Volunteer Linda Nordin places a package into a box with other food Nov. 10 at the Northern Illinois Food Bank to be delivered by DoorDash drivers for area residents who are homebound in Park City, Ill. Previously, the pantry’s express program was not available to its homebound clients because someone had to physically go to a collection point to pick up the food. But with DoorDash’s technology, now homebound clients can go to the My Pantry Express website and pick from the available food.
DoorDash drivers line up Nov. 10 at the Northern Illinois Food Pantry for an order of boxed food as another driver departs for an area resident who is homebound.
Volunteers Joe O’Connor (left), Eric Leuck (center) and Linda Nordin load food items into a box at the Northern Illinois Food Bank to be delivered by DoorDash drivers for area residents who are homebound in Park City, Ill.
Volunteers Margaret Schrimpf (left), Reilly Allen (center) and Northern Illinois Food pantry employee Randy Stotz interact with DoorDash drivers as they arrive Nov. 10 for orders to be delivered to area homebound residents in Park City, Ill.
Volunteer Eric Leuck packs a box with milk Nov. 10 at the Northern Illinois Food Bank to be delivered by DoorDash drivers.
Volunteer Linda Nordin counts the number of meat packages she and a small team with incorporate into boxes with other food at the Northern Illinois Food Bank.
Northern Illinois Food Pantry volunteer Reilly Allen gives a DoorDash driver an order of food to be delivered to area homebound residents in Park City, Ill.
Susan Goodell needed help.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Goodell, CEO of the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank, would look out the window at the long line of clients picking up the food available that day, while she and others answered calls from others who couldn’t travel to a distribution point.
“We were getting just horrible phone calls from our seniors, from people with disabilities, people who were COVID-positive and couldn’t leave their homes to get food,” Goodell said. “We were distributing food here at the site and other sites from about 6 a.m. till about 7 at night. Then, at the end of the day, the staff would pack up food and deliver it to people’s homes.”
So, earlier this year, when the food delivery service DoorDash approached the food bank, offering help, Goodell was elated by the support, and demand quickly ramped up. The program, in El Paso, Texas, now delivers 2,100 orders of food bank supplies each week, and there’s a waiting list to join.
It’s just the result that DoorDash had intended. By offering its delivery platform technology to food banks for free, DoorDash, like a growing number of companies, is providing something that many nonprofits say is even more valuable than cash — know-how.
Corporate donations of “non-cash” — which includes a company’s own products, services and technology — grew to 22{4224f0a76978c4d6828175c7edfc499fc862aa95a2f708cd5006c57745b2aaca} of all community investments in 2020, according to the Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose, a coalition of business leaders. Over the past five years, the coalition says, non-cash is the fastest-growing segment of corporate giving.
