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What’s the Neighborhood Food Project?

We launched the Ashland Food Project 10 years ago to make it easy for people to donate food to our local food bank. We realized that many of our neighbors wanted to help fight hunger in our community, but after work and family life just couldn’t find the time. So we created a simple, door-to-door food collection system.

“It’s a system of giving and collecting food that’s so easy, anyone can get involved, no matter how much time they have.. and it’s so effective that we’ve consistently brought in meaningful amounts of food for our hungry neighbors. What’s more, it gives people a purposeful – and fun – way to work together.” —John Javna, Neighborhood Food Project founder

Here’s How it Works.

We sign up neighbors in our community to be Food Donors and give them a green bag. They fill the bag with as much non-perishable food as they want. Then every two months (on the second Saturday of every even month), another Food Project volunteer picks up their green bag, leaves a new bag for next time, and brings all the bags to the local food bank.

It’s a Success!

The Ashland Food Project was so successful (about 30% of the town now participates) that neighboring towns in Jackson County, OR started their own Food Projects—which inspired us to create a 501(c )(3) organization called the Neighborhood Food Project to support efforts in new communities. So far, there are more than 40 Food Projects in 10 states.

These local Food Projects are providing a consistent supply of food to their local food banks and making their communities stronger—by bringing together students and seniors, busy families, and a wonderful, diverse mix of volunteers. Last April in Medford, OR, for example, 35,000 pounds of food was collected from nearly 3,000 donors and was distributed to fifteen food pantries.

“It’s awesome! We get an order of food in every other month; it’s like getting a Christmas gift six times a year. Now we get enough food in consistently so we’re not worried about having enough for our clients.” —Jason Bull, Medford Gospel Mission Food Pantry

Helping other Communities – Start and Sustain.

Working with dozens of local groups over the last ten years, we’ve learned what challenges are common to every Food Project—and we’ve created systems and tools to help deal with those challenges. For example, we now know that Food Projects can expect to lose 15-20% of their Food Donors each year because people move or have other life changes. So how do Food Projects refresh their base of Food Donors? We’ve invented reliable ways to do that!

The Toolkit

More and more communities are contacting us, asking for help. We’re ready to expand our capacity to help new communities start and maintain their own Neighborhood Food Projects by creating a TOOLKIT that contains all the tools and information they need.

This Toolkit will enable us to keep up with the demand, provide thorough guidance and support, and help everyone who wants to fight hunger in their community right now.

And that’s why we’re here on Kickstarter! We’re going to give the Toolkit to communities – FOR FREE. We need your help to create it.

The Toolkit will include:

—A New Website Template that communities can customize.

—How-to Videos: Everything from how set up a food drop-off to repairing green bags.

—Recruiting Videos: To help attract & sign up volunteers, from steering committee members to food donors.

—Testimonial Videos to use on websites and social media/promo material.

—Essential Graphics: Thank You cards, brochures, door hangers, reminders, refrigerator magnets, bumper stickers, lawn signs, etc.

—A Media Kit: With templates for newsletters, press releases, social media programs, PSAs, and more.

—Step-by-step Handbooks: Explaining everything from setting up a pilot program to finding sponsors.

—A Shopping App: Food donors will use it while they’re shopping, to find out what local food banks need.

—Templates & Detailed Instructions for all our Volunteer Recruiting and Retention Programs: We’ve developed wonderful programs such as Families for Food, the Student Hunger Strike Force, the Green Bag Connection, and an annual recruiting event called “Green Bag Day.”

—And much more

Help Make it Happen!

With your generous pledge, we’ll have the capacity to bring the Neighborhood Food Project to new communities and an ever-growing group of energetic volunteers. These volunteers will directly—and sustainably—support local food banks and food pantries. And those institutions will, in turn, make sure that none of our neighbors go hungry.

Thank you for your generous support!

John, Brad, Mark, Courtney and the Neighborhood Food Project’s thousands of volunteers.

The Neighborhood Food Project is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 corporation. Your contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Risks and challenges

We were able to launch this ambitious project with $100,000 in private funding and grant support. We have already developed the programs listed above and begun working with a very talented team of videographers, writers, designers and programmers. We’re well beyond the concept stage. With a successful Kickstarter campaign, we anticipate that we will be able to complete the Toolkit by late summer 2020. We will make the individual materials available for free to existing Neighborhood Food Projects and new communities, as each item is completed.