Food Drives are so important to our mission. Below are the steps to hosting a food drive in our community!

1

We will provide a list of our current food/paper goods needs. If you’d like to include gift certificates to Market Basket in increments of $20 or $40 on your Food Drive list, we are always in need of those, as well. However, we do not accept open items, expired items, perishables, frozen items, or unlabeled products.

Food drives usually run for 10-14 days.

Advertise on Facebook on the Reading Parents Network page, Reading Pay it Forward and we'd be glad to advertise on the Reading Food Pantry page, as well. Include the dates of your food drive, your donation drop-off address, and a list of food/household items that you are collecting. Use your personal email contacts to let your friends and family know that you are running a food drive. Make flyers and hang them around town, if permissible. We have lots of community members, including children, who run food drives for us—they are easy to run and they are so helpful to us!

When your food drive is over, email us to coordinate a donation drop-off time. The Reading Food Pantry is open every Wednesday between 4:30 pm and 6 pm for donation drop-off at 6 Salem Street, Reading. Our door is located in the back of the Old South United Methodist Church.

We love to post pictures of the donations that we receive on our Facebook page, with your permission, of course. It highlights your commitment to community service and lets the community know that food drives are doable and are a great way to stock our shelves!