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Several weeks ago my wife and I approached our pastor about starting a food pantry at our church. We have a desire to fufill God's command to help those in need in our church family and community. Our church isn't all that big, we run around 80 to 90 on Sunday morning so we do have enough folks attending to help stock the food pantry with not only food items but other necessities such as toilet paper, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, dish soap, etc. Just yesterday I went to two local grocery stores and gave them letters describing our ministry with the hopes that maybe one or both of them will support our church with donated items on occasion. My wife also mailed out letters to around a dozen dentists last week asking if any of them could donate any toothpaste or toothbrushes. Right now we are not planning on advertising to the community on our church website or hanging up flyers yet because our shelves aren't stocked well enough for that but we hope to get to that point. Currently, we are looking to just help those in our church family and accquaintances of those in the church as well as those who do on occassion do stop by the church and ask our pastor for help. My question for you all is do any of you have any experience in running a food pantry and if so, what advice would you give? Any good ideas on places to ask for donations or how to advertise to the community when we get to that point? Any thoughts would be appreciated! Michael