The big game brings people together to share food and fun. MOM brings our community together to create food security. This year, we’re inviting you to make your Super Bowl Sunday part of the solution. Help us get a strong start to our #driveforfood on Sunday, Feb. 12, by drafting your Super Bowl watch party guests to bring donations of food and personal care items for MOM’s food pantry.

Food pantry usage has doubled since last year and demand is expected to grow in March when extra FoodShare benefits put into place during the pandemic come to an end. We are concerned about having enough food to meet the needs of everyone who relies on our pantry to provide food for their families and that we may have to change our services.

We are not getting food from as many sources as we did before the pandemic and the mix of those sources is constantly shifting. In order to bridge the gap between demand for food and donated food, we have been purchasing more food than ever before; supply chain issues and other factors affecting retailers make this difficult. As we plan for the future, we must consider new ways to bring in food to meet our increased food needs.

The pandemic paused community food drives – they were a critical part of how we provide food to our neighbors. We need more community food drives now and throughout the year. Food drives can be small or large – among a few neighbors or friends – or larger drives by churches, businesses, or schools. You can plan your drive at drives.momhelps.org. Watch our social media and your email for more ideas for your food drives.

We welcome a wide variety of foods! Besides reducing the amount of food available, the decrease in community drives has also significantly decreased the variety of food on our shelves. Dignity of choice has always been a priority as we consider what we have to offer our food pantry guests. Please check out our donation guidelines and share them with your friends and family.

We recently launched an Amazon Wish List where people can buy high-demand items and send them directly to our food pantry. We’ll continue to update this list based on the needs of our guests. We’re so grateful to those who have already made purchases to help stock our shelves and to those of you who choose to make financial donations to support our food security and housing stability programs.