Ethics question

Based on my experience working with multiple small-scale local nonprofits, here's my guess as to how they arrive at that $0.50 meal cost:

They're adding all the food donations they get for free ($0 cost) with the food they purchase, then dividing it by the number of meals they serve.

Nonprofits love to boast (as you say) with the best possible statistics to attract donors. I would all but guarantee that they're not factoring in salaries, rent, electric bill, advertising, vehicles/gas/other costs to pick up donations, etc.

That $0.50/meal number is probably wildly incorrect.

Less foodbank related but buying food related - when we want to eat out or have a pastry or soemthing novel we use the TooGoodTooGo app! Our one bakery uses it and sometimes we get 3 loaves of their fresh made bread for $6 and just feeeze them!

Like Josh said, food prep is a rabbit hole but one worth learning for so many reasons. Zig Ziglar said anything worth learning is worth doing poorly in the beginning. There are as many ways to go about it as there are people doing it and teaching it. YouTube has been my friend in this area. LifeWithMikeG (formerly ProHomeCook) has some videos on using Souper Cubes for portioning and freezing and his cooking videos are simple and easy. Homesteading videos go a lot into building pantries and such but as mentioned before a lot of that does utilize canning and other preservation methods. Homesteading Family and Little Mountain Ranch are quality channels for that.

Dehydrating and freeze drying (since you have money) are two methods that are fairly easy to learn and fairly safe methods for long-term storage but the learning curve is learning how to use the end products. Purposeful Pantry is a good channel for dehydrating and Homesteading Family has a good amount of videos on freeze drying (Carolyn Thomas has also written a comprehensive how-to book for freeze drying).

Good luck with your adventure in food storage, it is knowledge worth having.

I have volunteered for mobile food banks and there is always excess food at the end. Could you do something like this to feel like it’s more a barter economy and less taking from those who truly need it? Transportation is also a barrier for people in poverty -could you pick up your meals + a few others and deliver to people with mobility challenges? My local. Foodbank also has gleaning opportunities where farms basically donate their excess food but you would provide the labor of picking the potatoes or apples or whatever the crop is.

To tackle this from a different perspective, did you know that agriculture and the food supply chain generates over a quarter of the worlds GHG emissions? And in the US, nearly half of that comes from food waste. So anything we can do to eat/ distribute/ manage food waste at any stage of the production/ processing/ consumption phase feels ethical to me.

Just contact the food bank

Just ask the food bank what they think

If enough people started exploiting food banks that didn't truly need it, food manufacturers and grocery stores would start to be more reluctant to donate to them because they would directly be competing with themselves for business. For that reason alone you shouldn't do it.

That $0.50/meal is being subsidized by someone because grocery store profit margins are like less than 3%

Good question. We have a Food for Kids program that provides lunch during the summer months. I donate to them and every once in awhile let my kid get a lunch from them. They set up at the parks we play at. There is a social aspect to it. Some of my friends say we shouldn’t take a lunch because we can afford to buy our own. I asked the volunteers and they said it is for all kids and it lessens the stigma if all kids take a lunch, not just needy kids.

The food bank may have a surplus of money in your example, but their capacity to provide boxes of groceries is limited by other resources like grocery store stock, number of volunteers and time. If the person above receives a box of groceries, it's likely another person doesn't get a box.

After college I volunteered with Americorps for a year in southern CO- 3 days a week at the local homeless shelter and 2 days a week at the food bank. Our food bank supplied the satellite food banks around the greater valley, so the food we received wasn't just to serve the folks in our town, it was everyone in the larger region.

I say all of this because the food bank never had more food than we could give away. The demand was always more than we could handle. I can only imagine this will continue to tick up as we see prices continue to rise, not just on food but on other necessities (like gas). I think your question/thought is creative, but I wonder if there is a different way to look at it. You came from a place of needing that service, and now you are in a place of being able to give back to the place that once helped you. This is rare and so amazing- if I were you I'd feel incredibly proud, and then incredibly excited to be able to give back in this way.

I agree with Jonathan, but the question points to something interesting. Groceries have gotten expensive. I have increased my grocery budget multiple times in the last two years, and I've started limiting luxury foods. What if there was a way to pool resources to get better prices on groceries? Does this exist already?

To me it feels unethical, I understand that you’re proposing a hypothetical. But if there’s any chance that someone that needs food isn’t able to get it using this pathway because the supply demand curve has suddenly shifted because someone figured out a loophole… I wouldn’t do it