How to donate cash to the Food Bank without dipping into your own pocket

Most of us donate what we can to the Community Connections Food Bank; now there’s a way to use the Internet to donate cash on a daily basis without dipping into our own pockets. What!?! I can hear those mental gears grinding away: How is that possible? It must be some sort of scam! Well, it’s not. Illustration courtesy of Kraft Foods

By David F. Rooney

Most of us donate what we can to the Community Connections Food Bank; now there’s a way to use the Internet to donate cash on a daily basis without dipping into our own pockets.

What!?! I can hear those mental gears grinding away: How is that possible? It must be some sort of scam!

Well, it’s not. Kraft Foods is willing to donate $100,000 to food banks in five different regions. $20,000 of that is going to food banks in BC.

Kraft is willing to give 50 cents to our local food bank in your name every time you click on their website. All you have to do is give them your name and e-mail address and locate the place where we live by giving them your postal code. A map will pop up when you do that. Click on the green dot for Revelstoke and you’ll be shifted to another page where you’ll be asked if your want to sign up for e-mail from Kraft Foods, Food Banks Canada or the Community Connections Food Bank. That may sound like an a-HA! moment, but it’s not. There’s no obligation to sign up so you’re don’t  have to wind up on a mailing list somewhere. You’ll finish up this simple process by using your computer cursor to move images of non-perishable food items into a box.

Do that and your done… for the day.

Kraft started this program on November 1 and is running it online until December 31. Revelstokians have — as of 9 am Wednesday, so far ‘donated’ $186. But we can get Kraft to put a lot more coin in the Food Bank’s coffers. We can all click on to the website every day until the end of the year. If we all do that from this day forth that’s 54 days or, at a rate of 50 cents a day, $27 per person. That could wind up being a lot of money — if Krafts little program gets a real buy-in from Revelstokians.

“At the end of December the food bank in each region with the most names will receive a bonus donation of $5,000,” Patti Larson, manager of the Community Connections Food Bank, said in an e-mail to The Current. “This is a personal request from me —  and is a BIG DEAL for our food bank so “THANKS”… together, we can help make the holidays easier for everyone!”