Donate Food

City Harvest rescues food from all segments of the food industry including restaurants, wholesalers, greenmarkets, bakeries, caterers, hospitals and corporate cafeterias, as well as canned food drives.

Scheduled Donors

Donors who consistently have 50 lbs. of food or more may be put on a truck route for weekly or daily pick-ups. For more information or to become a Scheduled Donor, please call 917.351.8711 and ask for our Manager of Food Sourcing.

Call-In Donors

Donors who occasionally have 50 lbs. or more of food can schedule a pick-up on an as-needed basis. If you have a donation of 50 lbs. or more that you would like picked up, please call 917.351.8711.

For call-in donations between 8PM on Friday and 6PM on Sunday, please leave a voicemail with City Harvest's dispatch office at 917.351.8731.

Enhanced Tax Deductions for Food Donation

On December 17, President Obama signed into law The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010.  The new law extends an enhanced tax deduction that potentially impacts City Harvest food donors.

The law extends the enhanced tax deduction for food donations that already existed for C corporations to all business taxpayers from Jan 1, 2010 to Dec 31, 2011.  As a result, the law will be retroactive and available for product donations already made to City Harvest.

The law enables all business taxpayers, including some farmers, retailers, franchisees, ranchers and other small business owners, to take the special enhanced tax deduction currently available to all C corporations that donate food and grocery products to City Harvest. 

Why can’t all farmers take the deduction?

Most farmers are sole proprietors and use the cash balance method of accounting.  The cash balance method of accounting means that the taxpayer/farmer keeps track of money in and money out, but not the specific costs of items like fertilizer, seed costs, irrigation costs, etc.  Thus they do not keep track of the details needed to calculate their cost (or basis) to produce the food.  The accrual method of accounting used by other businesses does.

For more information, contact Kate MacKenzie (917-351-8751).