Student Drive Guidelines - Individual
Donations do not count towards service hours unless the student prepares a plan, contacts Open Door in advance, and receives an emailed approval from Open Door. A maximum of two hours is allowed for a standard drive.
Do you have written approval for your drive? If not, you'll need to get that done beforehand.
Tell us about your drive. Here are sample questions. Answering some of these will help you explain your drive:
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How did you decide to support Open Door?
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Are you using our Most Needed List or focusing on just a few items?
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How are you publicizing your drive?
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Did you make a flyer?
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Is the drive tied to an event?
Once you have planned your drive, email us at info@faopendoor.org with the details, and wait for a reply.
Starting your drive
Students should be the ones communicating to Open Door regarding their drives. You are welcome to use a parent's email account to monitor the communications, but it is the student who should be writing and responding via email.
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If collecting at a business, make sure to get permission.
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Your flyer should list which items your are collecting, where and when. It should list the beneficiary as Freehold Area Open Door. Send us your completed flyer.
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Publicize your drive, and if possible, tag us on Instagram.
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Take pictures during the event. We will create posts for our Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Finishing your drive
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Check the expiration dates and toss anything that has passed its "best by" or "use by date."
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Sort everything. All the dry pasta should be together, jars of pasta sauce together, soups together, canned meats together, etc. That saves us time when we restock the shelves with your donation.
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Estimate the total weight of what you collected.
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Send us the pictures you took during the drive, and a few more of the finished drive, so we can prepare our social media posts. You will have the opportunity to review and approve everything before it is posted.
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Think about which parts were successful, which weren't and what, if any, changes you would make for next time.
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Once you have the approximate number of bags/boxes contact us to schedule drop off. Standard donation times are Monday - Thursday, 10am to 2pm at our back door.