Food Drives or Virtual Fund Drives can be held by anyone. Many of the groups and organizations who help include:

• Places of employment
• Faith Communities
• Schools
• Fraternal and other nonprofit organizations
• Families and Friends
• People hosting birthday celebrations, weddings, anniversaries, etc. and include a charity into their event.

There are many ways to support Roadrunner Food Bank. The important thing is to find one or a combination of activities that makes it easy for your participants to donate.

• Physical food drives – collect non-perishable food items in person and bring the food donations to us.
• Virtual food drive – is a fundraiser that is held entirely online.  It gives you the freedom to help our neighbors in need wherever you have an internet connection. Create a personalized giving page, set a fundraising goal, and share the link with co-workers, family, and friends – all from your phone or computer. Here is how to get started.
• Shop for food donations through Instacart’s Community Carts program.  Select the items you want to donate, purchase the products, and an Instacart shopper will deliver your donation right to us. There are no delivery or service fees!

It’s easy!  Register on this link to start a food drive or fund drive.

Once you submit your registration, you’ll receive an email from our team. You can get started right away if you are hosting a virtual food drive — set up your personalized virtual fundraising page here. If you need any help, please reach out to if you have any questions we haven’t addressed in this FAQ’s section (see bottom of this webpage for contact information).

We recommend that most campaigns last about a month to allow time to promote the drive and the time for your friends, family, co-workers, and faith community time to participate.  Please periodically remind people to join you in your efforts by using posters, email, social media, and in person invitations.

Personalizing your campaign is the best way to connect people you are inviting to help you with your food drive or virtual fund drive. Set a narrative and inspire! Share a compelling story about why you are taking this effort on and why food access is so important in our state to help people live, thrive, and be an active part of our community.

You can use ANY box(es) for your food drive. Copy paper boxes work well and can be decorated in the theme of your food drive. However, the food bank can loan you boxes. You can pick up boxes from the food bank’s Albuquerque location located at 5840 Office Blvd NE. We do recommend you tape the bottom well and use fliers to post in the empty places on the boxes.

Our boxes fit in the trunk of a car or back seat. Once filled, they can easily fit on a dolly and lifted into a truck bed or a car with a large enough back seat. Be sure to ask for help in loading as they can get heavy quickly when filled with canned goods.

Since transportation is a significant cost to us, please be prepared to pick up and drop off any food drive boxes and also deliver food donations to us at our 5840 Office Blvd NE location in Albuquerque.

Our fleet must remain focused on delivering food to distribution points across the state. Contact us in advance to arrange a time to deliver the food to Roadrunner Food Bank’s Albuquerque location at 505.247.2052. Food drives held outside the Albuquerque area have a modified process. We ask you to take the food donations to a partner in your area. Locations can be found on our Food Finder webpage. Please call the location in advance to ensure they have storage capabilities. 

Yes!  Of course, absolutely! If you are outside the Albuquerque area and wish to collect food donations for your community, use our Food Finder tool. These are locations that receive food regularly from our Albuquerque warehouse. We do encourage community members to keep food they collect within their local city/community as all food collected helps our neighbors in need.

Visit the Food Finder Map and Webpage.  Enter your zip code in the  white box located just above the map. Rural communities please expand the radius to search up to 50 or more for a larger list of partners. Your search results will show you a list of partners we work with in that community. Click on each location for hours/days of distributions. Look for locations that have operating hours of more than once a month. Be sure to call them in advance. Not every partner we work with has the capacity to store food.

• Canned proteins such as beef, chicken, or tuna
• Beef jerky, turkey jerky, pouches of chicken, tuna, and similar items.
• Prepared canned meals such as soup and beans
• Canned fruit and vegetables
• Peanut Butter or other similar butters like almond butter, cashew butter, walnut butter, hazelnut butter, sunflower seed butter, etc.
• Bags or boxes of rice or beans
• Pasta and cereal
• Jarred items
• Shelf stable milk, shelf stable rice milk, shelf stable almond milk, etc.

*Please do not donate homemade food items. All food items we distribute must arrive to us with labels, ingredient information, and nutrition information on the packaging. 

Download a flier with a complete list of food needs here.

• Only donate items that you would eat.
• Avoid perishable items like dairy, meat, chicken, fish, and fresh fruits and vegetables UNLESS you can guarantee the food remains at the proper food safety temperatures prior to delivery to the food bank.
• We only accept and distribute unopened items. We can accept opened packages ONLY if the internal packaging is still sealed and intact.
• We are not able to accept food items without labels, ingredient information, or nutrition labels.
• We can accept baby food and formula as long as they adhere to the above guidelines and are not expired.
• We can accept certain food items past their best use by date, manufacture date, or sale date. We use the Food Keeper app to determine freshness and quality of food items donated to us.

It depends. Receiving perishable food items requires coordination with our team and consideration in keeping the perishables at the right temperatures.  In general, the community may donate excess garden produce to the food bank during business hours. Some groups hold turkey or ham drives for us during the holiday months (with advanced coordination with our team to ensure the food products remain at the right temperatures).

Volume or bulk food donations from retailers, manufacturers, growers, farmers, and other food industry companies requires coordination with our food rescue team.  Learn more here.

Food donations from the community are inspected and sorted by our volunteers. They are added into our inventory at our Albuquerque warehouse where they can be then distributed to our network of more than 350 affiliated hunger-relief organizations located throughout the state of New Mexico.

When the partner receives the food from our distribution hub, they use it to provide groceries and meals to our neighbors facing hunger. Each partner organization operates a little differently.  Some have regular operating hours, others by appointment only, other based on when the food arrives to their location.  And others are shelters or group homes prepping and providing meals to people who need the additional help. This video helps explain how we work.

You bet! For those setting up a personalized Virtual Fund Drive, please provide your custom URL to family, friends, and others to get involved. They can then donate via credit/debit card right through your customized page.

For donations made by check, please make checks payable to Roadrunner Food Bank.  Be sure to include your company name, food or fund drive name, or use this Donation Log to collect information from those participating in your efforts. You can bring the donations to us and mail them to us.

Donations can be mailed to:

Roadrunner Food Bank
Attn: Food and Fund Drive Team
5840 Office Blvd NE
Albuquerque, NM 87109

• If you create a Virtual Food Drive personalized page, the results are tallied automatically through the portal and reflected on your page instantly. Keeping your campaign completely virtual will give you the most accurate results right away.
• If participants write checks or provide cash as part of your food or fund drive, we recommend you complete the Donation Log if you have not started a Virtual Food Drive personalized giving page.  Turn the completed form and funds collected to our staff to include in your efforts.  Please include your food and fund drive campaign name on the top of the Donation Log.
• When you bring food donations to us, please ask for a food drive receipt. Complete the form and while you are waiting, our team will weigh and include the total pounds you collected on the food drive receipt. We provide a copy to take with you and keep one to process internally. The copy that stays with our team will help us attribute your support to the right group.

• Virtual Food Drive/Online Contributions: An email receipt will arrive a few minutes to you after you make your gift through the personalized giving page. Be sure to check your junk/spam folder.
• Checks: If you mail in a check to us, you will receive an acknowledgement letter from the food bank shortly after we process your gift.
• Cash Contributions: If you make a cash gift and provide us your contact information, we will send an acknowledgement letter to you shortly after we process your gift to a valid mailing address. If you drop off your cash donation, our front desk team can write you a receipt to take with you.

Thank you for considering how to best help Roadrunner Food Bank!  The answer is: both are equally important.

• Food donations from the community help supplement and create variety in food items we have available to distribute into New Mexico communities.
• Donations of money are also very helpful. Monetary donations help us expand programs, expand food distribution locations to underserved communities, buy food in volume, secure freight costs to bring food into the state, and so much more. Because we can take your dollars and stretch it, our purchasing power in bulk food buying can come at a much lower cost. Also, purchasing food helps us evaluate what is currently available in our inventory and obtain food items that are harder to get donated — such as produce, food items high in protein like meat and peanut butter like products, milk, eggs, cheese, and more.

As our supporter, please contribute in the ways that are meaningful to you and how you want to support the food bank – whether in food, time, or funds.  All are important!  We are tremendously grateful for however you elect to support Roadrunner Food Bank!  Thank you!