Food For Pullman
Thanksgiving Food Drive and Meal Giveaway - 2024 Edition
Date: November 27th, 2024
Time: 1:30pm-5:30pm
Location: Pullman City Hall Senior Center
Sign-up Link: Click Here
2024 Planning and Purchasing has Begun!
You can view a full list of this year's purchases as well as a transparency donor/spend list at this link.
Meal signups are CLOSED for 2024
We will have a limited number of walk-in / day of kits available, first come first served. I try my best every year to not turn anyone away, however we have to put a close date on our signups in order to properly order the food for the meal kits. Costs have unfortunately increased significantly this year and this will be our most expensive year yet.
Hey everybody! Back here to announce the return for our 4th annual Thanksgiving Meal giveaway and Food Drive.
I'd like to officially announce the return of our event for 2024. Our goal remains the same as the last two years - providing meals to people who need or want them for Thanksgiving, including shelf stable items so not everything has to be made immediately, and not putting any stipulations on participating (no business or religious events to attend, no programs to sign up for, etc).
Our goal also remains to help all those in Pullman who need it including students who we feel are often underserved by events like this in town.
Early details for the event:
- Location: Pullman City Hall Senior Center (190 SE Crestview St, Pullman, WA 99163 - Rec Center Building/Downstairs Entry)
- Date: Wednesday November 27th, 2024 (the day before Thanksgiving)
- Time: 1:30pm to 5:30pm
As always we will be accepting food donations during the event as well. Any food donated during our event will get some free Pizza provided by our local Pullman Domino's. I also understand that many of you have asked how to donate but you leave for break before the event, I'm working this year to setup a bin at the site to provide donations throughout the month of November.
Over the last two years we've donated hundreds of pounds of food to the WSU Cougar Food Pantry and any donation or left over kit items will go to them directly again this year. If you think random Reddit posts are suspicious and want to cut out the middleman, donate directly!
Signup Information:
We are opening meal-kit signup again this year, you can sign up for yourself or someone else at this link. If you have any questions for me about kits, the event, or anything else, please email foodforpullman@gmail.comÂ
We're not doing anything with this data side from setting up the meal kits and knowing how much of what to order. Costs have risen pretty dramatically the last three years and this helps us keep this possible. It also helps to know how much need we're looking at earlier, but there will always be walk-up kits available as well. My goal each year has been to not turn anyone away, thus far I've kept to that, however due to a fairly significant rise in prices this year I'll be capping the sign-ups at 20 people initially until we can confirm having food for everyone signed up.
Donation Information:
If you would like to donate to the purchasing of the items for our kits please reach out to me at our email address foodforpullman@gmail.com - I'd like to emphasize that we are not a tax deductible donation organization (we turned the cost of doing this and going through all the steps required into just buying more food for people), but I strive to be as absolutely transparent as possible with all incoming and spending, every year. See this link for more details. Every year we've had a handful of donations that really help make this all happen and I couldn't be more happy.
Lastly, if you know someone who could benefit from this please tell them to come sign up (or help them if they require some assistance). We've done over 100 kits (~200 total Thanksgiving Meals) over the last three years, a few hundred pounds of food donated to the WSU Cougar Food Pantry, and actually put together a handful of Christmas meals last year as well for some people that reached out in need. Everyone who has helped make this possible has helped give back to the community we share and I'm so proud to be a small part of.
Also a shout-out and thank you to Paradise Creek Brewery for agreeing to cook our Turkey for the kits again for us this year (even paid for this is a hard thing to coordinate, so I'm extremely grateful), and our Domino's Pizza for donating pizza to hand out to people picking up kits and donating food again.
Thank you, and as always, Go Cougs!
The event for 2024 will be taking place at the Pullman City Hall Senior Center (Building B - Parks and Recreation). This venue has it's own entrance at the far end of the City Hall site from the main entry on SE Crestview St.
While it does help us to have you sign up for a bag (or multiple) before the event, we will be providing bags for walk-in needs on the day of the event as well.
Our goal is to turn no person away! All unused food from the event meal kits will be donated directly to the WSU Student Food Pantry to ensure nothing goes to waste.
All donations day of the event to the food drive will be donated to the same location.
Huge Thanks to our '21-'23 Donors!
I would also like to extend a huge thank you to everyone that donated to make 2021, 2022 and 2023 possible and a success. Your donations have now combined to over 100 meal kits given out for the Thanksgiving Holiday on the Palouse (~220 meals worth of food) and day of donations of non-perishable foods for the WSU student pantry have totaled hundreds of pounds of food to help students at WSU during the rest of the year.
I'd like to give a personal thank you to Corey and JR for taking time out of their holiday schedules to help me source and put together all the meal kits, as well as spending time in the cold handing them out with me for two straight years!
I can't wait to get things started for 2024, our 4th year of operating Food For Pullman's Thanksgiving food giveaway. It means the world to me that so many people have given time, money, food, and helped spread the word so that we can help people in need.
From the bottom the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Rob Larsen, Food for Pullman Founder