Donate Food | PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro

How to Donate Food

We are able to keep our shelves stocked at the PORCH Community Hub because of food donations from generous neighbors like you! We accept donations of any in-date nonperishable foods and can sometimes accept donations of fresh produce. We cannot accept donations of refrigerated/frozen products such as milk, meat, or prepared meals from community members at this time. We have a limited capacity to accept donations of hygiene products.

There are two ways to donate food to PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro!

Participate in your neighborhood’s monthly food drive for PORCH:

Do you live in Chapel Hill or Carrboro? Have you seen PORCH yard signs around your neighborhood? PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro works with more than 130 neighborhoods across Chapelboro to host monthly, neighborhood-wide food drives. Each month, our “Neighborhood Coordinators” reach out to their neighbors to update them on our needs and when they can set food donations out on their porch (which is where we get our name: PORCH—get it?) If you would like to connect to your area’s Neighborhood Coordinator or become a Coordinator yourself, please fill out this brief form.

Donate directly to PORCH:

Have you hosted a food drive or have nonperishables from your home that you would like to donate? We would love to receive your donation at the PORCH Community Hub, located at 202 South Greensboro Street in Carrboro (our parking lot is located BEHIND our building).

Though we are typically able to accept donations Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays from 9AM-3PM, please reserve a time to drop off donations using this link to assure we have staff on-site to assist you. Please do NOT leave donations at our loading dock without connecting with a staff member, there is a high probability that we will have to throw that food away.

Want to host a food drive for PORCH?

Food drives are a great way to come together as a community to make sure all of our neighbors have enough food to eat! We have put together a food drive “toolkit” that you can access using the button below. There, you’ll find instructions on hosting a digital or in-person food drive, an up-to-date list of our greatest donation needs, printable materials you can edit with your drive’s information, and instructions on dropping off donations.

Check out our food drive toolkit here!

What to donate

The PORCH Community Hub Market offers participants non-perishable selections including canned meat, pasta, pasta sauce, canned vegetables, dry/canned beans, rice, condiments, nut butters, snacks, cereal, canned soup, canned fruit, and mac n cheese. We currently have a SURPLUS of birthday kits and ask that food donations focus on the below, up-to-date list of the specific items we need to keep our shelves fully stocked:

Snacks (especially individually wrapped like granola bars, trail mix packets)
Pasta Sauce (prefer plastic jars)
Fruit (especially fruit cocktail & mandarin orange)
Low-sugar cereal (prefer non-Cheerio options)
Condiments (especially ketchup & salad dressing)
Jelly/or jam
1-lb bags of rice
Cooking oil
Maseca
Nutella
Heat and Eat Meals (like Hormels brand)

Plastic containers are preferred over glass. Be sure to check expiration dates. We cannot accept expired food.

Tax Receipt for In-Kind Donations

Your food donations may be tax-deductible! Use the link below to print a tax receipt for your in-kind donations.

Tax Receipt for In-Kind Donations

“Food from PORCH has been extremely helpful for my family. [It] allows us to afford other necessities in our home and gives us comfort knowing we can get the food we need.”

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