The Food Bank Challenge: Ideas for This Week on How to Stretch $10 to Donate

Gina of Moneywise Moms has started a Food Bank Challenge in the past week! She's challenging us (that would be couponers and generous-hearted folks in general) to see how far $10 of our monthly food budget can go for donation to a local food bank or charity. (Check out our post on finding your local food bank!) Gina has a fabulous Mr. Linky to get us in the collaborative spirit, too, where you can share your blog's Food Bank Challenge entry.

When I saw this challenge, my first thought was, "Ack, I just donated a couple of boxes' worth of stuff last week!" I wish that I had taken pictures. :) But that shouldn't stop me from getting another box started.

If you're up for the challenge, but aren't sure where to begin, check out this pretty painless scenario, with a Thanksgiving theme.

Head to Target, and spend:

• $1.60 for 8 cans of Del Monte vegetables, using one Target coupon and one 11/15 insert coupon (Thanks, Christy!) Make a couple of them green beans - your recipients could make green bean casserole with the next two ingredients!

Then make one other trip, to Giant:

• $3.50 for four cans of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup (buying these four will also net a $0.10 gas discount all week)
• $1.99 or less for one can of French's French Fried onions
• $2 for two bags of Stacy's Pita Chips (these are normally much more expensive!)
• $0.92 for one jar of Heinz gravy (normally ~$2.50/jar!)

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Subtotal pre-tax: $10.01
Value of items to be donated: ~$18

OK, so I went a penny over on the spending - but I think we're going for the spirit of the law here. :)

This isn't the result of a gung-ho shopping excursion - it's a stripped down sample run to show you how easy donating $10 spent on food can be. You don't have to do extra trips to Shopper's triple coupons to make a sizeable donation set (that might have been last week's aforementioned donation, heh) - and you don't need a huge supply of inserts, either. So are you up for it? See the latest on the Food Bank Challenge here!
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