text your donation -- it's quick, easy, and most of all, you don't have to get your hands dirty.

it started with a box at the front of the store, a hand-lettered sign requesting "food for the needy". the idea was to purchase a few extra items and drop them in the box on the way out. then there were lists, "buy these items, leave them in the box at the front" partially to remind folks to participate and partially because there were things getting in the box that shouldn't be there. i mean, everyone loves a loaf of bread, but the food bank doesn't need a squashed moldy bag of crumbs. so the grocery staff took to packing brown bags, writing on each bag what it contained - canned ham, dried beans, peanut butter - and writing a price on each bag, stacking the bags beside the checkout for folks to purchase a bag that was then placed in the "food for the needy" box. many more people remembered to help out and there was a much lower risk of ending up with unusable food.

yesterday while shopping i saw a new display loaded up with decorated reusable bags with "food to share" printed on each bag, all stacked neatly in a cardboard shelf. there's a poster at the top of the display showing three levels - "gold" is comprised of a canned ham, couple cans of beans, some rice; "silver" is peanut butter, jelly, tuna, crackers; "bronze" is vienna sausages, canned fruit. the idea is that you take a piece of paper to the cashier and tell them which you want ot purchase - a gold, silver, or bronze level package - and you get a free reusable grocery bag. simple. nothing to think about except which level. the grocery benefits from the inventory control because they don't tie up a bunch of items in the "food for the needy" box, and it stops that idiotic needy-box pilfering and vandalism of the unattended box. at the end of the campaign, the grocery orders the exact amount needed to fulfill what the customers purchased to be donated, and delivers it directly to the food bank, neatly packaged instead of randomly swimming in box.

i wanted to be generous, but chose silver because i like peanut butter better than canned ham and i bet a lot of hungry kids like it better, too. yeah, hungry kids. that's who is at the end of this streamlined, sterilized process - hungry kids. they've made it so easy for us to be our brother's keeper, separated us so far from each other, is it any wonder we don't know who our brothers are?