Organizing a Halloween Food Drive Event

Halloween is the perfect time for a food drive. During this fun season, many gatherings take place which allow groups to collect food items. Halloween food drives may be done by small groups, independently, or by a sponsoring agency. The number of people who will be participating in your Halloween event will determine how much coordination you need to do for your food drive.

Halloween food drives may be organized to support a member of the group hosting the event, may be established for particular families needing help, or may be larger in scope and support a food bank in your area. The size of your drive and the goal you set should correspond to the number of members you will have participating.

Once you have determined what level of a Halloween food drive you want to conduct, you can set your goals and coordinate the effort. For a small group, supporting one member, you may choose to have a group Halloween party and ask each member to bring a canned good to the party. Or perhaps you may have a progressive dinner at several members houses and divide the group up for providing not only the meal but also a matching set of ingredients for each item served to donate to the family in need.

If you are part of a group large enough to help more than one family, you may want to organize a Halloween food drive which assigns particular types of food to a section of your membership. For example, if your church Sunday School is going to hold a Food Drive to help four community families, you may consider splitting the groups up so that several classes provide vegetables, some provide boxed goods, a few with canned meats, and possibly one for cereal or children's snacks. By doing this, you can be sure your Halloween Food Drive provides a variety of food items for the recipients. Another way of doing this would be to decide on a menu. If your Halloween food drive will be to provide food for Thanksgiving season, you may make a menu and have your group members sign up for particular items. By doing this you prevent having 20 cans of yams, and no cranberry sauce.

For the largest groups, you may want to hold a Halloween food drive to support a local food bank. To do this, you should first contact the agency you want to support and determine what their needs are. They may have a specific few items which they constantly need. If this is the case, you may have a contest among your group by dividing into teams to see who can collect the most of their items. One group may be collecting peanut butter while another is gathering tuna. You can offer prices for the most cans per person, most cans per group, or largest value of items.

If your Halloween food drive will be collecting any type of item, rather than a specific one or two, you can consider doing a Trick or Treat to beat hunger. This works better with older groups instead of younger children. It is best to advertise in the area where your members will be visiting and publicize that instead of collecting candy for themselves, these members will be collecting donated canned goods.

Another way to conduct your Halloween food drive among larger groups is to have a canned food display contest. This event involves each group bringing in cans for the food bank, but they use those cans to make a display of some type. This type of drive would need to be advertised in advance to prompt others to join in the fun and give them time to come up with their design and the cans to build it. Canned food displays require a location for building, such as a school cafeteria or auditorium. These can be very simple or very involved and detailed but in the end the Food Bank wins with the number of food items donated to their cause.

Halloween can be a very good time to have a Food Drive. Organizing an event of this type can be a rewarding experience and provide resources to those in need.