The community food bank

Food banks are doing more than ever, often with the same small teams. Feed Ontario counted 8.7 million food bank visits in the province between April 2024 and March 2025, up 165% since 2019, and two in three food banks said they were worried about keeping their operations going. The need is real. So is the paperwork behind it.

What I noticed

Looking at how smaller food banks across Ontario run, from their websites and public information, a few things stood out.

• Tiny teams. Many run on two to six staff, with volunteers doing most of the work on the floor.
• Sign-ups by phone or paper. Volunteers often apply by calling or filling in a PDF. Food drives and group volunteer days are booked by phone.
• Receipts by hand. Donations come in online, by cheque and in cash, and tax receipts are often prepared manually, sometimes once a year in one big push.
• Growing reach. Some small food banks now act as hubs for whole regions, supplying other agencies and food cupboards.

Where the hours go

The admin that piles up tends to look like this:

• Filling volunteer shifts, and refilling them when someone cancels.
• Answering the same questions: hours, what to bring, how to donate, whether they take a certain item.
• Booking food drives with schools, churches and businesses, then following up.
• Matching donations to donors, issuing receipts and saying thank you.
• Pulling numbers together for funders and annual reports.

What an agent could do

Here's an illustrative example of an agent for volunteers and donors. It isn't a real food bank, just a picture of how the work could flow:

1. A new volunteer signs up online or on a paper form. The agent adds them to the volunteer list and drafts a welcome message with the next orientation date.
2. When a shift has gaps, it drafts a short note to volunteers who've said they're free that day. A coordinator approves it before it goes out.
3. When a group asks about running a food drive, it drafts a reply with the guidelines and suggested drop-off times.
4. When donations come in, it matches them to donors, prepares thank-you notes and gets receipt details ready for the person who signs them off.
5. Each week, it gives the team a one-page summary: shifts filled, new volunteers, donations to acknowledge.

Every message is drafted, not sent. A person reads it and approves it first.

What stays off-limits

This is the line I'd hold firmly. The people who use a food bank share personal details at a hard moment in their lives: income, housing, family size, ID. An agent should stay on the volunteer and donor side of the work and never touch client records or decide who gets help. Those decisions need people, and that information needs the strictest care.

The point is to free staff and volunteers to spend more time with the people coming through the door, not less.

What to be careful about

Volunteer and donor details are personal information too. Keep them in the systems you already use, limit who can see them, and say plainly in your privacy notice that a tool helps with admin. Official tax receipts follow Canada Revenue Agency rules, so a person should always check and sign them off.

A simple first step

For two weeks, keep a tally of two things: how many times you fill or refill a volunteer shift, and how long thank-yous and receipts take. If those numbers surprise you, that's where to start.

If you work at a food bank and this matches what you see, or misses something important, I'd really like to hear from you.

Darren