Food Lifeline

Cat Johnson

What a wonderful place to do some great volunteering! It is so well organized, 2 hour shifts, the staff is very friendly and welcoming, and you really feel like you are making a difference. If you are looking for a place to volunteer, I highly recommend this one.

Bobwins

I have been volunteering at Food Lifeline for a few months. They are the source of much of the produce and packaged food for your local food bank in the Seattle area. This nonprofit is surprising in size. They are housed in a big warehouse with commercial scale loading docks and big semi trucks with the Food Lifeline logo on the trailers. Inside the lobby, you see the names of all the corporate sponsors, including all the big corporate northwest names you can think of. Their size allows them to collect huge quantities of food that need to be sorted into manageable sized portions that can be shipped to local food banks. Each time I've volunteered, I had a different experience. The first time I sorted packaged foods that had been collected by an Amazon food drive. People threw assorted packaged foods and beverages into collection bins on the way out of a store. You can imagine the variety that had to be sorted into categories so that local food banks could order and receive proper amounts of different foods and drinks. Each session lasts a couple of hours and you can work at your own speed but I end up sweating and tired after every session I want to be productive and feel like I did a little good for others Another time we took huge containers of cereals like Cheerios and scooped them into plastic bags that weighed a certain amount. These bags were a family sized portion that could be sent to the food bank. I don't know if the huge containers came from factory overruns from a generic cereal producer or what but it took several volunteers working an hour to empty each one. The last time I volunteered, I sorted fresh produce. Imagine boxes of fruits and vegetables that grocery stores and distributors have donated because they are past a pull date or contain some good and some rotted produce. Luckily you wear gloves but I did end up carrying a box of fruit that dripped rotten fruit juice on my shorts. Don't wear your Sunday best clothing to volunteer! This was the most challenging chore because we had to decide what was salvageable and what was compost. As always, we put the good produce into manageable sized boxes so the local food bank volunteer could further sort it or put it out for consumers to pick it off the shelves. I like Food Lifeline because there are multiple opportunities to volunteer. You go to their website and look at their volunteer calendar. It tells you the times available and the number of slots available.

SelinaDawnHuynh

This is an amazing place to go to when you need help, no matter your financial situation. Pick up for neighbors in need if you’d like as well. They let you pick up for as many families as you want so you can help out those who are less fortunate and may not have a way to go out and about or carry such heavy stuff around. It’s an amazing thing, what these people do.

Chris Brown

Wonderful people accomplishing a very important mission. Volunteered for a morning here and had a great experience. Safety training was entertaining, staff was super friendly and helpful. Open, clean, and accessible location.