Imagine you own a company – a few dozen employees or maybe tens of thousands spread across America.
Like you, they are generous in supporting charities important to them, and if your company is anything like Google or Citrix, your company will even match donation made to AmpleHarvest.org.
Also, like countless other business, schools, houses of worship and more, you periodically run a food drive, inviting your employees to bring food from home or a store to the office so it can be donated to a regional food bank.
Now imagine you are the largest employer in America and you have nearly 4.3 million employees across thousands of offices, and while you are not legally allowed to match monetary donations your employees chose to make, you are allowed to do food drives to help them help the hungry.
Since 2009, employees of the federal government have donated more than 24.1 million pounds of food and other non-perishable items to help families across all 50 states.
Like every other food drive in America, the message has always been “jars, cans or boxes – no fresh food please!”
Until now.
After three years of working with our friends at the USDA and thanks to a final push in the past by both Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative as well as Congresswoman Chellie Pingree’s (Maine) office, the estimated one million federal employees who happen to also be home gardeners are being told that now, they can donate fresh food from their home and community garden directly to a local food pantry – easily found at AmpleHarvest.org/FFF. This special page created for federal employees works just like the rest of AmpleHarvest.org but also includes a special reporting form to help Feds Feed Families track their donations.
People working for Uncle Sam are our friends and neighbors and their budgets are as tight as anyone else’s. For many of them, giving charity further stresses an already stresses personal budget resulting in an abundance of desire to give constrained by fiscal limitations we all face.
Why would a congresswoman from Maine, get involved? Because even in a state with a shorter than normal growing season, AmpleHarvest.org can help. According to Rep. Pingree, “AmpleHarvest.org has already made it possible for millions of pounds of fresh, locally grown and harvest food to make its way to food pantries that help families struggling to put a meal on the table. This collaboration with the federal government and millions of public employees is going to make it possible for even more Americans to have access to fresh vegetables and fruits, grown and donated by their neighbors. I’m thrilled that this common-sense partnership is going to happen.“
Thanks to AmpleHarvest.org now partnered with Feds Feed Families, the scope of someone’s donation is limited not to the depth of their pocketbook but by the size of the garden, the length of their growing season, and their desire for a better America.
If you know of someone working for Uncle Sam, please send them to http://www.ampleharvest.org/FFFposter
