Wednesday morning in the hall
Many churches, mosques, gurdwaras, temples and synagogues run a food bank or pantry from their hall, sometimes on their own and sometimes with a local network. On Wednesday morning volunteers set up tables, unpack crates from the store cupboard and open the doors at ten.
Referrals have come in all week. A housing officer emailed one. A school phoned another through. A family walked in last week and was told to come back with a referral. The volunteer on the door has a printed list, but two of the families who arrive are not on it, because their referrals were emailed to the coordinator's personal address. The shelves are full of pasta and tinned tomatoes, and there is no tinned fish, UHT milk or toiletries left, which nobody noticed until a volunteer reached for them.
Why food bank admin gets out of hand
A food bank at a place of worship grows out of goodwill, and its systems grow the same way.
- Referrals arrive through phone, email, walk-ins and partner agencies, each to a different person.
- Visits are recorded on paper sheets, if at all, so repeat visits against any limit your rules set are hard to see.
- Donations arrive from collections, supermarkets, schools and festival drives in bursts, and are counted by eye.
- Food with dates needs rotating, and older stock gets pushed to the back.
- Volunteers rotate each week, so knowledge sits with whoever did it last time.
Your policies, such as referral routes, visit limits and what personal information to hold, are for your trustees and any network you belong to. We do not advise on them. The difficulty is applying them consistently with rotating volunteers and paper.
What it costs to run it on paper
People in need are sometimes turned away because their referral cannot be found, or given less than they should be because the shelves are unbalanced.
Food is wasted when stock passes its date at the back of the cupboard. Donors and partners lose confidence when you cannot say how many households you helped last quarter, and grants or supermarket partnerships often ask exactly that.
The coordinator, usually a volunteer, carries the whole thing: phone calls, emails, lists, reports. When they are away, the Wednesday session struggles.
A referral, visit and stock record
What we build is a small system for your food bank that volunteers can use on a tablet at the door and in the store.
- Referral agencies use an online referral form with the details your policy requires. Referrals go into one list, not personal inboxes.
- Walk-ins can be recorded at the door as needing a referral, with a note of what they were told, so the next session knows.
- At each session, the door volunteer checks in households from the list on a tablet, and the system shows any limits your rules set, such as number of visits in a period, for the volunteer to apply.
- Donations are logged as they arrive by item type and best-before or use-by date, in a quick form on a phone.
- The stock view shows what is running low and what should be used first, and generates a shopping or appeal list for the notice sheet.
- Reports show households helped, visits and food given out by period, in the format your trustees, network or funder asks for, without names where names are not needed.
| Job | On paper | With the system |
|---|---|---|
| Receiving a referral | Emails and calls to different people | One referral list |
| Checking in a household | Printed list, often incomplete | Tablet with today's referrals |
| Logging donations | Rarely recorded | Item and date on a phone |
| Knowing what is low | Found on the day | Low stock shown before the session |
| Quarterly report | Rebuilt from sheets | Produced from the records |
If you are part of a network that already provides a referral and data system, we would help you use it rather than build a second one.
Next Wednesday
At nine the coordinator checks the referral list: seven households, including one referred by the school yesterday. Stock shows tinned fish and UHT milk are low, so an appeal went into last Friday's notice sheet, and the donations logged on Sunday have filled the gap.
At the door, the volunteer checks households in on the tablet. One family has not been referred; she records the walk-in and gives the details of how to get a referral, as your policy says. At the end of the quarter the coordinator sends the trustees their report without counting sheets.
Is your food bank like this?
- Referrals arrive in several people's inboxes and phones.
- Visits are recorded on paper, if at all.
- You find out an item has run out on the day.
- Food passes its date at the back of the store.
- Reports for trustees or partners take hours to compile.