From the Amazing Grace Food Pantry
We hope you are enjoying this holiday season. The greater Middletown community has been very generous to our shoppers at Amazing Grace and the storeroom shelves are literally packed with food - tangible evidence of all those who care about their neighbors in need. We are extremely grateful for this outpouring of support - and grateful that we finally have room to store all of it.
Don't be fooled, though! If past history repeats itself, those same shelves will be almost bare in late February and through the spring until the May Postal Food Drive and bare again in the summer into the fall until the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. Giving away more than 25,000 food items each month quickly depletes that abundance of food.
If you haven't had a chance to visit our new home at 16 Stack Street, we hope you will be able to do so in the new year. It is a terrific, cheerful space which allows us to better serve our shoppers. When you make a food delivery to the back door, be sure to ask our volunteers to give you a tour of the whole space; we want you to see what our extraordinary community has made possible.
We also want to let you know about an upcoming change at the pantry which we hope will make dropping off food donations much easier for you. Now that we have enough space, we have purchased a scale to weigh bags and boxes of food as they are delivered. We understand that this is the way all other pantries in the state keep track of food donated, so it's probably about time that we did so too! We hope to have the scale installed and ready for service by January 1.
Attached is an updated FOOD DONATION FORM which gives you space to list items, but only if you wish to do so and want those numbers for your own internal use. We will not use those numbers at the pantry. We will only use POUNDS which will be weighed by one of our volunteers. Just complete the top part of the form (date, name of person or organization, name of person dropping off the food) and then the bottom address section if you want an acknowledgement. Our volunteers will weigh your delivery and enter the number of pounds on your form. Beginning in January 2011 we'll report back to you - on a periodic or year-end basis - only in pounds. Year-end acknowledgments for 2010 will still be in number of items.
Apologies for the short notice on this change. We just weren't sure when we would have the scale up and running but now our target date is January 1. If you would like to have an idea of how much a certain number of items actually weighs, just count the items and ask our volunteers to tell you how much that number weighs ( e.g., 50 cans of tuna = ??? pounds).
Heartfelt thanks to all for a very memorable year here at Amazing Grace and our very best wishes to you for a happy and healthy new year.
-the staff and volunteers at Amazing Grace
AMAZING GRACE FOOD PANTRY, 16 Stack Street, Middletown, CT
a program of St. Vincent De Paul Middletown
FOOD DONATION INFORMATION
__________________ ****_________________POUNDS****
Date to be weighed by Amazing Grace volunteers
____________________________________________________
Name of Organization or Institution or Person or Family donating the food
________________________________________________ _______________________
Name of person delivering the food described below Phone Number
_________________________________________________
E-mail address
_______ Check here if this donation is part of your regular monthly commitment through
the Families Feeding Families food donation program
_______ Check here if this donation is a periodic or one time donation.
ITEMS DONATED
(Complete this section only if you need it for your own use. Beginning Jan. 1, 2011 Amazing Grace will no longer count items but will weigh all food deliveries and use POUNDS to keep track of all donations.)
__________ Cereal _________ Peanut Butter
__________ Tuna Fish _________ Canned Fruit or Vegetables
__________ Pasta _________ Beans
__________ Pasta Sauce _________ Rice
__________ Soup
Other items:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Number of bags______ and/or boxes_______.
************************************************************************************************************
If you would like a written acknowledgement of your donation, please provide the following information (unless listed above):
Organization/Institution/Person_______________________________________________
Contact person’s name______________________________________________________
E-Mail address_____________________________________________________________
Street___________________________________________________________________
City ____________________________________________Zip____________________
NOTE: If you participate in the monthly Families Feeding Families program, you will receive a yearly report of your donation totals instead of a monthly thank you note. If you would like additional information, please let us know.
THANK YOU!!!
AG/FFFFoodDonationFormDec10.doc FOR OFFICE USE: ________Acknowledgement sent _________FFF info sent ___________Posted to donor records
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