“Whoa. I didn’t know the Food Bank was this big.”
We often hear that sentence when people visit us for the first time. Many people are surprised by the size of our warehouse, the scope of our staff, and the scale of hunger and food insecurity in Alameda County.
People are also shocked to hear how critical volunteers are in making this whole operation run every day.
Without volunteers, we would have never been able to grow to the size we are today, providing food for 116,000 people every month. Volunteers assist us in every area of the Food Bank – from sorting food, helping stock our shopping floor, helping conduct research, and staffing our mobile pantries.
Here’s what we we were able to accomplish in 2017 with the time, energy, and talent of volunteers.
20,220 volunteers walked through our doors (and logged 115,700 hours of volunteering)
59 = number of full-time employees it would take to do the work of our volunteers
405 average volunteer hours logged each day
More than 760 volunteers donated to our holiday fundraising challenge
401,018 = equivalent of meals raised through Together We Can, our holiday volunteer fundraising challenge
1,055 food drives organized at offices, schools, libraries, places of worship, and more across Alameda County
32 lead volunteers helped organize shifts every day
We distributed 36,000,000 pounds of food to our community in the 2017 fiscal year, the equivalent of 30,000,000 meals
We distribute food at 42 schools and colleges, all with help from volunteers
Ready to join our ranks in 2018? We definitely need you!
