General Discussion

Long time lurking, first post.... . For almost the last 10 years, my wife has been running a Pet Food Pantry out of one side of our garage. She has a history in Pet Rescue, but this was her true calling. Initially it was a single shelving unit, half full of mismatched dog and cat food, then another shelving unit was needed, and then a couple of Rubbermaid tubs, and grew to take over the entire garage stall. She has been featured in newspaper stories, interviewed by Boston area radio stations, and once even did an interview on Fox News about supply chain challenges. Never look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to getting your non-profit's message out. The South Shore Pet Food Pantry, a legit non-profit, at its peak, provided about 750 families a month with supplemental cat and dog food. One of the biggest drivers of animals into shelters is owners cannot pay the food costs. She discovered that many at food banks were taking as much chicken and rice as they could, but not just for themselves. She also knew that shelters around the area were getting large corporate donations, from Chewy or Amazon or the like, of cat and dog food, more than the animals in their care could consume or the shelter could disperse before the food expired. She networked to get the excess food from the shelters to our garage, volunteers would pickup the food here, take it home, portion out the dry food into sealed zipper bags, and then bring the bags of food back, with portion bags inside. My daughters spent countless hours in the garage putting together bundles of dry food bags , canned food, and treats, if we had them, into disposable shopping bags. We got most of the shopping bags for free from our local Home Depot who would have otherwise thrown them out. These shopping bags (had to do it this way during Covid and it became the standard) were then put into the hands of the pet owners at food banks. We have three patio boxes in our driveway with the constant churn of volunteers picking up bags of dry food to take home, portion out, and then return to us in sealed bags.
Sadly, that all stops at the end of the year. There is no more money to buy food, there are less and less volunteers willing or able to package or distribute food, and the shelves are getting bare with no new deliveries in sight. In case you are wondering, no one has ever got a paycheck from the SSPFP, no one was reimbursed for storage, or mileage to pickup or deliver food. It was and still is a benevolent endeavor, but one that she simply cannot do anymore. Donations have stopped, volunteers have other priorities, and it cannot be on one person to lift the load that 10 or more carried just a few months ago. It is just the time we live in now,