Walk & Knock takes pride in being ‘well-oiled machine’

The heaviest lift involved in Walk & Knock may not be physically picking up bags of donated food off people’s doorsteps and hauling them to the Clark County Food Bank. Rather, it’s the effort to get people aware of the food drive.

“Walk & Knock is a pretty easy sell. You’re collecting food for the needy, and most people have at least a couple of cans of soup they can give you or something. It’s not a tough pitch,” said board member Tom Knappenberger.

The annual single-day drive that always happens on the first Saturday in December is in its 34th year. Over the decades, the way to get the word out has evolved. It used to be that distributing paper grocery bags in The Columbian, Camas-Post Record and The Reflector captured a sizeable amount of potential donors. With declining newspaper subscriptions, the all-volunteer nonprofit behind Walk & Knock now employs several additional strategies.

The nonprofit pays The Columbian to deliver grocery bags to houses that don’t subscribe to the paper, employees at Chuck’s Produce put flyers in customers’ grocery bags, a former Trail Blazers announcer is the voice for robocalls that reach potential donors, and Walk & Knock has established “much more vigorous social media presence,” Knappenberger said.

Knappenberger has a background in public affairs and knows well the importance of educating and reminding people about the food drive, particularly during the busy holiday season when people are asked to give to a variety of causes. The strategies have seemingly paid off. Last year, Walk & Knock experimented with paying high school groups to drop off bags on people’s doorsteps in the Hudson’s Bay area. Donations in that area were up 80 percent compared with the prior year.

What’s more, last year’s 286,000 collected pounds of food broke a six-year streak of declining donations.

Through his research and talks with other food banks around the nation, Clark County Food Bank President Alan Hamilton determined that Walk & Knock is the nation’s largest local single-day recurring food drive. Walk & Knock is so confident of that distinction that the group incorporated it into a new logo.

“When I travel around and visit other food banks, I brag about Walk & Knock,” Hamilton said. “It’s kind of in a league of its own.”

The drive day itself is a “well-oiled machine,” Knappenberger said. About 3,500 to 4,000 volunteers work in various areas around town either collecting bags from people’s doorsteps or loading them into trucks for delivery to the food bank. Many are Boys Scouts, Girls Scouts and other youth involved in service activities.

Walk & Knock collects nonperishable, shelf-stable items such as canned tuna, pasta, soup, powdered milk, peanut butter, rice, beans and baby food. Toiletries and diapers are also accepted.

Knappenberger said he always aims to collect more food than in the previous year. However, he added, Hamilton reminds him not to get too bogged down in the numbers. Besides collecting food, he said, Walk & Knock increases civic involvement and people’s awareness of local hunger.

The improving economy takes a while to benefit those in poverty, Hamilton said. It’s difficult to track just how many people access food pantries, but the food bank estimates about one in five Clark County residents access food bank services at least once a year.

“We continue to have lots of work to do,” Hamilton said, adding that the food bank has shifted some focus to alleviating the root causes of hunger.