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WELCOME!
Fill A Bag and set it on your porch and you've joined the fight against Food Insecurity. It is truly that simple.
This is an informational website (i.e. "boring and dry"). It's here for those that want to know more. If we've missed something email us at info@ASGhelps.org
What is “A Simple Gesture Helps?"
We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit that is dedicated to making it as simple as possible to donate food.
OUR MISSION; Provide systems and methodology for Home Food Donation Programs nationwide to thrive. We aspire to see 450 million pounds of food being donated each year through one of these programs.
YOUR ROLE; Fill a bag with shelf-stable foods and leave it on your doorstep on the designated pickup days.
Our volunteers pick it up and take it to a pantry in your community. We don't take food across the county to deliver somewhere else, it's your food going to your community. "neighbors helping neighbors".
Although it's simple, it's also very successful! Last year these programs collected more than 4.5 million pounds of food, with more than 45,000 donors participating in more than 100 chapters across the USA.
The good news is it works, but the ‘not so good news’ is these programs are only available to about 1% of households in America. That’s where we come in, our objective is to grow that to 70% by the end of 2030. These programs should be everywhere.
To reach this goal we had to solve the main barrier. Why are there only 115 programs? The answer was clear; They are too hard to set up and operate. It takes nearly 40 hours to organize and run a large pickup event. It’s too hard to find volunteers willing to do that month after month. To fix this we developed the “ASG Event Manager”, which has reduced the time to just over one hour. The #1 problem is solved.
The 2nd big problem is the challenged to register donors. We would like one out of eight households in a community to participate, this may seem high but consider in Ashland Oregon one if three households have a bag out front on pickup day.
To solve this 2nd problem we’ve taken a deep dive into building a suite of ‘Campaigns’ that work. These campaigns are covered in depth within this site. We will provide you everything; how to set things up, all the marketing materials, and real-life experiences to help you decide how to customize these events for your chapter.
NOW IS THE TIME TO GET INVOLVED. Every year the gap between those in need and the those that are helping is getting wider. Take the first small step to set up your chapter, let the rest of it come along step by step. We will walk you through everything;
- Registering your chapter and setting up your personalized site
- Lots of ideas, marketing materials, and details to sign up new donors
- Help guides, user groups and forums, and other places to get any other information you need
Our ultimate goal is not just simplicity, but also 'near zero cost'. We want to avoid the high costs of storage, transportation and management oversight that are needed by Food Banks. Our hope is to see food collected between 9 and 11am, delivered to a pantry and sorted by 1pm, and in the hands of those that need it by 3-5pm that night. Minimize driving/transportation time not only saves money it's good for the environment too!
Join us!! We Need You.
Our Focus; Relieve Food Insecurity & Hunger
Food Insecurity is an overwhelming and complex topic. Government data shows that 14% of Americans experience food insecurity and 3.5% experience hunger on a regular basis.
Of particular concerns are families, especially single parent families. One in three single moms are raising their families with insufficient nutritious food. Our founder was one of those, so this is more than just our focus, it's personal.
Not having enough quality food as a child is unacceptable yet it's happening in America. Yet, did you know we Americans dispose of more food than any other country in the world? We must do more to redirect that surplus supply of food to those in need. Poorly or under-nourished children don’t just do they lack the fundamental building blocks of a healthy lifestyle, their self-esteem is crushed.
HOW OUR SYSTEM WORKS
The donor registers for the program and is informed about an upcoming event (usually every 2 months). They confirm their participation and review the “Needs List” for the pantry in their area. The donor fills a bag and leaves it on their doorstep. We then arrange for a volunteer to come by and take it the bag to a pantry in the same area. In an ideal scenario, that pantry is distributing that food the same afternoon.
The donor is the “gold” of the system, they provide food. Data from more than 100 of these programs shows they will average 15 pounds per donation and participate about 70-80% of the time. They will stick with it too, although the data is rough it shows a typical donor remains in the program more than 5 years.
This 360 pounds donated by a single donor in a 5 year period has a value of just over $1000.
The next key piece is that person in the middle; the one that picks up that food and gets it to the pantry. The"ASG Event Manager" uses two different methods to get that piece done;
It’s a simple idea. Leave a bag of food on a doorstep and someone picks it up and takes it to a Community Food Pantry.
- A DRIVER: When a program starts up the donors are going to be spread out over a large area. Our Operating System will organize up to thousands of donors into logical and efficient routes. Our Route Optimization program then gives each driver the most efficient route with turn by turn directions, ending at a pantry in the same community. We can optimize thousands of donors, hundreds of drives and dozens of pantry’s to take part in any single event.
- A NEIGHBORHOOD COORDINATORS Over time a program will begin to achieve ‘density’. By this we mean that a large number of donors are near each other. As this happens our Operating System will ask the donors and drivers in that cluster to form a neighborhood, and a Neighborhood Coordinator will be appointed. They then take care of that cluster by arranging for the food pickup, answering questions, and forming community among these generous people.
The key to success and longevity of the program is to get every donor connected to a Neighborhood Coordinator. And the sooner the better. Once connected to a “NC”, the community aspect begins to take shape. The NC’s role is to get more and more of those households in that territory to participate. As participation increases so does the community spirit on that special pick-up day.
You can learn much more about our operating system, P2P Event manager, by CLICKING HERE.
Blue pins have a bag out front, red ones need us to skip. The green show drivers start point.
WHY IT WORKS
As of last update, there are 115 chapters doing this nationwide. The 46,000 donors are providing about 4.5 million pounds of food a year.
Here are some of the best examples;
- In Ashland, OR about one out of three households will have a bag out front. Imagine that as you drive up a street. Everyone knows it’s “green bag day”.
- In Greensboro, NC there are more than 4000 donors participating. The “Green Bag People” are everywhere that day, with hundreds of drivers picking up food and delivering it to as many as 40 different pantries.
- In Reston, VA the food being picked up will fill the shelves of four different pantries. This system is often the only source they need for food to later distribute to those in need.
One reason it works is because people feel different when they donate food rather than just providing their credit card information. We know from experience that by the 3rd donation, nearly all the food being donated was purchased to be donated. That means the donor is thinking about someone in need while shopping and again while filling the bag. They can think; “this can of tuna going to help someone today” as they drop it in the bag.
Another reason the program works is it’s extremely cost efficient. If a donor provides you $1 your program will convert that to anywhere from $45 to $200 dollars of food. That ratio is nearly unmatched in the non-profit world. Most Food Banks will say they can take $1 and turn it into $3 or $4, this program can be up to 50 times more efficient.
And a third reason it works is it’s simple; putting a bag on a doorstep is quick and easy. It only takes a few moments to explain the program, people nod nearly immediately and often will say “I can do that!”.
Some Details about our Operating System
The system is designed to do many things; here are the main ones.
- Register donors; We use a “Campaign Tool” so each chapter can create dozens of donor-drives using a variety of tools. For example, a booth at a fair or an email canvassing campaign. Each one has its own unique URL and QR code so that we know exactly where a donor came from. We provide reporting for years to come to show you which campaigns worked with precise reporting.
- Organize Donors into manageable groups; As thousands of donors sign up it becomes overwhelming to manage them. We’ve solved that two ways. One is something we call a Neighborhood Coordinator. This person then organizes those near-by neighbors that are donating at each event. The second way is using our system to create groups on-the-fly by using technology and each donors geo-coordinates. Either way, this grouping allows our Operating System to make it easy to organize very large events. (And small ones too!).
- Run Pick-Up Events; this is really the heart of the System. It starts by assigning donors to events based on their latitude/longitude mapping. Next, the donors and drivers are asked to verify their participation and make changes as needed (all through automation and technology). The system then groups donors and drivers into optimized pods or defers to an assigned Neighborhood Coordinator . The system provides ”outcome tracking” to capture the amount each donor has provided. Finally, there is both real-time dashboard metrics and post event reporting to see exactly what happened.
- Communication; A messaging app allows the Event Managers to communicate with the donors and drivers into all sorts of ways.
- Special Events; There are a variety of donor-driven events that require special technology. An example is the “Brown Bag” event, where grids map out sections of homes for a person to deliver a brown bag (or door hanger), they receive their grid as an email and can show results as they drop each one off. Those potential donors then register showing pins on a map for those same volunteers to go back and pick up the food. As these donors register they are then included in the next Pick-Up Event.
- Reporting; A key to manage large programs is knowing how to make good decisions. For example, some donors are more likely to forget to put a bag out than others. The reporting identifies these and sends them a different type of notification to increase the likelihood they are truly confirmed. These details may not seem like much, but when dealing with hundreds of volunteers they will appreciate that the system values their time.
What It Can Look Like
There is no perfect model, and there is no 'required' model. The existing chapters come in all shapes and sizes. Some are formed by highly motivated individuals others by clubs.
If we could define a model that we are after, it might look like this;
- It starts with a Club, Organization or Team; where there is built in shared purpose. They are already connected to do something. This type of model can build sustainability. When the leader is no longer able to continue, another is ready to take over. Clubs, for example, may ordain this as a primary service; electing or assigning a lead and reporting its progress at each meeting.
- We'd like to see a pantry or a network of pantries disperse the food the same day it arrives. This allows for foods such as breads and eggs. And it eliminates the high cost of storage and logistics. We'd like our drivers to do a great deal of the prep and sorting work for that pantry to distribute the food later that same day.
- We hope to see a Brand Partner in each model, someone that can provide enough funding to enable chapters to scale up fast. Growing by word-of-mouth and 'step by step' growth is great and should be encouraged, but our goal is to reach millions of donors. To do that we are seeking programs that will grow fast, and Brand Partners can fund that in exchange for some great brand promotion.
- SCALE: the real goal, and the one we hope to achieve is scale. We think people should have a way to put a bag of food on their doorstep all over America. And, our hope is that 8-12% of
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