The Plan:
Gleaners set a goal to distribute One Million Gallons of Milk from 4/12/22 to the end of calendar year 2023.
Gleaners did fundraise to raise restricted funds to support the initial goal and allow us to distribute before building this into the actual budget.
We partnered with DFA (Teresa Fleming, Area Food Sales Rep in Huntington, Indiana)
The program offers “Free” Milk at our on-site distributions, our mobile pantry distributions, our Gleaners To Go program. It is also offered to all our agency partners who want to order it for their distributions. For the agency partners – they don’t have to pay any of the cost to order for their neighbors.
Our program offers Gallons of milk. For our agency partners, we do offer some ½ gallon milk if they have limited space, but there is a small price to the agency for this (Neighbors always get it for free). The price is because of difference in pricing between gallons and ½ gallons and the agency partner ordering ½ gallons pays that differnence.
The price of the milk varies each month (dependent on market price).
Initially we started with cardboard boxes instead of crates because of the logistics of returning crates. We have switched now to crates because of the additional cost pressures of the cardboard vs. crates. There are some logistics issues getting the crates back from agency partners and there is a charge if we don’t get them returned to the dairy.
Some agencies can’t store the milk due to limited cooler space -so we try to manage this with “Just in Time” deliveries that occur just before the agency is doing their distribution.
Results:
The results against the initial goal: we distributed 1,179,952 gallons of milk and 57,774 ½ gallons of milk. (Overachieved the goal!)
So far in calendar year 2024 – we have distributed 336,036 gallons and 36,354 ½ gallons of milk.
For our 2024 budgeting – we made a commitment to BUDGET beyond the initial fundraising for the goal of 1 million gallons. Our commitment is to provide milk for free to partner agencies up to the budgeted amount. We are not doing any specific soliciting for restricted gifts to purchase milk, instead we depend on the milk budget for purchases that is rolled into our total purchase budget for the year.
Things to consider for food banks considering a program:
Cooler space – milk takes up a lot of space – so plan for it at the food bank, for your distributions and for agency partners.
Consider if agency partners can handle milk in gallons. You may need to have a ½ gallon offering.
Neighbors that take the bus, ride bikes or walk can’t always take the milk since it is heavy, and they are getting other food they have to manage.
Don’t promise free milk forever just in case budget cuts happen, logistics stop working, etc. We are taking it year by year and hope to continue if possible.
The large commitment of 1 million gallons originally helped us to get a BEST PRICE – so try to build a plan that you can commit too when looking for your initial pricing quotes.
Currently we are bringing in 3 or 4 truckloads a week. This works for the budget. If we had unlimited funds, we could easily use 5 to 6 full truck loads a week, but logistics of cooler storage would also become a problem beyond the budget implications.
For more information, please contact John J. Nieman III at jnieman@freshconnectcentral.org or 617-688-4753.