Thank you for Volunteering with the Postal Food Drive Sorting 2026

Relationships are the backbone of our community partnerships and make possible large-scale collaborative projects like the postal drive food sorting! The longer CTK partners with an organization, the better we get at working together and Bellingham Food Bank is a perfect example. Over the last 9 years, BFB and CTK have worked together on many different projects from a grocery store distribution in Base Camp, to county-wide hunger initiatives, to the COVID drive through food distribution in our parking lot.  All that practice collaborating builds trust and familiarity on both sides which makes it possible to tackle bigger, more complex projects like the postal food drive. Our teams worked really well together, solving problems, negotiating who’d do which parts of the planning, and encouraging each other along the way.

But it all started when the Lead for the Letter Carriers Union asked if we could help.  He attends Hillcrest Church and was familiar with CTK’s foodshare ministry because we’ve supported their Southside Food Bank since 2018.  Being active in the community creates all kinds of connections which allow new opportunities to surface naturally. Our other Foodshare Partnerships also made it much easier to know where and how to send all that food.  Since we regularly deliver food to these foodbanks, we know who to call and could easily set up these one-time food drops with their storage limitations.

Several times we were asked, “How did you rally so many volunteers in just one week?” Relationships!  Almost all of the people who served at this year’s postal drive were already connected to a CTK ministry and already gathering regularly.  So to shift that gathering to a warehouse for one week, asking them to serve alongside people they were already getting to know, was much easier than building those teams from scratch. Standing over those bins of food, we watched people chatting with friends, making new CTK acquaintances, and experiencing what’s possible when the body of Christ moves in unison to provide for our community.  The Stamp Out Hunger food drive blessed not just our partners and the clients they serve, but the staff we work with year in and year out.  And so the relationships keep growing! 

These are the bridges we are building so that CTK’ers can carry the love and hope of Jesus to our neighbors all over Whatcom County.