27 creative ideas for food and fund drives

Here are some great ideas for making your drive fun and successful.

1. Encourage cash donations. A dollar goes a long way to bring food to people in need. For every $1 donated, FOOD for Lane County can collect and distribute five pounds of food. Money is also easier to store, deliver and count!
2. Foster competition between departments, classrooms and teams.
3. Offer rewards to top donors. Pizza parties, gift certificates donated by local businesses or a front-row parking space for a month make great incentives. Let employees wear jeans to work each day they donate canned food.
4. Assign specific food from the most wanted foods list to each team. Give a special prize to the group that donates a well-balanced collection of foods.
5. Encourage teams to choose a mascot, motto, team name or cheer. The sillier, the better.
6. Make colorful posters noting the specifics of your food and fund drive. Include FOOD for Lane County’s logo, list of most wanted foods and facts and figures about hunger. Display posters in restrooms, hallways, lunchrooms and classrooms.
7. Create a giant thermometer or can to measure progress toward your goal. Place it in the front lobby or employee break room.
8. Give your drive a name such as “Gifts from the Heart,” “Feed the Need” or “Eugene Can!”
9. Decorate bags for participants to take home, fill with food and return.
10. Design a paycheck envelope stuffer with information about the drive.
11. Designate theme days. Fill a playpen with infant formula on Monday. Plant a “garden” in the lobby with canned vegetables on Tuesday.
12. Using your workplace’s email or public address system, share a hunger fact for each day of the drive. Quiz people at random and hand out small prizes to those who remember the facts.
13. Kick off your drive with opening day festivities. Be wacky, informational or inspirational.
14. Bring your group for a tour of FOOD for Lane County.
15. Hold an auction. Nothing drives up cash donations like the enticement of a massage or airline tickets.
16. Bake sales, pie-throwing contests and car washes are tried and true food and fundraisers.
17. Organize pledge drives. Ask family and friends to pledge money if you walk, run, swim or paddle a specific distance. Skip lunch on certain days and donate the cost of lunch.
18. Recycle your treasures at a sale. One person’s junk is another person’s treasure.
19. Sponsor a bake sale, organize a cakewalk or hold a chili feed.
20. Organize salad, soup and potato bars. Hold pizza parties. Sponsor an ice cream social. Hold a potluck. Sell popcorn.
21. Hold a book sale or a silent auction.
22. Create a pop can collection station.
23. Sponsor a craft bazaar.
24. Collect food and funds at sports events such as basketball games, mini-marathon runs and baseball games.
25. Place donation jars and food bins near break rooms, copiers and fax machines.
26. Sponsor a brown bag lunch. Ask participants to donate the cost of a lunch or a lunch sack full of nonperishable foods.
27. Generate pyramid power. Have teams build a pyramid of food. Or ask teams to bring foods representing the nutritional pyramid.