bagged items, are easiest to keep safe.
Our collection sites remain the same this year, and volunteers are needed at each location to collect food, sort, pack the Manna truck, record pounds collected, and thank our donors, from 9:00 am – 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 10th:
– Our Lady of Mercy in Kensington parking lot – 9200 Kentsdale Dr, Potomac, MD 20854
– Loehmann’s Plaza in Bethesda – 5296 Randolph Rd, North Bethesda, MD 20852
– Bolger Center parking lot – 9600 Newbridge Drive, Potomac, MD 20854
Safeway is our corporate sponsor again this year. Safeway typically does not allow storefront promotions or their parking lots for collections. However, you might consider making local contact with store managers to see if individual stores will allow such use, or check with owners of the shopping center where Safeway is located. Headquarters can try to assist you with this if you make contact. The council level will offer limited promotions on TV and radio and in social media, but the best way to drive the campaign is for you to promote the food drive in your own local media, create signage, and tell as many friends and neighbors as you can personally.
Please start promoting Scouting for Food among your friends and neighbors. Word of mouth is the best way to encourage donations. Road signs can often help drive donations as well.
Don’t forget to begin recruiting scouts to help at the collection sites. We always need plenty of unloaders from cars, loaders for the food trucks, donation counters and recorders, and scouts to thank the families that drop off donations at our collection sites. Scouts can earn service hours and SSL hours for this volunteer time. Please consider taking photos of your scouts at work; we will publish a collection at the conclusion of the food drive.
Thank you for everything you do for our scouts! Let’s make this a hugely successful food drive this fall!