FAQ | Food Pantry - AmpleHarvest.org

Are there any costs associated with registering on AmpleHarvest.org?

Nope. None. Nada. Zippo. AmpleHarvest.org is totally free both for your food pantry (also called a food cupboard, food shelf, food closet or food bank in some parts of the country) as well as the gardeners using AmpleHarvest.org to find your food pantry.

What type of agency can register at AmpleHarvest.org?

AmpleHarvest.org is designed to make food pantries “visible” to neighborhood gardeners eager to share their excess harvest.

Other agencies such as soup kitchens and shelters may also take advantage of AmpleHarvest.org although our model was explicitly designed to meet the exact needs of food pantries.

The three requirements to register on AmpleHarvest.org are the agency must be:

Located within one of the 50 states of the United States.
A 501(c)(3) not for profit organization (most food pantries)
or a charitable organization with a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor
or an organization registered as a charity in their own state (some small charities)
or an IRS recognized faith organization (church, school)
or a government agency (town government for example).
And the donated food must be distributed at no charge to the recipient.

Individuals, ad-hoc groups and for-profit organizations may not register on AmpleHarvest.org. If in doubt, please send an email to info@AmpleHarvest.org

Our pantry has no refrigeration for storing produce, what do we do?

Because many pantries have limited refrigeration capacity with little or no room for bulky produce such as lettuce or melons, they usually provide only canned fruits and vegetables.

AmpleHarvest.org solves this problem.

On the Pantry Registration page, you are encouraged to put the day[s] of the week and the time of day that gardeners should deliver their produce to you. You can ask them to deliver the food just before you are going to distribute it to your clients. The produce should be in and out of your pantry within 1 to 2 days at most. Any produce harvested from a backyard garden can survive quite well without refrigeration for a day or so.

How does our pantry register on AmpleHarvest.org?

This video gives you a quick overview of registering your food pantry at AmpleHarvest.org.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAWliXRf-rI

Here are some helpful hints about registering:

Select a user name and password that is easy for you to remember, but not easy for others to guess. You will need your email and password in the future if you want to update the information on your page. Passwords should be at least 7 characters long.
The Street Address field should contain ONLY the address – no PO Box numbers, no floor numbers, etc. All words should be spelled out. AmpleHarvest.org uses Google Maps to help gardeners locate your pantry. If Google Maps does not recognize your address, it will not process properly. If you are in doubt, go to http://maps.google.com/ and enter your street address followed by your zip code (i.e. 123 Main Street 10024). If Google Maps shows your location properly, enter it into AmpleHarvest.org. Otherwise try testing a variation of your address. For example, if 10 Saint Marks Pl does not work, try 10 St. Marks Pl instead.
Make sure that the State field properly displays your state.
If you have a digital camera or smart phone, you may want to take a photograph of the front of your pantry – it may make it easier for gardeners to find. Photographs should be up to 1000 X 1000 pixels and in a .jpg format.
Many pantries are using the Additional Information field to list store-bought items the pantry needs – enabling non-gardeners to also help out your pantry.
Be sure to list the days and times that you can accept produce donations.

Consider listing how many pounds of fresh produce you can accept at any given time. This will help farms and gleaners to know how to distribute their excess produce.

Our pantry just registered on AmpleHarvest.org. What should we do next?

There are several steps you can take:

1. Wait for a confirmation email welcoming you to AmpleHarvest.org. This may take a week or so. It will include the helpful information below – and more.
2. Send an announcement to the local press and electronic media announcing your participation in AmpleHarvest.org. A sample press announcement (including AmpleHarvest.org logo graphics) is available here for your use.
3. Let other food pantries and similar agencies in your area know about the AmpleHarvest.org. You may want to email or fax information about AmpleHarvest.org to these neighboring pantries. A sample email document is available here.
4. Help inform the gardeners in your community about the opportunity to share their produce with a food pantry. Print out this garden shop flier, and ask your staff and clients to take it to your local

garden shop
nursery
lawn and garden section of your local Home Depot/Lowes/Sears/Wal-Mart, etc.
hardware store

And ask them to post it by their cashier or in another conspicuous location. It can also be posted on the public bulletin board at a local

library
supermarket
house of worship
health club/recreation facility

5. If your food pantry has a web page, put a link on your page to the www.AmpleHarvest.org site.

Please visit the Welcome to AmpleHarvest.org page for additional helpful information. You can also print the information by clicking here.

When might we start getting some garden produce for our clients?

You can expect gardeners in your area to share their excess garden produce with your food pantry when

Your food pantry registers at AmpleHarvet.org -and-
When the gardeners in your area learn about donating food to your food pantry -and-
When their garden is ready for harvest and they have more food than they can use -and-
When you’ve told b your food pantry listing on AmpleHarvest.org, to come.

In short, it could be tomorrow or it could be next summer. It is important to remember that this is the excess food at the peak of a harvest season. Industry experts estimate that more than 61 million (up from the pre-COVID-19 estimates of 42 million according to the National Gardening Association,) American households grow fruit, vegetables and herbs and nuts, and they grow a LOT of food – enough excess food to feed 28 million Americans.

How much produce may be donated and when will vary greatly based on what part of the country you are in, the time of the year, what type of growing season your region experienced, and how the backyard gardeners in the area prefer to plant their gardens. It also depends on what crops different gardeners decide to grow and on the weather and pest issues of a given year.

While it is difficult to predict when or how much produce your local gardeners will bring in, you can encourage them! Your staff and your clients can help influence the gardeners in your community to share their produce with a local food pantry. Please visit the Informing the Gardener page to learn more.

Do we need to pick up the food or is it delivered?

That is up to you and the donor. Our experience has been that in the vast number of cases, growers are happy to drive the food to your food pantry.

If you have access to a car or van and are willing to transport the food, you can then get food from a grower who does not drive or has no access to public transportation. Either they will arrange to get the food to you or they may need to share it with another food pantry in the community.

We are in a large city – should we even bother to get listed on AmpleHarvest.org?

Absolutely YES.

Nationwide, we are seeing a resurgence of gardening in cities–abandoned plots, community gardens, roof top gardens, and even “upside-down” tomato growing. Even the White House now has its own vegetable garden! Someone growing in the city can harvest as much as their rural counterparts. All they need is good soil, sun, rain and like every other gardener, some luck.

Is AmpleHarvest.org different from Plant-A-Row for the Hungry?

Yes.

Both programs work very hard to get fresh garden produce to the food insecure. AmpleHarvest.org is focused on getting fresh produce from millions of gardeners across all 50 states to local food pantries and PAR is available in those communities where they are set up to operate. AmpleHarvest.org offers gardeners nationwide online real-time information about their neighborhood pantries. Additionally, AmpleHarvest.org also offers gardeners and non-gardeners alike, the opportunity to see what store bought items the food pantries in their community are most in need of. A food agency can easily participate in both programs.

Should we report the produce donated by local gardeners?

Some food banks have expressed an interest in receiving this information so you should contact yours to see if this information would be helpful to them.

Gardeners are welcome to send an email to IShared@AmpleHarvest.org when they share their bounty. AmpleHarvest.org itself does no tracking of gardeners seeking food pantries nor the amount of produce donated.

We operate a ‘soup kitchen’. Can we participate in AmpleHarvest.org?

AmpleHarvest.org is designed to help millions of gardeners find food pantries and donate their excess crops to them. Soup kitchens and shelters operate differently from pantries in that they require all of the needed ingredients for a meal to be on-hand for every meal. Since local gardeners donate their produce when they harvest and only if/when they want to, you can’t be assured of a steady supply of produce from the gardeners.

If you can operate with the unpredictability of the gardener’s donations, then yes, you may register at AmpleHarvest.org. If however, you need to be assured of a steady supply of produce, you should instead rely on other sources.

Can AmpleHarvest.org help us get donations of store bought items?

YES.

You can complete your pantry sign up and fill out all the fields on your listing to let people know what store bought items you need, such as pasta, cereal, toothpaste, etc. Update it as often as necessary by selecting Register/Update a Pantry, and then entering your username and password in the “Existing Pantries Log in Here” section on the left side of the screen.

How can our food bank get member agencies to sign up on AmpleHarvest.org?

AmpleHarvest.org works with nearly every food bank in America as well as with Feeding America itself. Because the food banks have direct access to their member agencies, we count on the food banks to help agencies learn about AmpleHarvest.org and encourage them to register themselves. This is good for the food bank because it help the agencies get access to freshly harvested and locally grown food and because it enables local food drives to get the collected food directly to the agency without bogging down the food bank with the task of sorting and distributing food donated by individuals – thereby cutting the operating costs for the food bank.

Several resources are available for food banks to share with their agencies:

Please urge your agencies to see if they might already be registered on AmpleHarvest.org before possibly re-registering themselves by going first to Find a Pantry and entering their zip code. If their food pantry does not show up, they should register it.

While we strongly encourage individual agencies to register themselves at AmpleHarvest.org, some food banks have asked to “bulk load” their agencies. If your food bank wants to take that approach, please populate the bulk load spreadsheet and follow the enclosed instructions.

Lastly, if your food bank is hosting a conference or meeting for all of your agencies and you are looking for a keynote speaker, check out our speaker page and then email info@AmpleHarvest.org with the date and location – someone will get back to you within a few hours.

FAQ | Food Pantry