Financial contributions to Food Banks Canada are critical, but donations of resources such as transportation, skills, or services — known as “gifts-in-kind” — play an equally important role in helping us carry out our work.
Canadian Pacific (CP) is one of several companies that provide us with critical in-kind support, and their history as a Food Banks Canada Leadership Partner is a long and collaborative one.
Holiday Train rolls in
CP is a dedicated supporter of Canadian food banks through their wonderful CP Holiday Train campaign. Celebrating its 20th year, the festively decorated Canadian train lights up over 162 communities across North America.
The train sets the stage for seasonal festivities at each stop with free live music performances. Best of all, CP supports local food banks with a cheque and encourages attendees to donate healthy food items at each community stop to help address the issue of hunger
Since 1999, the Holiday Train has raised more than $14.5 million and 4.3 million pounds of food across North America.
Click here for the Holiday Train schedule
Did you know?
CP has been an active partner of Food Banks Canada since 1997, providing a significant in-kind donation of a service that is pivotal to our work: transportation. With a donation of a single container that moved about 15,000 pounds of food, the company’s commitment has increased steadily over the years to provide us with $250,000 worth of transportation support each year.
This year, thanks to CP’s TempPro refrigerated storage and transport system, we were able to move a million pounds of food that included fresh, frozen and perishable items through rail transport. This is an enormous help in transporting the massive amounts of food that are collected and shared across every part of Canada through our National Food Sharing Service. Fresh, perishable foods are an important part of food banking and CP’s infrastructure system allows us to help fulfill the goal of more dietary choices for food bank clients.
A highlight from this year
This past year, Food Banks Canada delivered and shared 41,600 of its 69,000 ‘After the Bell’ healthy food packs through CP’s in-kind support to Western Canada. These healthy food packs help to provide children with increased access to child-friendly, nutritious food during the summertime when school-centered support programs are not readily available.
Other in-kind givers
By providing essential services, expertise, and resources, companies like CP help us to allocate more funds towards our core mission of helping to ensure that no Canadian goes hungry. Other support from in-kind donors includes:
- Purolator donates courier services. This helps us and our network to communicate with local food organizations and supporters across Canada and share important resources.
- Thomson Terminals donates warehouse space and reduced rates for trucking. This helps us store, sort, and move donated food and consumer goods through our National Food Sharing System.
- Dog & Pony Studios donate digital design services. This expertise enables us to communicate to the public and our corporate sponsors through our website and social media.
- Thomas, Large and Singer Inc. This value chain solutions provider allowed us to deliver 69,000 healthy food packs to children across the country through our After the Bell program.
- Versa Cold Logistics Services. This refrigerated transportation allows us to deliver chilled and frozen foods on the road safely to food banks across Canada.
We are grateful to each and every partner, whether a large corporation, a small company, or an individual, and look forward to welcoming more in-kind donors in the year ahead.