One day last year, Jim Guarrera got offered free UConn and New York Giants tickets from two different season-ticket holders who couldn’t make the games.
Around the same time, the St. Vincent De Paul food bank where Guarrera volunteers was hurting from a lack of food.
And so SoupBowlTickets.com was born.
“Instead of giving the tickets to someone, why not ask them to pay and then give that money to charity?” Guarrera said.
That’s what SoupBowlTickets.com does.
The Web site, which officially launched this week, lets people with extra tickets find a tax-deductable way to donate them.
And when other people purchase those tickets, all the money goes to help Naugatuck Valley food drives purchase more food for their shelves.
Guarrera, who works at Carey and Guarrera Real Estate in Shelton, approached the Valley United Way with the idea about a year ago.
The United Way, which has experience connecting food with organizations, is orchestrating the project.
“There are things like this that are for-profit, like StubHub.com,” said Jack Walsh, the executive director of the Valley United Way. “Here, it’s a case that these tickets aren’t going to be used and they would go to waste. Instead, they will generate something positive for the community.”
The United Way will wait until a large sum of money is collected through the project, and divide it among several area food collection agencies, such as the Salvation Army, Area Congregations Together and the YMCA.
Guarrera said the Valley Board of Realtors has already donated $1,000.
And Center Stage in Shelton has said it would donate two tickets to any show, Guarrera said.
Walsh said he hopes the idea catches on because food banks are seeing more people come in needing food. With the hurting economy, many of the food banks have fewer donations at the same time.
“Everyone thinks of food at holiday times,” Walsh said. “That’s probably when the food banks are doing their best. After the holidays are over, it’s kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ We find they really have shortages at the end of the summer. And last year it was all year long.”
