Thank You, Food Drive Donors
With five days notice, North Loop volunteers and donors organized an emergency food drive that collected 1,840 pounds of food for CES, Community Emergency Service, of Minneapolis.
SNAP benefits were set to expire while the federal government was shut down. Mollie Scozzari, a longtime North Loop volunteer, reached out to the NLNA Board of Directors with the food drive idea. Two days later, Scozzari had secured CES as the food shelf partner and Fulton Taproom as the host.
The NLNA put the call out to its volunteer list, and immediately had 20 people sign up. The social media post about the food drive was shared widely across Instagram, so volunteers braced themselves for a strong turnout.
Donors arrived early with cars filled with food and supplies.
The first volunteer shift was greeted by three cars waiting in front of Fulton, before the food drive officially started, with their trunks filled with food. Thirty minutes later, the donations had spilled past Fulton’s designated donation area and a large sorting and storage operation became necessary in another part of Fulton’s space.
There was so much food that volunteers had to sort and pack in Fulton’s spare space.
The donations remained steady throughout the afternoon. After just three hours, more than 1,800 pounds of food and supplies had been donated, according to CES’s official measurement.
Fulton was kind enough to keep the piles of donations until CES could arrive with a truck two days later to pick everything up, with help from more North Loop volunteers.
The donations were immediately put on CES’s shelves at their Minneapolis location.
By Mary Binkley, North Loop Volunteer