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If you eat, you qualify for low cost, nutritious food. These web sites make it easy to stretch your food dollar. How low cost? Depending on where you live, about $18 for $35 or more worth of groceries, or $30 for what could cost you $60-$75 at traditional grocery store prices. Use your ZIP code to find a delivery spot, order in advance, pay a number of ways, and pick up your food the day it is delivered. This is grocery store quality food, not seconds or expired products. Southern Californians even have an organic produce option.

Americans have a patchwork of low cost food distribution points spread across most of the nation. Starting from opposite sides of the country, SHARE in San Diego and Angel Food Ministries in Monroe, Georgia have stretched their food outreach programs across the land, providing nutritious meals, a hand up, and hope to hundreds of thousands of people each month.

History: SHARE, Self-Help And Resource Exchange, started in 1983. Deacon Carl Shelton with the San Diego Catholic diocese visited Mother Teresa. After this meeting, he returned to the United States and met with a group of other Californians looking for self help ways to provide food to individuals and families. A good history of how this idea became SHARE is found on the Wisconsin SHARE site. The parking lot of Jack Murphy Stadium was the scene of the first food distribution of more than 7,500 packages. Today, SHARE consists of a number of different non-profit and non-denominational organizations still providing self-help and community building activity based on providing quality food at low prices.

In 1994, Ministers Joseph and Linda Wingo were looking for a way to help their neighbors in Monroe, GA, a small county seat about 40 miles east of Atlanta. The area was reeling from plant closings and job layoffs. Starting from their back porch, they handed out the first 34 family distributions of what is now Angel Food Ministries. Today, the non-denominational Angel Food covers 35 states and delivers more than 500,000 packages a month. The main Angel Food monthly unit provides enough food to feed a family of four for about a week, or one senior citizen for almost a month.

How they work: SHARE and Angel Food have the same core goal: provide quality food at low cost to those in need. Both groups are not-for-profit organizations and rely on volunteers for almost all the work. The Angel Food website notes it has 210 paid employees and 45,000 volunteers. Add all those volunteer hours, volunteer distribution sites, tax deductible contributions, and the purchasing power of buying in huge bulk quantities, and food gets inexpensive in a hurry compared to for profit stores. Even with all these volunteer hours and donations, Angel Food recently raised the price of a box of food from $25 to $30.

What’s the catch? “Resource Exchange” are two of the words that form the SHARE acronym. Participants are asked to donate two hours of volunteerism for each package. According to a site director quoted in a recent article in an Ocala, FL newspaper, “The volunteer service can be anything you can do to help someone else.” You decide the activity. Coach a youth league, take an elderly person to a doctor’s visit, babysit someone’s children, or help at the SHARE location for registration or distribution. For Angel Food Ministries, the organization insists you bring your own box to pick up food.

How to begin, what’s the food, how to order: For Angel Food, visit the Angel Food Ministries’ website. You can also click here for the Angel Food Ministries’ FAQ. The main site gives a link to this month’s menu. Chose your state. If you live in one of the 35 states serviced by Angel Food, enter your ZIP code and find the host site most convenient for you. Order early in the month. The web site gives the deadline order day for that month’s distribution. Contact the site and pay. Payment cash, EBT/Food Stamps, or money orders. Some locations also accept checks, credit cards, or debit cards, even online registration and orders. Ask the local site for methods of payment. On distribution day, go to the site and pick up your food.

Finding a SHARE site is a bit more difficult. There is no one SHARE web address. Pennsylvania and surrounding states have a SHARE affiliate and website, as do Florida and southern Georgia, Wisconsin, and Colorado and the Midwest. In New England, what used to be called SHARE New England is now Serve New England. Organized as a co-op, this group covers six states. In SHARE’s birthplace of San Diego, there is Golden Share Foods. It is Golden Share that offers organic produce, as well as a nice seafood package. A good way to find SHARE’s presence in your state is to use a search engine with “SHARE food program” and the name of your state as the search words. Types of payment also vary from site to site, so ask.

Angel Food starts in the southeast and moves west to California. It covers most of the midwest and up the east coast to New York and Connecticut. SHARE covers many of these same areas. Through Serve New England, it covers Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. SHARE Colorado, South Dakota and Wyoming residents also have access to these food kits. States that do not have either SHARE or Angel Food are Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, North Dakota, and Washington.

 

Yep, $20 off a $40 order–Gurnsey Seeds and Plants–since 1820.  The discount code is hidden. Discount applies at checkout.