10th Annual Jolly Trolley Food Drive Goes Virtual [LISTEN]

This year, you won't see the Trolley parked outside of your favorite grocery store collecting donations for local food shelves...but you can still help out.

Because of the pandemic, the 10th Annual Jolly Trolley Food Drive will be a virtual event in 2020. Typically, the donation drive lasts for a week, but this year it's running for a full two weeks.

Nate Ramacher from Metro Bus says the food drive supports local food shelves including; St. Cloud Area Salvation Army, Catholic Charities Emergency Services and Promise Neighborhood of Central MN.

There are several ways you can get involved this year. Monetary donations can be placed online. It's probably the easiest way to donate.

If you'd rather drop off a cash donation or a non-perishable food item in person, you can do that too. There are several donations locations around the community including; any Metro Bus location, Royal Tire on Highway 10 and Roosevelt Road as well as our radio station studios at Townsquare Media.

Ramacher says that while non-perishable food donations are great, money donations allow your dollar to go further at the food shelf, "if any one of us goes into the grocery store, we're buying at that retail   price. Whereas, the food shelves are able to buy in bulk."

This gives the food shelves autonomy to buy whatever they're in the most need of at any given time throughout the year.

During the month of December, your donations will be matched dollar for dollar through the Norman C. Skalicky Foundation and the Central Minnesota Community Foundation.

Ramacher says their goal is to collect $2,500 this year to be on pace with what they did last year. They're also hoping to collect 2,000 pounds of food.

You can make a donation now through December 20.