He doesn't it at all! He, acknowledges that this is a problem, but doesn't resolve the point -that there would be less donation- against his argument.

To do that he would either have to prove that money donations would increase in lieu of canned goods and/or that the administrative costs are higher than the value of the canned goods (which maybe true for very specialized and/or very corrupt charities, but not for your local volunteer run pantry)

Well, I know the charity administrator can just pay himself with a cash donation, but they can't do much with cans of food other than either distribute them or destroy them.

Bear in mind that if everyone gave canned food, there likely wouldn't be a charity in the first place. Someone has to run things, and that someone generally needs to get paid for any sizeable charity; it IS a full time job.

Another portion of the article touches on the overhead to sort and store all these items for later distribution, that sorting might be done by volunteers (and thus be free-ish) but there's always an opportunity cost, the labour used for receiving these items is labour lost on other important projects.

If the charity is a responsible one then you're wasting more money by forcing them to sort your cans, clothing and miscellaneous junk than the slim chance that someone's going to misuse those funds

Look up the charity on https://www.charitynavigator.org to vet them. If you don't trust the charity with money, then find one you do trust with money and give to them.

If you're worried about that look up the charity's pay filings. Most are very efficient at distributing donations into services and pay very little as a percentage they take in. If you live in a reasonably large city chances are good there are multiple charities that give 95-97%+ of their donations out again in services.

Even if they don't reach that lofty level it's hard to beat a 5x multiplier between the money paid for a donated can and the amount a purchaser could get with that money.

Then on top of the 5x amount of food argument, there's also the nutritional argument: a jar of Ragu sauce without any pasta or cheese or vegetables isn't a balanced meal. And it's better to spend money on fresh food and vegetables and milk at the time it's needed, than to throw away donated perishables, and only distribute canned food.

I just surveyed my small team at work (5 ppl). Every single one said they'd rather donate canned foods than cash due to this reason alone. 3 said they would "never" donate cash.

This is not normal, and you shouldn't be giving any organization where that happens. The board pays the executive. The executive should never write their own check.

Exactly. Reminds me of panhandlers who ask for money to buy food. But if you give them food they refuse to take it. Yeah, right...

You can actually vet a charity unlike a panhandler.

You might even be able to volunteer for them yourself for a few weekends and gain trust in them before setting up a scheduled cash donation, if you really want to verify it.

> No, the author covers this pretty well:

Partially, I am also saying that the food we donate is what makes it special. Part of it is donating a mass of Ragu sauce, as the author says, but part of it is that the person who donates all that Ragu sauce probably really likes ragu sauce and wants to share that joy with others.

And in reference to winter food drives, the holiday season is all about sharing joy. Be it sharing one's favorite dishes at thanksgiving, or giving the perfect gift. American society values putting thought and effort into ones gifts, and canned food allows people to do that.

For some people it likely is about feeling good over sheer quantity (and local news reports do show off the mounds of donated cans!) but I do think another part of it is wanting to do something more personal.