Thanksgiving volunteer question

November 23, 2005 2:11 PM

Thanksgiving volunteer question: I live in the SF Bay Area and have no plans for Thanksgiving (tomorrow). I'd like to go out and volunteer to help people get fed instead of sitting at home watching football feeling sorry for myself. Anyone got leads on where one would go to do such a thing in Berkeley, Oakland or SF?
posted by garethspor to Grab Bag (8 answers total)

craigslist has some listing - it seems like there are a few others looking to volunteer like yourself. maybe email them and see if they've got any info?

there may not be thanksgiving-specific volunteer listing, but volunteercenter has a list of organizations that are constantly looking for help. maybe you can generate the list and start contacting one organizations at a time.
posted by grafholic at 2:18 PM on November 23, 2005

San Fran:
Food Not Bombs! They'll be giving out hot soup/bread/food to the homeless at UN Plaza. Or there's a really big church near Polk & Geary in the Tenderloin, I think....call the Salvation Army in San Francisco and they'll give you a ton of leads.
posted by evariste at 2:36 PM on November 23, 2005

St. Anthony's

Glide
posted by jasper411 at 2:41 PM on November 23, 2005

I'm almost certain Glide is the church I was thinking of, thanks jasper!
posted by evariste at 2:44 PM on November 23, 2005

networkforgood.org should have some listings up.
posted by kosher_jenny at 4:55 PM on November 23, 2005

Try volunteermatch.
posted by tentacle at 7:15 PM on November 23, 2005

A nice gesture, but Thanksgiving is not exactly the most helpful time to volunteer for food programs and the like. It may be different in SF, but where I live there is a huge surplus of volunteers for this sort of this at Thanksgiving. It's a bit of an honour to get to serve food for the homeless around now.
It might be a whole lot more helpful for the organization if you planned to help out at some other time of year, and actually did it.
Of course, I could be wrong. I live thousands of miles away. Do offer anyway, but be prepared for polite rejection.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 2:42 PM on November 24, 2005

I tried doing that last year (albeit in Florida), and everyone I talked to echoed what Count Ziggurat said: they have too many volunteers on Thanksgiving day. You might want to try again over the weekend. It still feels just as good to help, even if it's not a holiday.
posted by Sibrax at 6:17 PM on November 24, 2005