About our Community Partner Spotlight: A Simple Gesture...

As a non-profit, volunteer-driven organization, our mission is very simple.  Our goal is to feed the hungry in Anacortes.  How do we do this?  Simple.  Every other month, we spend the second Saturday morning driving through town, collecting Red Bags filled with food that our donors leave on their front porches.  That food is brought in, weighed, sorted, and packed for distribution to various food banks, the Anacortes Family Center, Food to Go, and our Red Bag Pantries located throughout the city.  The majority of food goes to The Salvation Army, which has the largest food bank in town.  It is through collaboration with the various agencies in town that we are able to collect and distribute food to the needy.

The demand for food at our pantries has been increasing over the past ten years, but the supply of low-cost foods has been decreasing.  Our local food banks are forced to purchase food in order to stay open during the summer months.

ASG History

Our organization began when a woman in Anacortes was reading the Wall Street Journal and saw an article about A Simple Gesture and its founder, Jonathan Trivers, of Paradise, CA.  Sue Monaghan was inspired to start A Simple Gesture-Anacortes.  Working in collaboration with The Salvation Army, she began assembling the board, ordering bags, and soliciting donors and volunteers. Working with her daughter, Kristin Rogers, Sue began visiting every organization looking for donors.  The results were amazing.  Our first pickup was  October 10, 2015, with 310 donors; we collected 4,000 pounds of food and toiletries.  Today we have over 700 donors and have collected over 86,000 pounds of food and household products. The response from the community has been beyond amazing.

For more information and how to participate, please visit A Simple Gesture Anacortes or find them on Facebook.