Whatever you bring — surplus food, a meal program, a donor congregation looking to contribute beyond the next zip code — there's a place for you on the board.
You know what you have at close. The tray of pasta that didn't sell. The bread that won't keep. The pastries from this morning. The bag of beans you over-ordered. Right now it goes in the trash, costs you money to dispose of, and represents work that didn't pay off.
With us, you tell us once what you typically have surplus of and when. We store it as a standing offer. Then each week we check in: "Got extras tonight?" You reply yes or no. If yes, we route it to a kitchen that needs it that day. A driver picks up at close, or you drop it off if the kitchen is close.
You get a tax receipt for every contribution, automatically. Your name stays on the activity feed, attributed to specific meals. The whole thing takes about a minute of your time per week.
Whether you're a community kitchen serving Saturday lunch, a school in a remote part of the state, or a congregation running a Christmas family-adoption drive — you have specific needs you can articulate. The platform makes those needs visible to a coordinated donor base instead of relying on whoever happens to walk through your door.
You post line items: twelve cans of black beans, six reams of copy paper, twenty packs of children's underwear in size six. Each line item shows live fill state. Donors see exactly what's still needed and pledge against it. You don't manage the donor relationships — the platform handles that. You just confirm receipt when items arrive.
For local programs with weekly cadence, we offer backstop coverage: if a need doesn't fill by 8pm the night before, partner-funded reserves cover the gap. Your meal always runs.
You don't have to live in Flagstaff to participate in the network. A donor in Phoenix, a congregation in Tucson, a Lutheran women's group in Anaheim Hills — anyone can pledge against a need on the board. The platform routes contributions to the right partner and shows you the journey.
For local Flagstaff needs (Saturday's lunch, Tuesday's breakfast), drop-off and pickup work the same as for any contributor. For remote partners — NCPA in Rock Point, others as the network grows — your pledge ships either directly to the partner or to the Flagstaff hub for the next outbound run. The card on your screen moves through four states: pledged, at hub, on the road, delivered.
Congregations can register as recurring contributors — a standing commitment to cover, say, the basketballs for NCPA every fall, or the Christmas family kits, or the school supply drive each August. Set once, the platform tells you what to send and when.
NeighborTable is a coordination layer, not a logistics company. We don't operate trucks, we don't manage warehouses, we don't have a 24/7 customer service team. We don't compete with the Arizona Food Bank Network, which handles statewide food distribution at a much larger scale than this platform reaches.
We are also not an open marketplace. Individuals can't post needs directly. There are good reasons for this — fraud prevention, tax compliance, the kind of trust that lets donors give freely — and we'd rather be small and trustworthy than large and hard to verify.
Finally, we don't take a platform fee from donors. The platform is funded by partner contributions and grants. Your pledge goes entirely to the partner organization, minus the actual cost of shipping if you choose ship-to-hub.
No application form, no portal, no automated onboarding flow. Just send a note describing your organization and how you'd like to be involved. We'll get back to you within a few days.