Great Falls letter carriers and volunteers will be taking on hunger this Saturday, May 9th, as the annual city-wide food drive “Stamp Out Hunger” kicks off its 33rd drive in support of the Great Falls Community Food Bank (GFCFB).
GFCFB Executive Director Shaun Tatarka said the event is vital to the organization’s summer efforts.
“We really rely on this drive to get us through the summer months,” Tatarka said. “Summer is usually a very slow time for us as we see donations really drop, but hunger does not take a vacation, so we need to make this a successful drive.”
Tatarka said that, unlike other seasonal food drives and monetary donations, the letter carriers’ drive has been slowly decreasing since the Covid outbreak of 2020 put a two-year hiatus on the event.
“We just haven’t been able to get back to pre-pandemic numbers, but we hope to rebound strongly this year. Our goal is 15,000 pounds, which will really help us this summer.”
There are approximately 45 volunteers helping out the letter carriers this year. “It’s way too much of a load for the letter carriers to do it themselves, so we help them out by sharing some of that burden,” Tatarka said. “We are so grateful to all the volunteers as well as the letter carriers themselves for taking on this massive task.”
Great Falls residents who wish to donate to the drive simply need to leave their unopened, non-perishable food items by their mailbox BEFORE 8:30 am on Saturday, May 9th, regardless of when their mail carrier usually comes. Volunteers will only be out until 12:30. People who want to send a cash donation in lieu are encouraged to use the envelope mailed to all residents this week. If volunteers and/or carriers miss a donation, there are many ways to still donate.
All three Great Falls post offices will have food donation barrels in their lobbies through Wednesday, May 13th. Donors can also bring their donations to the Food Bank at 1620 12th Ave. North, Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Donations weighing more than 40 pounds can be picked up by calling the Food Bank at 406 564-8588.
The National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive is the outgrowth of a tradition of community service exhibited repeatedly by members of the letter carriers union over the years. These carriers, who go into neighborhoods in every town six days a week, have always been involved when something needed to be done, whether it be collecting funds for a charity like the Muscular Dystrophy Association, watching over the elderly through the Carrier Alert program, assisting letter carriers and their families during times of disaster through the NALC Disaster Relief Fund, or rescuing victims of fires, crime, and other mishaps.
The national, coordinated effort by the NALC to help fight hunger in America grew out of discussions in 1991 by a number of leaders at the time, including NALC President Vincent R. Sombrotto, AFL-CIO Community Services Director Joseph Velasquez, and Postmaster General Anthony Frank. A pilot drive was held in 10 cities in October of 1991, and it proved so successful that work began immediately on making it a nationwide effort.
Input from food banks and pantries suggested that late spring would be the best time because most food banks start running out of the donations received during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday periods by that point in the year.
A revamped drive was organized for May 15, 1993—the second Saturday in May—with a goal of having at least one NALC branch in each of the 50 states participating. The result was astounding. More than 11 million pounds of food was collected—a one-day record in the United States—involving more than 220 union branches. In the more than 30 years since it began, the food drive has collected more than 1.94 billion pounds of food for those in need.
By Tommy Jarvis: May 1, 2026 – Great Falls, Mt
Author: Staff
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