Thurston County Food Bank

Background

Retaining Volunteers

Volunteer recruitment is a constant effort for gleaning operations. It is important to understand the needs of your volunteers, and the best ways to retain their efforts season after season.

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Attracting Interest to Your Program

A few tips on marketing to attract volunteers and donors.

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Networking in Your Community

Networking in your community allows mutually beneficial partnerships and often increases your ability to meet client needs.

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In TCFB's experience, gleaning programs don’t need many donors, but rather key donors. Maintaining good relationships with these donors is vital to for the gleaners to continue to harvest the thousands of pounds of produce from local farms each year.

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History of Thurston County Food Bank and Gleaning

TCFB houses a wide array of programs from gleaning projects to a CSA program to food drives to student internships...

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Produce Recovery

Tips on Starting a New Gleaning Program

Tips on starting a new gleaning program, including assessments and organization.

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Plant Starts as an Introduction to Donors

Thurston County Food Bank distributed thousands of plant starts during spring and early summer of 2011 as part of the Plant-A-Row Program.

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Backyard Fruit Tree Harvests

Motivating community in Thurston County to pick produce before it falls and is forgotten.

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Food Bank Garden

The Thurston County Food Bank partners with The Kiwanis Club of Olympia to run a successful garden program that produces 40,000 lbs of food every year!

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Promoting Gleaned Produce

Once you have established a gleaning program and have fresh vegetables and fruits coming through your food bank doors, it is important to make sure that clients know how to prepare and cook with the produce.

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Cull Gleaning

Big farms funded a large portion of culled produce for Thurston County.

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Row Crop Gleaning

TCFB built up their row crop gleaning with small farmers who produce for the local farmers' market and/or CSA.

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Thurston County Food Bank

Website

http://thurstoncountyfoodbank.org/

Thurston County Food Bank (TCFB) is located in Olympia, WA. Established by volunteers in 1965, TCFB has continued to grow since that time. TCFB reaches the community through a variety of services; food bank distribution, satellite location distribution, FORKids, mobile food bank sites, and summer lunch program. TCFB utilized 7800 volunteers who donated 50,379 hours this past year. Thurston County Food Bank has a large presence in the Thurston County community, serving 57,234 clients in 2014.