Call

(650) 347-3648

If you are in need of food, medical services, shelter, or any of our counseling or referral services, please contact our client service department at the number above to schedule an appointment.
 
Do you need Financial Assistance? Click here to Apply.

Visit

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Food Hours
Monday – Friday
9 am – 4 pm
Thursday
9 am – 12 pm

View our coverage area, types of assistance and more.

FIND HELP

Llámenos

(650) 347-3648

Si necesita alimentos, servicios médicos, de cualquiera de nuestra consejería, o servicios de referencia por favor contacte nuestro departamento de servicio al cliente al número que aparece arriba y haga una cita.

Necesita ayuda Financiera? Haga Click aquí para Aplicar.

Visítanos

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Distribución de Alimentos
Lunes – Viernes
9 am – 4 pm
Jueves 9 am – 12 pm

Vea nuestra área de cobertura, tipos de asistencia y más.

ENCONTRAR AYUDA

电话

(650) 347-3648

如果您需要食物，医疗服务，住所，任何咨询或转介服务
请通过以上号码联系我们的客户服务部门安排预约
 
您需要经济补助吗?点击这里申请。

地址

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食物供应时间
星期一至五
上午9点至下午4点
星期四
上午9点至下午12点

查看我们的服务范围，援助项目等
寻求帮助

FAQs

Thank you for your interest in Samaritan House of San Mateo. Here are some of our most asked questions. There are bound to be other questions to ask us, so please call (650) 341 4081 or email [email protected], if you do not find your answer below.

About Us: Fighting Poverty. Lifting Lives.
FOLLOW US

About Samaritan House

Donating to Samaritan House

Looking for Help

Volunteering at Samaritan House

Host or Attend an event

Careers at Samaritan House

About Samaritan House

A: No. Samaritan House is a popular name for non-profits. Samaritan House San Mateo is an independent non-profit serving San Mateo County in Northern California.

A: Our headquarters are located at 4031 Pacific Blvd., San Mateo, CA 94403. We also have several other sites throughout San Mateo County.

For a map of our service area and locations, please visit here

A: No. Samaritan House is not a religious organization in itself. We are grateful to receive support from congregations of many different faiths to serve our community together.

A: Samaritan House is closed on the following public holidays and does not have any volunteering opportunities available for one off involvement: New Year’s Day; Martin Luther King Jr. Day; Presidents’ Day; Memorial Day; Independence Day; Labor Day; Thanksgiving Day; Friday after Thanksgiving; Christmas Day. In addition, Samaritan House will close early at 2pm on Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve.

A: Samaritan House conducts tours of our headquarters in San Mateo. This provides an opportunity for visitors to see, first hand, some of the programs and services we offer and learn about their impact on the community. Click here to sign up today!

 

 

 

A: Project Wee Care is a school-based program that helps children build empathy by donating to needy children in their community. Schools participate in four drives each school year, collecting essentials that are distributed to Samaritan House families in our programs. Every item a family receives helps save money that can be used to keep them housed. For those schools who commit to and participate in these drives, Samaritan House offers an opportunity to attend an age appropriate tour of our site to see how they have helped our clients and talk more broadly about the issues of poverty in our community. You can learn more by visiting our Wee Care pages and then set up a time to meet with your school staff, principal and/ or PTA by contacting us.

Donating to Samaritan House

A: Unfortunately, we are unable to accept furniture. We recommend that you contact St Vincent de Paul to see if they can accept your donation.

A: With the exception of our Holiday Program Toy and Food drives, we are not able to pick-up donations of goods. If you are a group, corporation or business interested in making a large or recurring donation, please call us at 650.341.4081

A: Unfortunately, we are not able to accept used toys. Please contact St Vincent de Paul or Goodwill and see if they will accept your donation.

We do accept, new unwrapped toys to give out in our Holiday Program and these can be brought to 4031 Pacific Blvd., 3rd Fl., San Mateo, CA  94403 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday – Friday.

A: Yes, we do! Please click here for more information.

A: Thank you so much for your support with in-kind donations! Samaritan House does not have enough storage capacity and so can only accept the donated items that we can give out to clients immediately. We are also only able to accept those items that we are legally able to give away. 

We are not able to accept: Child car seats, cribs, strollers, household items including furniture, mattresses, bedding, pillows and comforters, towels, adult clothing, electrical items including desktop computers, laptops or mobile phones.

If in doubt about your donation items, please call us to check first. Unsuitable items, or donations that we are restricted from giving out, can end up in landfill at a cost to our organization, both situations we want to avoid.

For more information on the types of items we can accept, please reach out to us on (650) 341 4081 or [email protected].

A: Samaritan House may be able to help to pickup a large donation of items that are part of a Drive. However, we have limited trucks and drivers and so will need to ensure that there is capacity within our existing pickup schedules. Please contact us to discuss further.

Looking for help?

A: Please contact our Client Services office at (650) 347-3648 to schedule an appointment with a Case Manager or visit our headquarters at 4031 Pacific Blvd., 2nd Fl., San Mateo, CA  94403 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday – Friday (Thursdays 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.)

A: The Samaritan House Dining Room at The San Mateo Masonic Lodge (303 Tilton Ave, San Mateo, 94403) is open to all Monday – Friday from 4:00 – 5 p.m.  Please feel free to dine with us or take your meal to go.  Our Food Pantry is located at 4031 Pacific Blvd., San Mateo, CA  94403 and is open Monday- Friday, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. & 12-1 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, the pantry provides lunches to go at 12 p.m.

A: We are only able to serve residents of San Mateo County. To find an organization that can help in your area, please call 211.

Volunteering at Samaritan House

A: Visit our Volunteer Home page to get involved and sign up.

A: We welcome young volunteers over the age of 12. While 12 to 15 year olds need to be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. 16 and 17 year olds are able to volunteer in some of our programs if they have a parent (or guardian) signed waiver. The exceptions to this are our Free Medical Clinics, Safe Harbor Homeless Shelter and our Client Service department where all volunteers must be 18 or over. We encourage young children seeking to impact their community to volunteer at home by running drives and fundraisers to help their neighbors in need. For more information check out our Children, Youth and Family volunteering pages. We appreciate that parents want their children to learn the values of empathy early, and for that purpose we recommend looking into our Wee Care Program in the schools.

A: Thank you! We have lots of information on our Donation Drive pages to help you organize a drive for essential items. And our Fundraising pages also have ideas and materials to help plan a fun event and generate a cash donation for Samaritan House.  If you still have questions, you can contact us and we will be happy to help.

A: We would love to hear about how your specialist skills could benefit our organization. Please contact us to tell us more.

A: For the most part, Samaritan House relies on support from regular volunteer teams within our various departments. We offer more long term and regularly scheduled opportunities. Check them out by visiting our Volunteer pages. On occasion we may have a one-time opportunity; please contact our Volunteer Department by email to discuss the options.

A: Thank you for your interest. For most of the year, we can place adult groups of 10 or less across our regular program activities in our San Mateo location at Pacific Blvd, Monday through Friday, 9 – 4. In the lead up to the December Holidays, we have opportunities for larger groups to help us in our Holiday Toy Shop hosted at the San Mateo Event Center but this is still limited up to about 25 adults at a time. Despite being a leading organization in San Mateo County, Samaritan House facilities are actually very small so we struggle to accommodate larger groups who can only volunteer together.

A: Samaritan House receives a lot of support from corporate and community groups which means that we have groups working with us most weeks. We need to ensure that we have not overwhelmed our staff in the departments that groups will serve, or our dedicated regular volunteers. We will try to accommodate you, but please give us at least 4 weeks notice and a range of days that would work for you, so we can find the best fit, for you and for us.

A: Most volunteer opportunities with Samaritan House are open Monday through Friday 9am – 5pm. Volunteer shifts are generally 9am – 12 and 1 – 4pm. We have some Monday through Friday early evening opportunities at different locations in the County from 4 – 6pm. Although Samaritan House is closed to clients on Saturday and Sunday, we do have a small number of volunteer opportunities to help with food and grocery preparation at our Pacific Blvd. location in San Mateo between 9am – 12 at the weekend. Safe Harbor Shelter, our Homeless shelter in South San Francisco, has some opportunities on the weekend for small teams of adults over 18 – to host a BBQ or meal and a fun event with residents. To learn more visit our Volunteer pages.

A: We have more than 3,350 volunteers who help us each year. We rely on email to contact you throughout your time as a volunteer with us. We do not send enormous amounts of emails to you – only communications related to your volunteer shift such as closures on that day, new opportunities available and invitations to our annual volunteer events. Email is so essential to us that if do not have an email address, you will not be able to submit an application or volunteer.

A: We don’t want you to be excluded! It’s possible that your email service is blocking our communications, or that we have you noted as declining email communications in our database. Our database will not send any email to those who have “opted out” or “unsubscribed” from email communication. This opt out covers all future communications of any type from Samaritan House. If you feel you have not been included in an important email, please get in get in touch by email to let us know that you give us permission to opt you back in to our email communications. Please always check your own email spam filters, as some email services block group emails.

A: Our volunteering opportunities require a range of physical abilities. The physical requirements that are aligned with particular roles are listed in their description. We aim to make accommodations as reasonably as we can. If this is affecting you we will be happy to discuss alternatives with you.

A: For most of the year we do not allow volunteers to schedule themselves. We set up a regular, repeating schedule based on the volunteer’s availability and our current openings. However, for some of the volunteer opportunities in our Holiday Program such as food distributions, meal services and our Toy Shop distribution, we encourage volunteers to sign up to attend shifts themselves using our online tool. Emails will be sent to volunteers as these special opportunities are opened and places are taken on a first come first served basis.

A: Our new volunteer database is not yet enabled to allow volunteers to record their service hours online. Please continue to use the paper time-sheets that are in the areas that you serve. We enter volunteer hours at the end of each month against your record profile.

A: Samaritan House does not accept community service ordered by court or as part of parole or probation agreements. We understand that currently these other local organizations may accept volunteers in need of this type of community service: Second Harvest Food Bank; YMCA San Francisco; Habitat for Humanity; LifeMoves; Episcopal Community Services in SF.

A: You cannot volunteer with Samaritan House if you or a member of your household are receiving services from us. This includes medical, dental or food services.

A: Samaritan House does not provide automobile insurance coverage for volunteers who drive their personal vehicles in connection with agency business or activities. Volunteers may use their personal vehicles for agency business or activities only if they are fully insured under their own personal automobile insurance. The volunteer’s personal automobile insurance will be primary in resolving liability and property damage issues associated with any accident that takes place while the volunteer is driving their own vehicle on agency business or activities.

A: Training will be provided to volunteers to minimize the likelihood of accidents or injury while volunteering in their role on behalf of Samaritan House. Volunteers must accept, and acknowledge on their application, that there are risks present in volunteer duties and freely assume those risks and agree to release Samaritan House, its officers, agents and employees from and against all claims for injury, loss, or danger as a result of such duties. In the case of a volunteer incurring an injury which requires medical attention while performing their volunteer role at Samaritan House, the volunteer’s medical insurance will be the primary in resolving the cost of this treatment.

A. We understand that circumstances change and you may not be able to continue to volunteer with us. We are very appreciative of all of your support. Please let the Samaritan House staff in the department where you volunteer know, as well as the Volunteering Department so we can keep our volunteer schedules as up to date as possible. As ever, email is the best form of communication with Samaritan House.

Host or Attend an Event

A: Thank you so much! Please visit our Host a Fundraiser page to learn more.

A: Great! Please visit our News & Events page to see what events are coming up.

Careers at Samaritan House

A: Thank you for your interest! Click here to visit our Careers page and see open positions.

About Us: Fighting Poverty. Lifting Lives.