Volunteer
The Good Food Collaborative is almost entirely volunteer driven. Volunteers help people shop, register our members in our PantrySoft software, stock the shelves in the store, unload the massive food deliveries we get, and so much more. People volunteer both their time and give us funds to help purchase food and maintain operations.
There is a large community of people working together at the Good Food Collaborative to help us address food insecurity in McDonough County, and we can always use more help.
For those interested in working in support of the pantry storefront, it is helpful for us to have people who can regularly volunteer to take a shift of a couple of hours. For those who have tighter schedules, there are often special, one-time tasks that require a few extra hands.
If your organization has a team that would like to take on a task or get on a regular schedule with us, we would love to talk to you.
If you are interested in volunteering, contact us.
Contact Us:
Email: info@goodfoodcollab.org
Phone: 309-255-4710
Physical Address: 133 W Jackson Street Macomb, IL 61455
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 355 Macomb, IL 61455
Volunteer Stocking Shelves
Every day that we are open, we go through hundreds of cans of food, packages of mixes, frozen vegetables and meat, and a lot of odds and ends. These all need to be moved from the warehouse, unpacked and placed on shelves. There is some lifting involved in this work, for example, a flat of canned green beans can weigh 15 pounds.
Volunteer for the Warehouse
Our pantry storefront is located in the front of the WIRC building, our warehouse with all the food is in the back of the building. Our food is stored on pallets and in the cooler and freezer. We need people capable of moving cases of food from the pallets and freezer onto carts that are wheeled down the hallway. On any given day that we are open, it wouldn’t be unusual to move three or four dozen cases of food, not including all the produce.
Volunteer Unloading
Approximately once a month we get a semi-truck sized delivery from the River Bend Food Bank. All the food in the truck comes on pallets and we have pallet jacks and a forklift to move the pallets around. But sometimes we get a pallet of food that comes off the truck on a pallet and needs to be moved into either the freezer or the cooler.
We need help to move the boxes of meat or produce, some of those boxes can weigh 30 pounds. The deliveries usually come in the mornings between 9:00 and 9:30.
