The North American Food Drive (NAFD) is a labor intensive, highly visible, incredibly rewarding philanthropy, designed to raise food for local communities, while promoting Lambda Chi Alpha. For many years, local chapters did their own philanthropies and Lambda Chi Alpha had no officially designated “international” outreach. The official food drive started in 1993, with efforts coordinated and tracked internationally. The event is typically held on the first Saturday in November. The focus of the NAFD is for all chapters to participate in the same event on the same day. In 1993, 149 chapters took part in the first event. More than 250,000 pounds of food was raised for local food banks on that day, and more than 8,000 brothers participated. Since then the NAFD has continued to grow and several chapters now collect individually more than 100,000 pounds of food.
The food drive is basic (and so is the concept). Brothers drop off empty grocery bags throughout their community with a letter asking people to donate food for a local charity. They then return to pick up the bags on the first Saturday of November, weigh the bags, and deliver them to a local charity. Many additional activities can supplement the basic event of the food drive making it not only more fun for our brotherhood but also involving sororities, dorms, or other civic organizations (Boy Scouts, YMCA, etc.).
The advantages of the NAFD are numerous. Chapter brothers participate in a hands-on event with the immediate satisfaction of collecting food from the local community for a worthy charity. The synergy of all of Lambda Chi Alpha's chapters participating helps generate local, regional, and sometimes national and international media coverage for the event. Finally, Lambda Chi Alpha rewards leading chapters with awards and recognition at the General Assemblies and Leadership Seminars.


Here at UL, we do our NAFD with a week called Watermelon Bust. We incorporate the 5 sororities on campus and it is a week-long event. The Sororities compete with each other to earn points for their philanthropy a certain percentage of funds raised (30% to the winning sorority, 20% to the second place sorority). Points are awarded by participating in and winning particular events. The run-down is generally like this:

• The entire week, the fraternity as well as sororities are found around campus asking students and any passer-bys for money to give to the respective sororities' philanthropies, as well as the NAFD.
• We have a phone day, where we call businesses around Lafayette to help get sponsorships and raise more money.
• There is a competition between the sororities to decorate a watermelon with their chosen theme.
• All the sororities as well as the chapter raise canned goods for the local community.
• In the end, we culminate with a field day that has plenty of games and watermelon for each of the sorority teams and it ends in a celebration & awards ceremony at the fraternity house.