Food banks, food clubs, community pantries and social supermarkets hold a lot of people up. HelpingHand takes the paper out of referrals, keeps your stock honest, and gives your trustees something real to show funders.
The Problem
Referrals, orders, stock and reporting in one place, for a food bank or a membership food club.
HelpingHand runs your whole operation in the browser, whether you issue emergency parcels against a referral voucher or run a food club where members pay a few pounds and choose their own shop. Staff, volunteers, referral agencies and the people you support each get the view they need.
Most of a session goes on double-checking lists, not on the people in front of you. HelpingHand prints the picking list, keeps the counts straight and stops the same thing being written down twice.
Stock is counted as it comes in and as it goes out, so what is offered online is what is actually in the store. High-demand tins and toiletries can be capped so the first ten households do not take the lot.
Nobody wants to explain in a queue that they have no way to cook a frozen chicken, or that the household cannot eat gluten. Preferences are recorded once and respected every time, and the choosing happens in private.
HelpingHand runs your whole operation in the browser, whether you issue emergency parcels against a referral voucher or run a food club where members pay a few pounds and choose their own shop. Staff, volunteers, referral agencies and the people you support each get the view they need.
Most of a session goes on double-checking lists, not on the people in front of you. HelpingHand prints the picking list, keeps the counts straight and stops the same thing being written down twice.
Stock is counted as it comes in and as it goes out, so what is offered online is what is actually in the store. High-demand tins and toiletries can be capped so the first ten households do not take the lot.
Nobody wants to explain in a queue that they have no way to cook a frozen chicken, or that the household cannot eat gluten. Preferences are recorded once and respected every time, and the choosing happens in private.
Less waste, calmer sessions, and evidence your funders accept
Picking lists come off the system already ordered, so a session is spent with people rather than on paperwork.
Counted stock and dated lines mean tins get used in the right order instead of being found expired at the back.
Nappies, formula and toiletries go further when the system applies the limit rather than a volunteer having to say no.
Households supported, parcels issued, referral sources and repeat need, exportable for a grant return or a trustees pack.
Set up in an afternoon, no IT support required
Start with a free 7-day trial. Cancel any time. Call us if you have any questions or would like a quote.
Questions we are asked most often by UK food banks and food clubs
Yes. Referral agencies get their own login and issue a code to a household. The code is redeemed once, is tied to the referral that issued it, and shows up in your reporting, so there is no paper voucher to lose and no guessing where a household came from.
Yes. A membership food club is the model HelpingHand fits best. Members join once, pay their subscription, and choose their own shop within a weekly allowance. You can run a food club and an emergency parcel service from the same system without them getting tangled.
Households supported, parcels or shops issued, referral sources, repeat need and stock movements, all exportable. It is the same underlying data your session runs on, so a grant return does not mean reconstructing the year from a notebook.
Personal data is held against the household record, visible only to your organisation, and can be exported or deleted on request. Referral agencies see only the households they referred. You stay the data controller and decide what is collected in the first place.
Most of what a volunteer touches is a printed picking list. Everything else is a photo and a tick. Stock photos can be taken on a phone, out of stock lines disappear on their own, and nobody has to learn a spreadsheet.
We are a New Zealand company working with food banks, food clubs and pantries in the UK. Email is the quickest way to reach us and we answer within one working day.
Milford,
Auckland 0620,
New Zealand
Monday - Friday
9:00am - 5:00pm New Zealand time