“It’s not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving.”

— Mother Teresa

Regular needs

When you go out to shop, please will you leave something in one of our collection points listed below? Take a look at our note about quantites, below, and If you are able to deliver your gift in a strong carrier bag that’s a great help, since we always need more bags to fill.

Everything that we give away must be in date, so please help us by checking “use by” dates. Also, please check for any alcohol content, as we have to be scrupulous about not giving away products containing alcohol.

Gifts of money

Donations of goods don’t cover everything we aim to give. As prices increase, need increases, but we see donations at the various collecting points becoming less, while we have to buy more out of cash donations and grants, and at higher prices.

So the cash donations keep us going by supplementing the food and other goods collected. Each week we spend hundreds to buy more essentials. We can do this because of some generous grants, and cash donations from individuals, but our reserves are shrinking. If you want to make a financial donation, please fill in the contact form and our team will be in touch. Donations qualify for Gift Aid.

We’re very grateful that last Winter’s crowdfunding appeal donations were matched by the AVIVA and Co-op Community Funds, tripling each donation under £250 until 26th January 2023.

Where you can give

Donations of food and certain other essential supplies can be left at any of the Drop-off points above. Volunteers sort and pack the items into bags. Each bag contains enough supplies for 3 days for a family of up to four.

We work in partnership with agencies like CAB and the Family Centre. Also we receive referrals from Social Services, Health Visitors and doctors, who identify people in crisis and refer them to the Food Bank.

Those in need of help are referred to one of our distribution points to receive a bag.

Quantities

It might seem that larger is better, especially as by buying large packs it’s possible to give more for the same cost, but there are big difficulties with “big”:

We try to provide a balanced range of essentials each week to visitors. Some have to carry them all the way home from the distribution centres, so having to carry something really heavy might mean leaving other vital items out. But we can’t open large packs to repackage the contents into more manageable sizes. That would mean handling unpackaged food, which in turn would involve the added expense of certifying volunteers, refitting the distribution centres to make them acceptable for unpackaged food handling, complying with health regulations, and dealing with inspections.

So multi-packs that contain individually-packaged items are very welcome (like the big boxes of tea bags that contain sealed batches of forty), but huge packs of pasta, rice, or even tea bags, present us with a tough problem.