The Gift of Food 2011

Please invite your family and friends to join again this year for a crisp December day of giving back to your community.  Last year, the event raised 14,000 pounds of food and $2,000 for the Gallatin Valley Food Bank – note that the US Postal Service drive that occurs annually in April raised about 18,000 pounds. This year, we have again partnered with the Gallatin Valley Food Bank and set our sights on becoming the Valley's biggest food drive by tripling our impact and raising 45,000 pounds of food.  The need is greater than ever and we think we can accomplish this audacious goal, thanks to your help once again this year. 

The stars seem to be aligning around this year’s event.  Our plans to dramatically increase the awareness we generate for the event are coming together nicely.  Here are some updates:

-          30,000 grocery bags donated: 

o   At last year’s event, we asked a few groups of volunteers to try out the concept of delivering paper bags door to door in the week leading up to the event.  The amount of food collected in these neighborhoods was amazing – in one, almost 80% of the houses had bags waiting on their front porch when the folks arrived on the day of the event to collect them.  As result, Rosauers has partnered with the main sponsors of the event to donate 30,000 paper bags for distribution in the week prior to the event this year.  In order to accommodate folks having to cover their neighborhoods twice within the same week, we have made the size of the neighborhoods smaller this year.

-          Updated website - choose your own neighborhood this year:

o   Based on feedback from last year’s event, we are in the final stages of updating a new volunteer website.  The new website, which is being created by Rob and Jade at Agile Task, will enable volunteers to pick their own neighborhoods on a first come first serve basis. 

-          TV advertising & professionally produced commercial: 

o   We are proud to welcome a new sponsor this year, KTBZ.  The station will be running several TV commercials leading up to the event as well as mentioning the event in their newscasts.  We have secured the support of a professional film maker to produce the commercials.

-          Radio advertising and live on-location spots from the drop-off locations:

o   We have secured a LOT of radio advertising across all of the Gallatin Valley stations this year.  We also have commitments for live on-location shows from each of our drop-off locations in Bozeman.  We are working on getting on the Dave and Dean show and others in the week leading up to the event.

-          GO and sign up now for your neighborhood!

http://thegiftoffood.org/

Call or email me with any questions!

Thanks,

Jim
406-581-7777
jrharris@gmail.com