Participation Policies
About Bountiful Baskets
Bountiful Baskets is not a business. It is a group of people who work together for mutual benefit.
Bountiful Baskets is constantly growing to reach new areas as people want to have a site close to their home. They train with an existing Volunteer Site Coordinator and then go open the new site. We run at least every two weeks at each site. Some sites run weekly. We are completely volunteer-run and make no profit. Please see our Locations page for a complete listing of current sites as well as which week they run.
This is a Volunteer Endeavor
This is a grass roots, all volunteer, no contracts, no catches opportunity to pool funds with people who live close to you and secure volume discounts from retailers, allowing you savings you couldn’t have working alone. Without volunteers this club wouldn’t happen, so you will need to help as you are able. There are many opportunities to help!
Reasons to Participate
- This is a great deal and you are helping others get a great deal, too. With the conventional produce offering, you get approximately $50 worth of grocery store-quality produce.
- Bountiful Baskets encourages a healthier lifestyle.
- You meet great people!
How Bountiful Baskets works
Your group purchases items at deep discounts. Items are then distributed evenly among participants. Some details:
- Use this website to make monetary contributions toward the pools of money used to purchase product(s)
- Contribute the amount required for participation in each pool by the deadline(s) listed (see Contribution Timeline table on the homepage)
- Additional details about products are available at Current Offerings
- For produce baskets, it is the same produce you would get from a restaurant or store.
Basket contents
You will have an opportunity to get a variety of high-quality seasonal produce. We balance variety with seasonality in order to get the most appealing and cost-effective basket possible. Groups should receive local produce first when available, then regional produce if it is not.
Pickups
Each site has a 20 minute pickup window. Please see the “Pickup Times” table on the homepage for site pickup times. Bring a container to take your produce home in! Laundry baskets, coolers, grocery bags, and boxes work great. Perishable items that are not picked up are donated and will not be available to you.
Items Not Picked Up during the 20-minute Pick Up Window Will Be Donated and Unavailable to you. We are unable to hold items. Please arrive on-time!
Contribution Changes
We can not make changes to any finalized contribution. Once you have put your credit card information into the website and clicked “submit,” your contribution to the group purchase is final. This means you may not change the site you selected.
Volunteering
Only participants for the current offering may volunteer. Children under 13 may help in ways that do not touch the produce. Children must be accompanied and supervised by a parent or guardian. Please arrive at your site at the time listed for volunteers on the Locations tab. Generally it’s an hour before pickup. About every 7th time you participate you should arrive at the volunteer time listed on your contribution confirmation email. If you are unable to volunteer due to physical inability don’t worry about it, just start helping as soon as you are able. Also, talk with the Volunteer Site Coordinator about what your abilities are and they can usually match you with something you are able to do! For Bountiful Baskets to work every week it takes people of all shapes, sizes and abilities working together!
Case End & Volunteer Produce
Case ends are those items that will not distribute to every participant one more time (if there are 40 bags of carrots in a case and only 36 baskets, 4 bags of carrots would be case ends) Case ends of like value will be combined and distributed together. For instance, if in the example above there were 32 case end celery bunches then the case ends of celery and case ends of carrots would be combined and people would get either case ends of carrots or case ends of celery.
The methodology will be to treat case ends in such a way that they are distributed as fairly as humanly possible, with volunteers getting 1 large/expensive item or 2 small/inexpensive items for volunteering. For example someone could get 1 pineapple, or 2 apples. Also, note that if there is a bagged item, then the bag should be opened and the items contained should be distributed individually.
Fees
- There is a handling fee for each separate transaction. This fee applies to all transactions, even those made within the same pickup cycle. Please note: we are unable to add items to a processed transaction.
- There is a $3.00 First Time Basket fee for new participants. This need only be applied with the first basket(s) contributed for; it does not apply when selecting a new or different pickup site.
Returns
There are no returns. We group together monetary contributions, purchase in the largest available package, and break it down to individual shares. There is no way for us to return 1/24th of 12 cases of vegetables, etc. Your money has been spent as we were directed to spend it and returns are not feasible.
Credits
Any credit due to unavailability of an item you made a contribution for will be issued to your Bountiful Baskets account for future use. This will be done as quickly as possible. If you have an issue you believe needs a credit please make sure your Volunteer Site Coordinator has requested one. You may see what date credits are processed through on the homepage in the right hand margin.
To see if a credit has been processed please log in to your account and click on “Contribution History.” If there is a credit available you will see it there. Once it has been used you will no longer see it there, instead you will see the credit applied as a line item on each contribution confirmation where a portion of the credit was used. Every year on December 31 any credit in the system older than 1 year will be decremented by $1.
Weights & Measures
The best effort is made to ensure accuracy, however weights and measures are approximate, and not guaranteed accurate.
