How You Can Help:

Food Industry Donors

 

The food industry is an important partner in the fight against hunger. Connecticut Food Bank relies heavily on local and national growers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to obtain food products that might otherwise go to waste.

Why You Should Donate to CFB

In the United States today, 35.5 million people are hungry or food insecure, including 12.6 million children. In Connecticut alone, there are 280,000 people at risk of hunger at some point during the year. Of that number 11.6% is children. Yet every year, America wastes millions of pounds of food.

Connecticut Food Bank helps the food industry eliminate waste and feed hungry people at the same time by serving as a distribution channel for surplus inventories. CFB provides a safe, efficient, and cost effective system for distributing a wide variety of unsaleable, but edible, food through our network of local service agencies, including soup kitchens, food pantries, and shelters.

How Donating Food Helps Your Business

  • Tax Deduction — The 1976 Tax Reform Act (Section 2135) allows companies to deduct costs associated with donating food to non-profit organizations. For information, contact your tax professional or visit the IRS website.
  • Cost Savings — In addition to tax benefits, you can save money by donating products to CFB rather than discaring them.
  • Inventory Control — A food donation can help reduce your surplus of hard-to-move inventory, and inventory that is edible, but unsaleable.
  • Company Promotion — CFB promotes our food industry donors through a variety of marketing materials and publicity, including newsletters, website, and the Annual Report.
  • Community & Staff Goodwill — Your support will win you the respect of your customers, community, and staff.

What to Donate

  • Code dated
  • Off-specification products
  • Cosmetically damaged
  • Perishable
  • Discontinued or test market
  • Personal care
  • Dry-stored
  • Private label brands
  • Frozen
  • Seasonal packages
  • Fruits & Vegetables
  • Surplus
  • Household
  • Under- and over-weight items
  • Meat products
  • Unlabeled or mislabeled products

How to Donate

To discuss how your company can donate food or other products to Connecticut Food Bank, please contact Carolyn Russell, Product Donation Coordinator, at (203) 469-5000, ext. 312, or crussell@ctfoodbank.org.

You can also arrange to take a tour of our East Haven warehouse and administrative headquarters to see exactly how we process donations.

Once your donation reaches our East Haven warehouse, it will be checked in and documented, and you will receive a receipt. Your donation will be quickly distributed to people through our member programs. These programs are monitored to ensure that donated products do not re-enter the marketplace.

Tax Benefits of Donating Food

In the 1976 Tax Reform Act (Section 2135), Congress refined what had been the general rule since 1969, entitling corporations to an increased deduction under certain circumstances* for contribution of ordinary income property to a public charity or to a private operating foundation.

Your company may take:

  • The sum of one-half of the unrealized appreciation (market value minus cost equals appreciation) plus the taxpayer’s cost, BUT
  • Not in excess of twice the cost of the contributed property.

Example:

  • Selling Price: $4.00
  • Cost: $1.00
  • Gross Profit: $3.00

Gross profit equals $3.00. One half of $3.00 equals $1.50. The maximum deduction can never exceed two times the cost ($2.00). Therefore, gross profit element is limited to $1.00.

  • Adjusted Gross: $1.00
  • Total Charitable Contribution: $2.00

A common example of ordinary income property is property held primarily by the donor for sale to customers in the ordinary course of business. In this example, you must remember to emphasize the appreciation of the property being donated is not to exceed twice the cost of the property.

For more information, contact your tax professional or visit the IRS website.

*Under IRC Section 170 (E)(3), a corporation is entitled to a deduction with respect to a contribution to a public charity or to a private operating foundation of appreciated property described in Section 1221 (1) & (2).

Liability Protection

In 1996, the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act was signed into federal law to encourage donations of food and grocery products to non-profit organizations for distribution to people in need.

This law:

  • Protects you from liability when you donate to a non-profit organization.
  • Protects you from civil and criminal liability should the product donated in good faith later cause harm to the needy recipient.
  • Standardizes donor liability exposure. You or your legal counsel no longer must investigate liability laws in 50 states.
  • Sets a floor of “gross negligence” or intentional misconduct for persons who donate grocery products. According to this law, gross negligence is defined as “voluntary and conscious conduct by a person with knowledge (at the time of conduct) that the conduct is likely to be harmful to the health or well-being of another person.”

For more information about the protection offered to food donors as well as the full text of the Act, please visit America's Second Harvest.