Community Servings

Community Servings hosts a Farmer’s Market on Wednesdays from 4−7pm and for this I think they are doing wonderful things!!! :)

A friend of mine and I were looking for a place to volunteer weekly and contacted Community Servings. They responded quickly (much faster than any other organization we contacted) and we went to the orientation the following week. They have orientation EVERY Wednesday at 6:00pm and it lasts for about an hour.
We finally started volunteering and I am extremely impressed. We volunteered in the kitchen (I think I sliced and diced 3 buckets worth of squash) and loved it. The staff is friendly, and the shifts are really flexible. It is no wonder they have so many volunteers come back week after week.

Community Servings is the 1^st organization I volunteered for in Boston. I signed up to volunteer as part of a freshman day of service back in 2002.
Community Servings prepares and delivers fresh and nutritious meals to individuals and families living with critical and chronic illnesses in the Greater Boston area.
I loved bringing a group to volunteer at Community Servings. As you help prep food, staff explain the mission of CS and the value of your volunteer hours.
The staff is very friendly and welcoming.
I didn’t realize how big their volunteer program is until I checked their website: «As one of the largest volunteer programs in the area, Community Servings welcomes 1,500 volunteers per month to work in our kitchen, deliver meals, and help with our fundraising efforts. Together, these supporters donate over 3,500 hours of free labor each month to care for our sick clients — the equivalent of 20 full time employees.»
If you volunteer here, you will not be disappointed.

I was looking to complete a fairly large amount of community service hours during the summer so I e-​mailed and applied to a bunch of soup kitchen type non-​profits around Boston. I couldn’t believe the lack of response! Luckily for me, Community Servings was the ONLY organization that responded promptly and one of only two organizations that responded at all.
CS is wonderful because they have a huge number of volunteers, but they manage to treat them all like family. The staff knew my name on my very first day and I got a couple of bear hugs from the drivers on my last day of van delivery. (If you ever volunteer on a van at CS and want to meet a real character, ask to ride with Josie.) There are many options for service. Two of the main ones are kitchen work and food delivery, but CS also has a Farmer’s Market staffed by volunteers and seasonal projects like Pie in the Sky. The variety means you wont get bored and you can work on many sides of the process here and even see where all of their hard work is going, which is super rewarding. They are also awesome with managing groups.
The volunteer orientation is on Wednesday nights and focuses on SafeServ procedures (wash your hands, wear gloves, etc.). Community Servings also offers cooking classes to the community and a 12-​week professional kitchen training course.
I could probably go on and on about CS but the thing I like even more than all of it’s wonderful goals and noble mission to feed the sick and impoverished in Boston, is that it is well run. This is a non-​profit that really has its act together. They know how to utilize volunteers in a fair way and how to raise money ethically to sustain their goals (i.e. they were this year’s Restaurant Week charity partner which brought in over $ 15,000) and they do it all in a beautiful facility. I have worked with non-​profits in the past who have really struggled to sustain themselves and didn’t always utilize what resources they had. CS was a welcome change which helped me to do exactly what I came for– help others– and I loved that.

This charity gets all my respect and support. I have been to their info meeting on a wed night for 30 mins so that I can volunteer to prepare meals. I have also helped out during the auction. Not all non-​profits are successful based on the amount given to the individuals in need, but they give back 94 cents on the dollar to the families they serve.
Here is their statement from the website:
Community Servings is dedicated to providing free home-​delivered meals throughout Eastern Massachusetts to people homebound with HIV/​AIDS and other acute life-​threatening illnesses, who are unable to shop or cook for themselves. We provide our clients, their dependent families, and caregivers appealing, nutritious meals, reaching out to those in greatest need.
Our goals are to help our clients maintain their health and dignity, preserve the integrity of their families, provide nutritionally and culturally appropriate meals, and send the message that someone cares.

How is it that no one has reviewed Community Servings yet?! They are my favorite non-​profit organization in the area and I spend a lot of time helping out with various projects because I so firmly believe that their work is awesome and important.
So Community Servings prepares and delivers fresh and nutritious meals to terminally ill people and their families in the Greater Boston area. They moved into a crazy nice facility last year and the increased space allows them to serve even more people.
They are responsible for «Pie in the Sky,» the annual pie sale that you may see ads for on
from time to time. Basically, well-​respected Boston restaurants make and donate pies to Community Servings, and Community Servings sells these pies to you and me. For $ 25 we get a delicious pie and they get money to provide a week’s worth of meals to someone in need.
During the holidays, they organize a holiday basket program. Their clients and their families fill out wish lists, and people can «adopt» a person or a family and buy them the things they’d like. It’s really an awesome program and it’s amazing to see how many baskets they collect during the drop-​off weekend.
We are fortunate to have an organization like Community Servings in our area; they take care of our neighbors who have illnesses. If you’re looking for a way to help out, check out their website (
).