Tips for Volunteer Recruitment and Retention

Last week, members of our team jumped on a call with chapter leaders to talk about the ways that they and their fellow chapter members bring new volunteers into the movement and celebrate the volunteers who keep our chapters going! The chapter leaders we spoke with had some great tips, which we’re excited to share with our entire network. 

Recognition boosts volunteers’ morale! Here, members of the chapter at Western Kentucky University are recognized for recovering 5,000 pounds of food.

Tips to recruit new volunteers:

• Give short presentations about FRN to classes that cover food and environmental topics, such as nutrition or environmental science.

• Introduce FRN to first-year students at residence hall meetings.

• Host virtual recruitment meetings.

• Table at campus activities fairs and invite students to play food waste trivia games with prizes for correct answers.

• Partner with other student organizations to host events.

Organize fun, educational events for your chapter! Members of the chapter at Wagner College learned about other ways to keep food out of landfills at this composting workshop.

Tips to celebrate and retain volunteers:

• Incentivize participating in food recoveries by giving out a prize for the volunteer(s) who join the most food recoveries.

• Utilize social media: encourage volunteers to take pictures during food recoveries and share those pictures on your chapter’s social media accounts. Recognize volunteers for their hard work by tagging them and highlighting their role in the recovery.

• Host fun volunteer appreciation events, like pizza parties, potlucks, or movie nights*.

• Give volunteers some FRN swag so they feel connected to your chapter and our network*. 

*If your chapter doesn’t have access to funding to purchase prizes or host volunteer appreciation events, check out our recent blog post to learn how to apply for grant funding from FRN National!

These are just some of the great ways that FRN chapter members stay connected with each other and their work. Does your chapter have tips to recruit and retain volunteers? Tag us on social media to highlight your volunteers or send us a note at programs@foodrecoverynetwork.org to share your strategies.

How to apply for chapter funding from FRN National

Every day, hundreds of students in our network are mobilizing to recover food, raise awareness, and fight back against food waste, climate change, and hunger. To ensure this important work is sustained year over year, FRN National is pleased to offer financial support to chapters that need funds to keep their chapter up and running. 

Do you need new gloves for food recoveries?  A parking permit to transport food? Flyers to recruit new chapter members? Swag to show your volunteers how much you appreciate them? Keep reading to find out how your chapter can apply for financial support from FRN National. 

Who can apply for funding? 

Funding is available to all official chapters in our network. Check to see if FRN National recognizes your chapter as active. If not, you might need to fill out an Official Chapter Agreement form. 

How much money does FRN National provide?

Official chapters may request up to $300 per academic year to help support chapter operations.

What can FRN issued funds be used for? 

FRN Grant Funds may be used to cover costs for supplies and/or events that enable your chapter to continue its work. FRN funds can be used to cover the cost of:

• Food recovery supplies (ex: trays and lids, gloves, masks, hairnets or hats, transportation)

• Volunteer recruitment materials (ex: flyers, banners, postcards)

• FRN swag (ex. t-shirts, buttons, stickers)

• Volunteer appreciation events (ex. end of semester pizza party)

How do I apply for funding from FRN National?

It’s simple! Fill out the online Grant Application. You can fill out the application as a supply request, meaning FRN National will purchase the supplies on your behalf, or reimburse you if you have already purchased supplies out of pocket. An FRN Team member will review your Grant Application submission within two weeks, at which point we’ll contact you to confirm if your application has been approved and processed. 

How do I know how much funding I have left?

To check your chapter’s funding balance find your chapter under Current Chapters and select the pounds-to-date spreadsheet to view the funding tab. You may have extra dedicated funding, if your chapter has been inactive for 3 years, that money will be re-introduced into the general funding pool for all chapters. As best practice, please be sure to track how much funding you have requested from FRN National. Extra dedicated funding may be from external partners or individuals donors.

Still have questions? 

If you have any additional questions about FRN-issued funding, please email our team at programs@foodrecoverynetwork.org.

University of Illinois at Chicago: tackling our first food recovery of the semester

After spending almost 1.5 years operating as a virtual club, organizing this recovery in the first week of in-person classes was, honestly, a little difficult. While some of our chapter members and our school’s Office of Sustainability were able to help us collect food from the nearby hospital during the pandemic, getting our usual volunteers back into the swing of things this fall was a bit of an adjustment. Most of us hadn’t driven our electric vehicle, named GEMA, in quite a while and the last time a lot of us had done a food recovery was before lockdown. Nevertheless, we were very excited to be able to participate in our first big recovery of the semester!

Our chapter recruited three volunteers to help us recover the leftover food from the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) Leadership Summit at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Chicago.

While we weren’t able to take all of the food, we did collect one box of apples, three boxes of sandwiches, one box of fruit cups, and a few boxes of pastries, bringing our first recovery of the semester to a total of 120 pounds of food recovered. We donated the food to Franciscan Outreach, a local homeless shelter that we’ve partnered with for the past few years and to whom we often donate food. Hopefully we will be able to recover more food from future NAR events, but until then, our chapter looks forward to all of the recoveries we have planned this semester. 

A note from FRN’s Program Manager: 

I am so proud of the commitment our students at UIC showed for this recovery effort. It’s not common that FRN National calls upon our chapters to support food recovery programs outside of their campuses, but we had the opportunity to pilot this model with the UIC and LUC chapters for the first time this summer. With any pilot, there are often a few curveballs, and the UIC chapter faced some difficult circumstances when the supplies we ordered for the food recovery weren’t delivered on time. Despite the packaging issues, the UIC chapter arrived on time and recovered as much food as they could possibly fit into their vehicle. On behalf of FRN National, I’d like to thank these students for their support and their tenacity to recover and donate this food!

Loyola University Chicago: Our Food Recovery Story

by Benji Pesto

On August 23, Food Recovery Network’s Loyola University Chicago chapter recovered 313.368 pounds of food from Theatre on the Lake, which hosted this year’s National Association of REALTORS® Leadership Summit. Fellow chapter members Christina Bozio, Caitlyn Dang, and others recovered leftover food from the event and donated it to A Just Harvest in Rogers Park.

This is one of the biggest single recoveries Loyola’s chapter has ever performed, and we are amazed by how much food we were able to donate! Recovering outside of Loyola’s dining halls has really opened our eyes to the world of food waste beyond the limits of campus, and we hope to partner with more businesses and organizations to further reduce food waste and fight hunger in Chicago.

Our chapter treasurer Caitlyn Dang said, “I felt an overwhelming sense of joy once I saw all of the food recovered stacked on the table at A Just Harvest. It was astonishing to see how with just a few hours of my time on a Monday night, I could help recover hundreds of pounds of food that would otherwise have ended up in the trash. Now, I know this food will go to making a difference in my own local neighborhood and feed so many people who are in need. A little truly does go a long way—volunteer with Food Recovery Network!”

A Just Harvest is a non-profit community organization in northern Rogers Park in Chicago. It’s mission is “to fight poverty and hunger in the Rogers Park and greater Chicago community by providing nutritious meals daily while cultivating community and economic development and organizing across racial, cultural and socioeconomic lines in order to create a more just society.” A Just Harvest was able to use the food we recovered from the event to create free lunches for quite a few days following the recovery.

Powerful Partnership: FRN and National Association of REALTORS®

When FRN launched FRN10X last year, establishing powerful partnerships became one of FRN’s three anchor strategies to achieve our desired result of recovering surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the U.S.

As we begin a new school year, we are delighted to announce a new powerful partnership for FRN - our collaboration with the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) to bring awareness to the intersectional issues of hunger and housing. 

Earlier this year, we were delighted to welcome Bob Goldberg, CEO of NAR to our Board of Directors and earlier this week, our Executive Director, Regina Anderson shared the main stage to talk about the intersectionality of our work at NAR’s national conference in Chicago.

There will be more conversations to come over the next year, but in the interim, we encourage you to check out NAR’s newest research study on the linkages between affordable housing and food insecurity. The press release below highlights this important piece of research and our new partnership together.

NAR’s Press Release, August 24, 2021

Affordable Housing Concerns and Food Insecurity Linked, NAR Report Finds

NAR continues calls for more affordable housing while expanding partnership with Food Recovery Network to combat hunger

Key Highlights

• About two-fifths of homeowner households (38% or 23.3 million) and two-thirds of renter households (66% or 17.8 million) reported having difficulty paying for the usual household expenses, including food.

• One in four households that spent more than 50% of their income on housing in 2019 – before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic – received food stamps.

• Louisiana, South Carolina and Georgia have the largest shares of households that are both behind on rent or mortgage payments and without enough food to eat.

WASHINGTON (August 24, 2021) – Households burdened by housing costs are more likely to need food assistance, according to a new analysis by the National Association of Realtors®. NAR’s Housing Affordability and Food Sufficiency report examines the connection between families that struggle with rent or mortgage payments and food insecurity.

From June 23 to July 5, 2021, nearly two-fifths of homeowner households (38% or 23.3 million) and two-thirds of renter households (66% or 17.8 million) reported having difficulty paying for the usual household expenses, including food, rent or mortgage, auto and student loans, medical expenses and utilities. Nearly six million households received free food offered by food pantries, churches or other charitable organizations.

“Housing affordability and food sufficiency are inseparable to families’ balance sheets,” said Jessica Lautz, NAR vice president of demographics and behavioral insights. “The pandemic has only highlighted many families’ struggle to secure stable housing and food security. This report shows how critical it is for NAR to continue its work to increase the access to stable and affordable housing in America.”

One in four households that spent more than 50% of their income on housing in 2019 – including one in three renters – received food stamps from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The percentage of gross monthly income spent on housing costs serves as an indicator of housing affordability. Housing costs can include a combination of mortgage or rent payments, utilities, insurance and property taxes. Households that spend more than 50% of their monthly income on housing are considered severely burdened by housing costs.

Louisiana, South Carolina and Georgia have the largest shares of households that are both behind on rent or mortgage payments and without enough food to eat. The states where households are most likely to receive free grocery donations while also struggling with housing costs are New York, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina and New Jersey.

NAR has partnered with the Food Recovery Network since 2019 to fight hunger and food insecurity across the nation. FRN provides guidance and resources that have ensured a number of NAR and its state and local affiliates’ meetings and events are Food Recovery Verified, which allows the group to recover surplus food from various events and donate it to hunger-fighting non-profits. NAR and FRN extended the partnership this year as the association again began hosting in-person events. Since June, NAR has donated 500 pounds of surplus food from three national events.

NAR CEO Bob Goldberg and FRN’s Executive Director Regina Anderson spoke yesterday about the collaboration during the association’s Leadership Summit, an annual gathering of state and local Realtor® association presidents-elect and association executives.

“As the financial impacts of the pandemic are still being felt by far too many families across the country, I’m grateful to be continuing our partnership with the Food Recovery Network to fight the unacceptably high levels of food insecurity in America,” said Goldberg. “Last month alone, more than eight million households reported not having enough food to eat. The need is great, but so are the philanthropic spirit and actions of Realtors®.”

NAR’s efforts will add to the work of FRN and its affiliates, which has to date recovered 5.3 million pounds of food, equivalent to 4.4 million meals donated since 2011.

“Powerful partnerships like the one FRN and NAR have fostered ensures people have access to the food they deserve. It’s important that people can see themselves as part of a simple solution to changing the current process of tossing perfectly good food to one of recovering good food and ensuring it can go to those experiencing hardship,” said Anderson.

View NAR’s Housing Affordability and Food Sufficiency report here: https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/research-reports/housing-affordability-and-food-sufficiency. 

The National Association of Realtors® is America’s largest trade association, representing more than 1.4 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.

# # #

Information about NAR is available at nar.realtor. This and other news releases are posted in the newsroom at nar.realtor/newsroom. Statistical data in this release, as well as other tables and surveys, are posted in the “Research and Statistics” tab.