Food Banks statewide are being asked to help step up the level of record-keeping that is being done by agencies handling TEFAP products.  We are therefore asking that a new version of the mandatory distribution log be in use by most agencies by the start of 2012 – mobile pantries, snack programs, and group homes are exempt.  Both the log and page-long release to be posted at those agencies should be customized with the agency’s name.  Agencies should also post the generic income guidelines for TEFAP.

Once again, we have lots of USDA chicken available.  The number of cases in online ordering is deceptively small  – there will be more coming to replace our current stock of drums and thighs.  These cases of chicken have the regular USDA handling fee of 12 cents per pound, so each 43 pound case comes to $5.16. With 8 pre-portioned packages to the case, you can provide a family with 5 pounds of chicken for only $0.65!

Need a suggestion for serving it up? Try food bank enthusiast Diana Rattray’s Garlic Chicken recipe. Doesn’t it look delicious?

If you have an order scheduled with our main warehouse in Comstock Park but cannot get it as planned, please call our main phone line, 616-784-3250, to cancel or re-schedule as soon as possible.  Don’t ask for Agency Relations (or send an email that might not get seen for hours), simply give your message to the person who picks up the phone.  We’ll take it from there.

We are implementing this new procedure because messages left by agencies were not getting directed to the appropriate people in a timely manner, therefore undeserved return-to-stock fees were charged.  We believe that following this standardized communication flow will prevent such errors from happening in the future.

We’d really love to see West Michigan information and referral services for food pantries get kicked up a notch, and one of your fellow agencies – Nonprofit Innovations, Inc. – has given us a great way to do that.  If your agency runs a public facing food program that gives people food or other grocery products to take home (and yes, that includes mobile pantry hosts), we’d like you to consider allowing us to post enough information about you for clients to show up at the right place, at the right time, with all things you’d like them to bring along.  (Mobile pantry hosts – if you’re concerned about getting too many families that way, you can simply give out enough information for them to submit a pre-registration at which point you can tell them exactly where and when to be.)    If you decide your answer is yes, please fill out the survey below.  We will upload the aggregated results to www.findafoodpantry.org.  Whatever information you choose to supply will be publicly available and easily found via online search engines like Google. After the upload is done, you’ll be able to update your information on the site.

You can access the PDF online here.

From the Food Bank of the Southern Tier, testimonials from food pantries that switched to client choice.