Need advice on how to properly run a food bank

October 8, 2022 4:58 AM

I am a member of a Tenants & Residents Association (TRA) on a housing estate in London, based at the estate's community hall. A month ago the TRA has started offering a food bank on Friday afternoons, run by an independent person (not a TRA member), with food donations from the City Harvest charity. Privately, other TRA members have come to me with several complaints about how the food bank is run. I'd appreciate advice – especially if you have experience of well-run food banks.

I am hearing the following complaints:

• The storage room is filling up with crates (photo). This interferes with other use of the storage room. (For example, the cupboards can't open anymore, and the TRA's freezer is completely full so cannot be used by the hall's kitchen.)
• There is permanently a lot of food being stored. This includes perishables like potatoes and bags of flour (photo). This could cause rot or attract vermin.
• Other TRA members suspect that the TRA chairperson, who arranged the food bank and is friends with the person who runs it, is using it for personal advantage. She has keys to the hall, and allegedly uses it as a personal pantry.
• Other TRA members allege that the food is not distributed equitably. They say the chairperson takes the best stuff and the needy get scraps.

I am not in a position to verify the latter claims and I do not want to make unproven accusations. However, the matters regarding storage space and vermin concern me too. The accusers say they have raised these concerns with the chairperson but were angrily rebuffed.

I'm thinking perhaps the best answer is to insist on clear rules, based on how other food banks are run? (It would be ideal if I could point to existing guidelines from an authoritative source, or if I could point to examples of other food banks.) For example:

• Insist that the food bank takes away all empty crates every week
• Insist that any food not distributed should be taken away. (Is this realistic though?)
• Insist that no perishable food is stored
• Insist that identical food parcels are assembled beforehand so that everyone gets the same

Are there similar rules at other food banks? It will be difficult to enforce these rules as there will not necessarily be someone present who can enforce them. The chairperson will react defensively to any interference – she already discourages other TRA volunteers from attending.

Any advice?

posted by snarfois to Human Relations (12 answers total)

The food bank in my town doesn't assemble identical parcels, but does limit how much total food each person takes away (everyone gets a certain size bag) and puts a one-per-person cap on scarce items. There's always a little griping about whether the rules are fair and whether anyone got more than their share, but it's the sort of griping that happens anytime people are competing for something important. It sounds like in your case the issue is low-key corruption, which is a different story.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:26 AM on October 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yikes, that's a lot of crates! I think you have a lot of standing to insist that the crates be removed, and it looks like you're rapidly approaching the point at which there will literally be no more room for crates. How are the crates getting there? Does City Harvest drop them off? Shouldn't the folks dropping off the crates be picking them up? What would happen if the crates were just put out on the pavement (or wherever would make sense)?

Likewise it would be extremely reasonable to designate a portion of the fridge/freezer that can be used by the food pantry and another that is reserved for use by the other users of the hall. If there is regularly a lot of food left at the end of the distribution period, that means they're sending too much food, or too much of the wrong kind of food.

If there's perishable food left over at the end of the Friday afternoon pickup could it be put in an open community fridge/pantry kind of situation, rather than being locked up until the following Friday?

I don't think identical food parcels will help much; a food bank in my city started doing that during the pandemic to cut down on interaction, and one of the results was people abandoning the food they didn't want, and other people complaining about the ungratefulness of the folks who didn't like kidney beans or whatever, and the abandoned food attracting vermin.

I feel like contacting City Harvest could help you get a reality check and at a minimum get the ball rolling on getting rid of the crates (but I say this with no knowledge of the organization).
posted by mskyle at 6:15 AM on October 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

To me this doesn't sound like a legitimate charity effort, it sounds like you all are being grifted. You have to define a problem before you can solve it & you might have one of 2 different problems - a disorganized charity or a pair of weird grifters.
posted by bleep at 6:50 AM on October 8, 2022 [6 favorites]

Have you spoken to other, well established, food banks to understand how they operate? I’d start there. In addition, have a conversation with the community hall kitchen users to understand what would work for them and go from there.
posted by koahiatamadl at 6:53 AM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Both food banks I delivered for during the pandemic operated out of donated spaces that served multiple other groups and so loaded in and out completely every day. Nothing was stored on site except brooms, mops and other cleaning stuff in a closet. Both also assembled identical boxes/bags for recipients. On the rare days there were leftovers of this or that item - extra bags of onions, or a handful of packaged meals - they were given to the volunteer drivers or delivery people after cleanup.

Now, most of the above procedures were either made necessary by Covid or by the dictates of how and when the goverment-run food providers got the food to the food bank. But the basic tenet that we would leave no trace of our work at the site after the day was over seemed like a no-brainer. Also, safe food storage requires training and certifications and inspections that the food bank did not/could not take on.
posted by minervous at 6:58 AM on October 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

Another thought. If you do take on this as a problem to solve…are you prepared to run this food bank or become known as the person who ‘ruined it for everybody’ by insisting it become well run?

If you’re dealing with self serving people who are abusing this charity for their own means they will not want things to become better organised. They will fight any changes/challenges and most likely find other situations to take advantage of if you persist and get traction.
posted by koahiatamadl at 7:04 AM on October 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Storage is always a problem with on-site food distribution - Tables and/or crates, & left-over bulk food. Finding a better storage option is probably more reasonable than the organizers having to remove everything every week. But, there are many places where there is not storage space and everything is loaded in and out every week, but that makes the job much harder. It sounds like someone told them, just put it in the storage room, without explaining how else the room is used, and that there still needed to be room for access for those other uses. Bulk foods like potatos and flour are often stored between distributions, as long as they are being checked every week and not just left for months, the risks of vermin and rot are extremely low. Use of the freezer also should have been negoiated up front. Again, the issue is more likely one of the distribution folks not knowing how the storage areas are used during the rest of the week.

Please do not move to identical boxes. While this can seem easier and fairer, the result is always greater food waste.

The issue of personal use of the resources is very real. Perception and reality can be very different, but the only way I have seen to avoid the perception that the organizers are some how getting personal gain is a clear delineation between volunteers/workers and food recipients. If the folks organizing are also getting food, there will be negative perceptions. This can be reduced by having volunteers/workers getting their food after everyone else has been served, but it will never go away as long as the roles are mixed.

This is based on 20 years of volunteering at and 5 years managing similar food distribution at multiple locations.
posted by hworth at 7:04 AM on October 8, 2022 [23 favorites]

hworth is providing really solid, actionable advice there.

The pantry organiser need to be responsible for returning all of those food delivery crates. City Harvest delivers the food in those crates, but they need to pick up last week's crates on the same run.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:21 AM on October 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Could the TRA insist that the food bank becomes a constituted group or incorporated organisation, as a condition of it being allowed to continue using the space? That would require a committee to be appointed and a constitution to be adopted, which would help with some of the governance issues around eg. organisers taking food. Going through this process also means giving important consideration to things like liability (which probably resides with the organisers as individuals unless they’ve taken steps to arrange otherwise).

It’s not uncommon for well-meaning one-person projects to have growing pains as they develop, but a lot of the leg work for managing this in terms of governance has already been laid out in template form by all the other organisations who’ve been down the same route before, and the organisations that oversee them. Of course, that doesn’t always help account for strong/difficult personalities, but it should at least provide a set of ground rules (eg. volunteers don’t take food; if they need food it should be assigned by another volunteer or a committee member), a committee of people whose job is to oversee the rules, and procedures for dealing with those who break them.

If the person running things is super-resistant to any kind of governance and bringing in other committee members, that tells you something useful and not-great about them, too - someone who genuinely believes in the work of the project more than their own control/vanity will be keen to put in place a structure that enables it to grow and thrive healthily.

There’s probably an organisation in your borough (or maybe London-wide?) that advises voluntary groups, that could give you advice on this kind of stuff.
posted by penguin pie at 9:03 AM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Best answer: - Based on your described scale of operation, it looks like that is way too many crates.

- Here's a short pdf with some good standard dry storage food safety practices.

- In my experience, it is not uncommon in unpaid volunteer-run projects for the volunteers to get some early access to the good stuff. In a volunteer-run bike collective, this looks like the volunteers getting first dibs on the bike parts. In a conference I'm helping organize, this looks like flexibility around signup deadlines. In a food share I used to volunteer at, this looked like first dibs on some of the good stuff. There are usually implicit guidelines about what's an acceptable use (vs. abuse) of the perk. Sometimes these get codified. Codifying these practices means limits can be established.

- As a last resort, you should know that volunteers can be fired. I would try to work with her to get her to accept help. Nobody should be irreplaceable, anyway. This seems like the most important (and probably the most challenging) answer to your question.
posted by aniola at 10:13 AM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

and not just to "accept help" but to accept other people as equals in the process.
posted by aniola at 10:14 AM on October 8, 2022

Best answer: Another thought: It's reasonable for you to expect basic food safety standards. Beyond that, it's not really your job to figure out solutions, unless you want to be a core volunteer. It's your job to successfully connect the person running the project with the complainers so that they can figure out and implement solutions amongst themselves.
posted by aniola at 10:25 AM on October 8, 2022 [4 favorites]