St. Thomas students can donate leftover Flex dollars to Summit Marketplace, which will use the money to buy food for The Open Door for the second year in a row.

The Open Door, a hunger relief organization, takes donations of perishable food and distributes them through fixed food pantries, a mobile pantry on a bus and a mobile “lunch box” bus that gives food to school-aged children.

“We went from having students just purchase things off the shelf, just throwing them in a box, to where they could just say, you know, here’s $5 for the food shelf and then they would just see what the food shelf was most in need of and we would order that in,” said Summit Marketplace supervisor Barb Lundell.

Students can make donations starting on Monday and can continue to do so until Dec. 21 at 4 p.m. when meal plans expire.

Student manager and senior Kelly Kimmes has enjoyed working with The Open Door in the past.

“I got involved with them — I did my Business 200 with them, so (it’s) really great work they do,” she said.

Summit Marketplace has taken donations for charity since its opening. The Open Door has not always been the receiving organization, but it has been the charity of choice since last year.

The old system of putting food donations into a donation box led to food pantries getting too much of what they didn’t need, and not enough of what they did need.

The system of donating Flex allows Summit Marketplace to order items that the pantries actually need.

The donations raised over $1,000 last year.