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Donations

Spring 2013 Earth Day Baskets

Photo of small table laden with donations of food, flowers and other itemsGreetings! The Cornucopia Food Pantry is providing Earth Day food baskets again for the spring season at UNH, in celebration of Earth Day and our own abundant spirit in our community. These baskets will have a variety of wholesome and nutritious foods, including gift certificates for you and your family.

 

They will be organized on April 16th and distributed on April 17th. We welcome volunteers and donations and you can e-mail Megan, our coordinatror, at may68@wildcats.unh.edu if you can provide volunteer time or assistance!

We are constantly trying to determine how we can better serve our community, and we welcome your ideas and suggestions. Peace to you and your loved ones and let us know if we can help at all in any way We are grateful that you are a part of our community.

General Donations

Cornucopia provides food baskets three times a year: Thanksgiving, winter holidays and spring around earth day. If you wish to donate a food basket, during our holiday food drives, you can use our donation form or you can contact us via email to find out what you need to do. We can use fresh foods for the food baskets, especially things like onions, carrots, potatoes, spices, herbs, flour, sugar, and so on that won't go bad in a day or two.

 

We also have freezer and refrigerator space at the pantry, so juice, meats, eggs, frozen foods, etc. are okay for ongoing needs. One of the things needed the most are non-food items, such as: paper products, household items, personal hygiene items, etc. You can also take a lot to see see what items people have suggested that they need.

Drop Offs

Donations can be dropped off at any time in the donation bin just inside the front door of the Waysmeet Center.

Forms

To make things easy to donate a food basket, items or money, we provide the forms for downloading below. Note: The holiday specific forms will be updated each season with the current years version.

All forms are in PDF format. Free Adobe PDF readers can be downloaded from Adobe.

Suggested Items

Often people just don't know what to get or what is appropriate. To make it easy we provide a variety of sample lists that you can use like a regular shopping list. Below are some of the lists we have used for the Spring and Fall food drives.

One of the things needed the most are non-food items, such as: paper products, household items, personal hygiene items, etc.

Gift Cards/Cash

Cornucopia will also accept gift certificates, as well as cash donations, which are tax deductible. Checks can be made out to the Cornucopia Food Pantry or the United Campus Ministry.

General Information and Programs

Every year we have three major food drives - Thanksgiving, Winter Holiday and Earth Day (April). This is a great time to donate items. These food drives are done in partnership with the Waysmeet Center at UNH, the UNH Office of Community Service & Learning, and the Community Leadership Program (CoLead) at the UNH Thompson School of Applied Science.

Cornucopia Free Market

We have been blessed to receive a regular weekly donation from the new Trader Joe's in Newington. That donation, combined with other food rescue operations and NH Food Bank donations, provides food to keep our shelves reasonably well stocked.

 

Some of the food needs to be distributed quickly, and in response to that need, we are starting a weekend "Cornucopia Free Market."

 

Each Saturday and Sunday starting October 6th, we will have fresh food available for distribution from 11-12 each day. The regular food pantry will not be open those days, but we will have fresh food that needs to be distributed available on a first come, first serve basis.

 

Please come check out what is there and enjoy some wonderful nutritious and healthy food!

Food Rescue Programs

The Cornucopia Food pantry is active in growing its Food Rescue/Food Recovery programs. Food Rescue (Aka Food Recovery) Food rescue, is the

 

"practice of safely retrieving edible food that would otherwise go to waste, and distributing it to those in need. The recovered food is edible, but often not saleable. Products that are at or past their "sell by" dates or are imperfect in any way – a bruised apple or day-old bread – are donated by grocery stores, food vendors, restaurants, and farmers markets. Other times, the food is unblemished, but restaurants may have made or ordered too much, or may have edible pieces of food (such as scraps of fish or meat) that are byproducts of process of preparing foods to cook and serve. In addition, food manufacturers may donate product that marginally fails quality control or that has become short-dated."

 

The Cornucopia Food pantry is proud to be expanding our food rescue operations, and is very grateful to the following local businesses for their generosity in helping Cornucopia "feed the masses."

We are perpetually in need of volunteers to help with this aspect of our operation. Please contact Megan Brabec or Gabrielle Moen if you can help us out!

 

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