What are the Blessings in a Backpack?
The blessings we distribute are bags of food delivered to the food-insecure children on Friday afternoon to get them through the weekend. We do not regularly distribute the backpacks themselves
What part does the National Organization play in supporting Blessings Across Long Island?
We rely on Blessings in a Backpack, a national nonprofit based in Louisville, KY, for back-office support, including branding and marketing, event and fundraising platforms, as well as legal and accounting support. BALI receives virtually no funds to feed children from national. Finding money to feed the children is the sole responsibility of local programs, such as BALI. However, by sharing the same EIN as the National organization, we can allocate more of our funds to support food initiatives.
How do we choose children to receive the blessing?
The school staff identifies the children in need. Teachers, aides, school social workers, and administrative staff all work together to identify the need and provide a bag of food. Our work at Blessings in a Backpack is completely anonymous. Many times, the children don’t even know where the food is coming from.
How does the food get distributed?
We drop ship boxes of pre-packaged food from a national distributor directly to the school or deliver bags from our packing events directly to the schools
What’s in the pre-pack?
About 900 calories of shelf-stable nutritious food. Here is a list of what’s included in a sample pre-pack:
- Jack Links Sweet BBQ Bites
- Cheddar Cheese Plank
- Apple Crisp Soft Baked Bar
- Frosted Flakes Cereal Pouch
- Ocean Spray® Orange Craisins®
- Sunflower Kernels
- US Presidents WG Snacks
Why do you ask for monetary donations instead of food drives?
In the expansion project we call BALI (Blessings Across Long Island), most of the food distributed is pre-packaged and drop-shipped to the site. Food drives are volunteer-intensive and involve more complicated logistics than simple drop shipping. To feed the most significant number of hungry children, we adopted the drop-ship model rather than the food drive model.
Do you never do food drives?
We reserve food drives for marketing events that are run by large organizations that provide the food and the volunteers to bag and deliver the food.
We’d love to hear your additional questions. Email them to blessingsacrossli@gmail.com.
Blessings Across Long Island 