You Can Help Us Find Food Drop-off Points

QUESTIONS FOR CHURCHES & COMMUNITY CENTERS

(Churches are probably best of all for numerous reasons!)

Thank you so much for being willing to contact some of these establishments, or any others you feel may be able to assist us in our cause. Please take notes if you can so that we can compile an informal record history of each facility we approach. If we left anything out, please feel free to be creative and to incorporate any other ideas you may have in order to encourage these places to get involved and to help us reach more people in need.

Upon calling or approaching each of these establishments in person, ask to be directed to the appropriate person who would be in charge of coordinating this kind of operation (perhaps this way, there would be a higher possibility in them wanting to participate). If they are not available, ask for their contact information so that you may try to reach them later. In the meantime, see if there is anyone else that may be able to answer any of these questions or have any further information or ideas.

1.) Do you currently have any perishable or non-perishable food drive/donating programs in place? (If not, skip to question #2)

If so: *How often (on a monthly/weekly/daily basis?)

*Can your establishment accept nighttime deliveries from the Souplantation? (Examples listed below)

-Could one of your church/community center members either (1) meet a couple of our delivering volunteers between 10-11pm in order to store this food (2) either in their own homes or (3) inside of the church or community center) immediately after we package up the food at the restaurant, for distribution the following day? Or…

-Would your establishment consider entrusting one of our volunteers/(most likely one of their own church or center members) with a key in order for Helping Hearts to have access to the kitchen or other room with a refrigerator where this food would be stored? (You may want to mention that you know of many churches that graciously make rooms in their facility available, even in the evenings, to self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. They appoint keys to the Secretaries of each group in order to extend their facilities for them to hold group meetings. A designated Helping Hearts volunteer could operate under a similar kind of agreement and make sure that they alone take full responsibility for the key and only enter the church’s property briefly during set times and days for food drop off and storage purposes. They then will lock up the facility completely, leaving it in the exact condition it was in prior to their arrival. It wouldn’t hurt to also mention this to community centers to see if they may consider doing the same sort of thing. ( This is currently done at one of our drop off points in San Juan Capistrano – it goes directly into a church kitchen for distribution the next day).

2.) If not: Would you be willing to potentially be a food distribution point for our charitable group?

--Discuss nighttime delivery & storage options such as those listed above…if they say that they do not have any storage space, FIRST explore the option of having a member of their establishment temporarily store the food overnight and bring it back to either their facility, or a nearby church/community center the following day for distribution. Perhaps they could throw this idea out to their members during a service, meeting, bulletin board, etc. to see if anyone would be willing to provide this service to help the poor, or be interested in helping in any other way.

--Discuss with them whether they could have their own members/volunteers heat up and distribute the food to the needy individuals/low income families one or more days per week. (It allows them the opportunity to minister to those local to their own site). Or…

-A combination of both: Perhaps our volunteers & their volunteers could work together in order to make this effort possible.

If neither of these two options is immediate and feasible, tell them that an easier way for churches and nearby community centers to make this effort possible is for them to simply “work in conjunction with one another.” For a real example, many community centers already have food outreach programs in place, such as (In this example Newland/Bolsa Ave. - Midway City Community Center….The only problem is that, due to their limited daily hours of operation, they cannot store the food overnight. But if a member of a nearby church (In this example Newland/Westminster – Church of Christ) would be willing to store the food overnight or entrust one of our volunteers with a key, the food could then easily be delivered to the very nearby community center for immediate distribution and consumption the very next day. This courtesy provided by the church can also benefit and potentially help to build their own church community because the recipients of the food will know that the food was donated by that church and they may be instructed to simply start coming to the church itself for the food sometime after that.

-(AS A LAST RESORT ) If they would like for Helping Hearts to coordinate its own volunteers to provide this service to the people during whichever times work best for their establishment the following day.

3.) Finally, ask if they know of any people who are in need of food, or if they know of any other people or establishment that may be interested in assisting us in this cause.