When I donate food, I almost always donate to Harvesters, which is not a lot like the traditional "food pantry" - people don't get to go in and "shop" for groceries, Harvesters delivers large boxes of stuff to families, smaller food pantries, non-profit residential programs, and so on. I have done a handful of packing shifts there, putting together these boxes. As far as I am aware, they don't do special diet boxes, or anything like that. (And I think that because I've certainly packed soy butter in with peanut butter, and rice flour pasta in with wheat pasta, and so on.)

Anyway, my experience as a volunteer there has changed my donation habits a bit. When I've been a packer, it always seems like they're low on protein-rich foods, so I'm now more likely to give beans, tuna, canned meat, or peanut butter than to give things like canned veg or pasta - that stuff, there's always plenty of. I also started giving things like toilet paper and other household goods, because they do distributions of that stuff, but I don't think as many people know that they need that stuff as know they need food.