Bag Program · Active

Doorstep
Donations.

A bag arrives at your door. Fill it with non-perishables every two months. Leave it outside. Students collect it, route it to local food pantries.

That's the entire model. It works.

A hand holding the white Doorstep Donations tote bag
Co-Founder · Director ●  70,000+ meals served  ·  35 chapters  ·  300+ volunteers 2020 — Today
The Premise

Food drives ask a lot. A bag at the door asks almost nothing.

The traditional food drive is a one-off event. You hear about it, you mean to participate, you forget — or you participate once, and a year later there's another one, and you forget that one too.

Doorstep Donations was built on a simpler bet: if you make donating recurring, doorstep-based, and small enough to fit in a tote bag, ordinary households will keep doing it.

It's a Postmates-shaped model for charity — except instead of bringing food to you, students come and collect food from you. A bag, every two months, on a porch. That's it.

The numbers say the bet was right.

47.4M
Americans currently experiencing food insecurity.
13.5%
Of US households turn to charitable food services at some point each year.
2.7×
Childhood hunger today versus its peak during the Great Recession.
2020
Founded with Ryan Spiegel and Jonah Gleeman, in high school, in New Jersey.
The Bag Program · How It Works

Five steps between a pantry shelf
and a family's table.

No special apps. No new accounts. Just a recurring, two-month rhythm a household can absorb without thinking about it.

01
Sign up
A neighbor opts in online — no commitment beyond their bag.
02
Get a bag
A reusable Doorstep Donations tote arrives at their door.
03
Fill it
Non-perishables — pasta, canned goods, cereal — every two months.
04
Leave it out
On the doorstep on pickup day. The household never has to drive anywhere.
05
Routed to a pantry
Students collect, sort, and deliver to local food pantries that day.
The whole point was to remove every reason a person could give themselves to not donate. If the bag is there and the pickup is there, the friction is gone. — On the design of the model
Five Years In

A bag at the door, seventy thousand meals.

70,000+
Meals served
ACROSS 35 CHAPTERS
35
Active chapters
UNITED STATES + CANADA
300+
Student volunteers
YOUTH-LED 501(C)(3)
$50K
Donations raised
FROM HUNDREDS OF DONORS
Founded MMXX · Headquartered in New York EIN 85-1019984 · Registered 501(c)(3)
The School Program

A model students can actually run.

The Bag Program is the front end. The School Program is what makes it scale — a way for students to bring it to their own schools and run a real chapter, with structure and accountability built in.

i.
Leadership
Students get real responsibility — recruiting donors, coordinating with food pantries, building a roster, organizing the routes. The chapter is theirs to run.
ii.
Structure
We provide the bags, the playbook, the materials. Chapters don't have to invent the model — they plug into a system that already works and customize it for their community.
iii.
Accountability
Monthly check-ins with the Doorstep Donations team. Chapters answer to each other, to their pantries, and to the donors who trusted them with a bag.
2.5t
50 donors. 2.5 tons of food per year.
A single chapter recruiting a manageable group of recurring donors moves more annual volume than most one-off school food drives — without ever holding a food drive.
The Network

35 chapters across the US and Canada.

Each one is a school or an individual leader running the Bag Program in their own community.

01Newark AcademyNew Jersey
02Mount St. Dominic AcademyNew Jersey
03Lincoln High SchoolWashington
04Millburn High SchoolNew Jersey
05Montclair AcademyNew Jersey
06Newport High SchoolWashington

+ 29 more chapters across the US & Canada — schools and independent leaders.

The Team

Built by students. Run by students.

Three co-founders started Doorstep Donations in high school. Today, the leadership team is entirely youth-led.

Co-Founder
Ben Gleeman
Co-founded the org and built the original Bag Program.
Co-Founder
Ryan Spiegel
Co-founded the org and led early chapter expansion.
Co-Founder
Jonah Gleeman
Co-founded the org and shaped the School Program.
Leadership
Madeline Roston
Co-Chief Executive Officer
Leadership
Nina Barnes
Co-Chief Executive Officer
Leadership
Nadine Schwarzblat
Vice President of Operations
Leadership
Madeline Pope
Vice President of Data Collection & Analysis
Regional
Alec Marchand
VP, Northeast Region
Regional
Ander Yang
VP, Midwest Region
Regional
Ian Wu
VP, Northwest Region
Get Involved

Want a bag at your door?

Sign up to receive one — or bring a chapter to your school.

Doorstep Donations Inc. Registered 501(c)(3) · NY State · EIN 85-1019984
Ben Gleeman

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