Foodbanking is practised in about 40 countries. However, as it is relatively new to South Africa, the many benefits of foodbanking are not yet widely understood. So, what’s the big deal?
South Africa is said to have approximately 120,000 civil society organisations, including 37,000 registered non-profit organisations (NPOs). Many provide food to their beneficiaries. Since most NPOs are under-resourced, they have to seek donations from food manufacturers and retailers.
The result? Thousands of NPOs knock on the same doors asking for food. Imagine the challenge faced by food manufacturers and retailers of deciding which among thousands of small NPOs they should help. Imagine the related challenges of managing numerous relationships and food collections. And imagine the hardship of small NPOs in trying to solicit donations and then transport the product from multiple food sources.
FoodBank SA was formed to address these and many other challenges.
FoodBank SA speaks with one voice on behalf of numerous NPOs and other community based organisations. We already provide food to 1,059 of them and, as we grow, so can this number. This enables the food companies to deal with only one entity, FoodBank SA, instead of thousands.
FoodBank SA provides food manufacturers and retailers with the peace of mind that their products are going to worthy causes. Our fleet of 30 vehicles gives us the logistical muscle to fetch food from donors and to deliver it to communities who cannot collect it, sticking to the food donor’s collection schedules.
Our warehouses are equipped for the sorting and storage of massive volumes of product. We adhere to the highest food handling standards. This enables us to safely salvage large volumes of recovered food. We also make it difficult for the donated food to be re-sold on the black market: we deface the branding, apply “not for resale” stickers, and use satellite tracking to monitor the routes taken by our fleet of 30 trucks.
By collecting food from numerous donors and sorting it, we can offer a more nutritionally balanced “package” than a small NPO which might receive food from only one or two donors. Of course, despite this, we are reliant on what produce can be rescued from time to time—and that's why we also use our scale and therefore buying power to purchase staple foods cheaply, to improve the balance and nutritional value of what we can donate.
Additionally, because we operate in multiple locations, if we receive more food in one food bank than it can use, we can distribute the excess to our other food banks. Small individual hunger relief agencies could not do that.
Overall, our scale allows us to provide more effective representation for those who are hungry and food insecure. This in turn enables us to secure much bigger volumes of food from donors.
That’s why we already donate well over ten million meals a year. Yet we can go a lot further. For one thing, we hope to secure food from many more food companies and to grow our receipts from those who already support us, for example by adding the capability of safely dealing with frozen meats and fish.
