High-impact holiday giving can make a big difference (Newsworks-WHYY)

December 27, 2011 By Elizabeth Fiedler

Trying to decide what to do before year’s end to help those less fortunate?

The executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for High Impact Philanthropy, which puts out an annual giving guide, says conventional drives that collect packaged food gather a mix of food that often does not match a family’s needs or provide balanced nutrition. Katherina Rosqueta said it’s better to give money to a food bank.

“There’s a whole network of food banks across the country that can now take advantage of large surpluses of food that the food sector–grocery stores, farmers, food packagers–will donate. The network of food banks just need to charge a small handling fee in order to distribute that,” Rosqueta said. “So that’s 10 to 20 cents for a pound of food and at retail that same pound of food would probably cost us about $2.”

Read the full article on Newsworks.org.