Food Drive Sign Up Sheet (free, online)

How to set it up

A food drive has three phases and each needs different people. Collection: someone at each drop-off site for a few hours to keep the bins tidy and thank people. Transport: drivers with a truck or an SUV to move the boxes from sites to the sorting location. Sorting: a crowd for one evening to check dates, sort by category and pack boxes for the pantry. The sheet should be three lists, each with dates and times, so a person who can drive but can't sort sees exactly where they fit.

The mistake is asking for 'volunteers for the food drive' and getting twenty people who all show up on sorting night. One tip: put the most-needed items on the page as their own list with counts, like 'peanut butter, 40 jars', and let people commit to bringing them. You'll get what the pantry needs instead of forty cans of green beans.

Questions people ask

What items should we ask for?

Ask the pantry. Usually it's protein, peanut butter, cereal and personal-care items, not canned vegetables. Put their top five on the sheet with counts and people will bring those.

How long should collection shifts be?

Two to three hours at a grocery store entrance. Longer than that and people stop signing up. Two people per shift so one can take a break.

How do we manage sorting night?

Ask for more people than you think. Fifteen people can sort a thousand pounds in two hours. Send a reminder the day before with the address and what to wear; online sheets do that automatically.

Why not a paper sheet or a Google Form?

A paper sheet lives in one place and fills up with the first people who walk past it. A Google Form takes forty signups for a row that needed two, and you find out in the spreadsheet. An online sign-up sheet closes each row when it's covered, sends a reminder the day before, and gives every person a link to cancel so the spot reopens. See the side-by-side with Google Forms.