I’ll add that food banks also prefer money over the can of beans that’s been sitting in your pantry for six months. They can buy in bulk at great rates and they know what the community needs.
100% correct. For example, the Chicago food depository is an amazing organization with a really well run warehouse. It’s best just to give them cash because they can buy in bulk and obviously it’s easier to manage large quantities of identical products than one-off donations.
Food banks also get a lot of bulk food donations from grocery stores and distributors. But they need cash to pay for trucks to pick up the donations, and to rent operating space.