Opinion: Cash Better Than Cans for Holiday Food Drives

Giving money to antihunger charities should replace traditional holiday food drives that burden nonprofit groups with boxes of canned goods that they can purchase more cheaply than consumers or that do not meet their nutritional standards, a correspondent for online magazine Slate writes.

The amount consumers paid for the donated goods could be spent much more efficiently by food banks and pantries through bulk purchases and deals with industry groups for surplus supplies, business reporter Matthew Yglesias. He adds that inspecting and sorting food donations adds to charities’ overhead costs, and that much of the contributed food counters their work to stock fresher and healthier items.

“Find well-managed charities in your community and trust them to know how to do their job,” Mr. Yglesias advises. “They have access to food at a fraction of the price. They know their clients, and they have better things to do than to sort through your canned goods.”

Responding to Mr. Yglesias, a New York Times blogger argues that traditional food drives offer lessons in charity for children.

“There is part of me that loves the pure rationality here. But here’s what you miss when you make this all about the money: the opportunity to teach,” Ron Lieber writes in the paper’s Bucks blog. “The visceral experience of sorting through physical items (including toys and clothes and books) and figuring out what isn’t truly necessary is something that you can’t easily replace by writing a check to the needy.”