Create New Food Opportunities & Donations
You can make new opportunities with the food you have rather than wasting it. Whether it's leftovers in your own kitchen, or excess food from commercial sources.
On this page you will find:
- Resources for Your Home
- Food Donation Locations
- Food Donation Safety Guide
- Laws about Liability in Food Donation
Resources for Your Home
- Save the Food Recipe Guide (NRDC)
- The Natural Resource Defense Council's guide on using up the leftovers, food past its prime, and kitchen scraps
- Amazing Waste (UW-Madison, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies)
- Recipe book from 2016 created by two UW-Madison students
- Food Waste and Recovery Guide for Madison & Dane County (2018)
There are many online resources as well, including paid services like Ends+Stems, that can help you use all that you buy.
Food Donation & Gleaning Organizations
Contact the organization before taking food to them or before organizing an event to help them.
Some locations may have limitations on what they can take due to lack of refrigeration or other restrictions.
This list of pantries and gleaning operations is incomplete for the Madison area. We tried to focus this list on website that have that list they take food donations.
For a more complete list of food pantries in the area, use the Dane County Public Health Food Resource Guide.
If you are aware of an organization that performs food recovery work and takes donations, and they would like to be added, please contact the Streets Division so this page can be updated.
| Organization Name | Contact Information | Location | Additional Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Healthy Food for All - Dane County |
| 1219 N. Sherman Ave | HFA's mission: "We collect excess produce from farms and prepared foods from corporate cafeterias that would otherwise go to waste. We clean and repackage this food at the FEED Kitchens and then distribute it to food pantries and neighborhoods all over Madison, WI." |
| The River Food Pantry |
| 2201 Darwin Rd | Check website for list of most needed items. |
| Badger Prairie Needs Network |
| 1200 E. Verona Ave (Verona, WI) | Check website for list of most needed items for this month. |
| Catholic Multicultural Center |
| 1862 Beld Street | |
| The Allied Food Pantry |
| 4619 Jenewein Rd | |
| Bethel Food Pantry |
| 312 Wisconsin Avenue | |
| Goodman Community Center Frtiz Food Pantry |
| 149 Waubesa | Check website for list of most needed items. |
| Good Shepherd Lutheran Church |
| 5701 Raymond Rd | |
| Grace Episcopal Church Food Pantry |
| 116 W. Washington Ave | |
| Lakeview Lutheran Church |
| 4001 Mandrake Rd | |
| Lussier Food Pantry |
| 55 S. Gammon Rd | Lussier Food Pantry wish list for donations. |
| Meadowood Neighborhood Center |
| 5734 Raymond Rd | |
| Neighborhood House |
| 29 S. Mills Street | |
| St. Vincent de Paul |
| 2033 Fish Hatchery Rd | |
| Wil-Mar Neighborhood Center |
| 504 S. Brearly St. | |
| WayForward Resources |
| 3502 Parmenter St. (Middleton, WI) | WayForward Resources's top ten most needed items for their food pantry. |
| Sun Prairie Emergency Food Pantry |
| 18 Rickel Rd (Sun Prairie, WI) |
Food Donation Safety Guide
The Wisconsin Community Action Program (WISCAP) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension created the Safe & Health Food Pantries Project.
The guide is a deep dive into food safety at pantries, and covers pantry operations as well as donation practice.
Check their guide for more details.
Identify Food to Donate
You can donate food that has not been served.
This includes any raw, processed, or prepared food, ice, beverage, or ingredient used or intended for use, in whole or in part, for human consumption.
Foods that have been packaged using a reduced oxygen packaging procedure (cook-chill, sous vide) cannot be donated.
There are some foods you cannot donate, despite all good intentions, because they pose safety concerns.
A partial list of some food items you cannot donate can be found later on this page. You should also contact the pantry you wish to visit before showing up with food they cannot accept.
Food Must be Kept at the Correct Temperatures for Safe for Donation
Prepared foods must meet and maintain certain temperature requirements to be safely donated.
Follow the below guidelines to ensure food is safe.
Cold Food
- Must be kept at 41° F or below
Hot Food
- Must be kept at 135° F or above
Hot Food That Is Cooled
- Hot food that is donated cold must be cooled from 135° F to 70° F within 2 hours and from 70° F to 41° F or below within 4 hours for a total of 6 hours
Correctly Label All Food Intended for Donation
Label the outside of the container with the name of the food, your business, the preparation date, and “Donated Food—Not For Resale.” This is the best practice.
Foods with the temperature concerns (like foods that must be kept hot or cold) must be date-marked to indicate a 7-day maximum hold time so they can be used or discarded by the 7th day.
Some examples of foods with time and temperature concerns, also knows as TCS (time controlled for safety) foods, are:
- Cut tomatoes
- Dairy
- Cut melons
- Beef
- Fish
- Cut leafy greens
Foods You Should Not Donate
(From the Safe & Healthy Food Pantries Project)
This list is not exhaustive. Before you donate, contact the pantry you wish to use to be certain they can accept what you have.
- Home-canned or home-preserved foods
- Home-prepared meals or desserts
- Spoiled foods
- Rotten fruits & vegetables
- Opened packages of food
- Foods in crushed, dented, or rusted containers
- Foods past their "use by" or "best by" dates.
- Packages of food that are dirty of soiled
Liability and Food Donation
The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996 was designed to encourage good faith food donations to organizations that distribute food to those in need.
This law is designed to protect individuals, restaurants, and groceries from liability concerns.
The USDA has a FAQ page that explains about how this law applies and protects individuals, restaurants, groceries, food trucks, and many other entities.
The USDA provides further resources that will help you understand the protections and limitations to this act.
There is also a Wisconsin state statute (895.51) regarding food donation protections, too.