First of all, congratulations!
The shelter I work for has a great relationship with a distribution company where regularly (once every month or so) when they have items that are close to expiring, packaging is damaged, can't be sold in stores, etc. they donate it to us. Oftentimes this arrives as 15-20 pallets worth of stuff at once, and our building is physically pretty small so it can seem overwhelming for sure.
- Make sure you're prepared and have the time to deal with it. If you know ahead of time when the delivery will be arriving, call on volunteers to be there to help so that you aren't pulling all of your staff away from their regular duties to spend hours doing that.
- Think about what you need/want. What are your preferences for brand, type of food (wet/dry, cat/dog/other), are there any medical specific diets you want to have on hand, etc? For example, my shelter has big floor to ceiling cupboards in our garage that all of our food is stored in. We never know exactly what we're going to get in these deliveries, but we have a handful of certain brands of food we prefer to use, we keep pretty much all cat food because we go through it so quickly, and we keep some puppy/kitten specific food on hand to give to our fosters. We also always keep any extras that may be thrown in (litter, collars, toys) because we can always use those.
- What does your storage space look like? We keep what we need and are able to store at that time. We fill our cupboards as full as we can, and then the rest we give to others. Some of it is bagged into gallon ziplocs and put into our shelter's pet food pantry for members of our community to take if they need assistance. We also have contacts at about 15 other shelters/rescues in our area that we contact to see if anyone else is in need of food. Then we make piles with whatever food we won't keep/use for each of them to come pick up. We label all of the piles with the rescues name so that everyone is guaranteed some (and we try to be nice and sort out senior food for the senior dog rescue, puppy food for the rescues on the reservations, etc). Sharing is caring!
Just make sure you know what you want/need ahead of time and plan to have help available when it's delivered and you'll be fine! Good luck!
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Riley Bailey
Volunteer/Foster Coordinator
Yellowstone Valley Animal Shelter
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-30-2024 07:53 AM
From: Karen Kirsch
Subject: Semi Truck Donations
A win we've had this month is we've been offered a Semi-Truck Donation of pet food/products. Does anyone have experience with this? We are TINY compared to many of you guys so we are a bit overwhelmed right now. We want to get our ducks in a row so when it arrives it runs smoothly. FEEDBACK PLEASE.
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Karen Kirsch
Founder
Spayed and Aid
KY
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