A food pantry needs intake software that registers each household once from a phone, checks people in fast on distribution day, applies your visit rules, and reports households and individuals served without a sign-in sheet to type up.
Advocate's Food Pantry program does each of those, along with locations, sessions, delivery routes, and inventory.
What should food pantry intake collect?
Food pantry intake should collect household size and the details your county or food bank requires, one time, with the household's consent. Collect only what you use. In Advocate, households register once from any phone, and that record carries over to every visit.
Before you choose, confirm what your regional food bank and county ask you to report.
How should check-in work on distribution day?
Check-in should take seconds: find the household, confirm them, and move the line. A volunteer at the door should be able to do it on a phone or tablet. Advocate gives volunteers a fast check-in list for each session, so nobody types up a paper sheet on Monday.
How do you apply visit rules fairly?
Set your visit rules once in the software, so every volunteer applies the same rules. Advocate's service plans set how often each household can come and what they get.
What should a food pantry report?
A food pantry should report households and individuals served, not only pounds of food distributed. Those are the numbers donors, boards, and food banks ask for. Advocate counts households and individuals at every visit, and the numbers update while you work.
Can one system run pickup, delivery, and more than one site?
Yes. Advocate runs as many pantry locations as you need, each with its own sessions, schedule, and capacity. It plans home-delivery routes next to pickups and sends routes to drivers, tracks inventory, and tells households when to come.
About Advocate
Advocate is nonprofit program software built by Reciprocity in Pontiac, Michigan, for nonprofits across the United States. Program managers use it to take applications, keep one record for each household, send email and texts, run volunteers and events, and run programs such as sponsorship, food pantries, and fundraisers. It counts the households and individuals each program serves while the work happens, and it is free to start.
