Despite its best efforts, the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics in Durham couldn't beat the Guinness world record last year when students set out to collect the most food at one location in 24 hours.

This year, it wised up: The Durham residential magnet school partnered with the Mormons.

When it comes to planning, mobilizing volunteers and executing large-scale operations, no group can quite match The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

On Saturday, when the school attempts to break the world record once again, it is wagering the Mormon stakes, or geographic regions, of Raleigh and Apex will push them over the top.

"It's the perfect partnership," said Sue Anne Lewis, student life instructor at the Durham school. "They're providing the manpower, the energy and the enthusiasm."

The church, which has an extensive welfare program and a regional network of farms, storehouses and canneries, has always taken good care of its own. But members of this 13.8 million-member worldwide church also undertake numerous humanitarian and relief projects around the globe.

And they're good at it.

In the parking lot of the Mormon temple in Apex this past weekend, a team of volunteers sorted through nonperishable foods in assembly-line fashion. Some checked the expiration dates. Other separated plastic items from cans. Still others loaded the food onto a tractor-trailer.

All the collected food will be trucked to Durham to be weighed Saturday. The goal is to beat the 509,148-pound-record for food amassed in one location on one day. School leaders hope to go beyond the record and top 550,000 pounds. The food collected will benefit the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.

"Each year we look for a service opportunity," said Matthew Harding, president of the Raleigh stake. "We really liked what the school was trying to do."

Gifts by the pound

In Raleigh, each Mormon family was asked to donate 10 pounds and to get 10 neighbors to donate 10 pounds each.

The Apex stake, which includes Cary, Garner, Holly Springs, Fuquay-Varina and Morrisville, challenged its members to donate 20 pounds and get 10 neighborhood families to donate 20 pounds each.

The 900 families in the Apex stake are taking the challenge seriously; some have gone beyond it.

"We had a personal goal of collecting 300 pounds," said Jennifer Martin of Morrisville, who spent part of the weekend alongside her son, Joshua, 11, sorting donated goods at the Mormon temple parking lot. "We feel like we're blessed, and we want to contribute to the effort."

Mormons aren't the only group to contribute to the food drive.

Other churches and neighborhood organizations also are partnering with the school, plus businesses such as Walmart and Chick-fil-A.

But the Mormons contribute a special kind of expertise.

As far back as 1937, former Mormon Church President J. Reuben Clark Jr. decreed that members keep a year's supply of food and water in case of emergency. The church's "Provident Living" website includes a food storage calculator, and instructs families on how best to package and store foods, even the amount of food each person is likely to eat in a year (about 300 pounds of grains, 60 pounds of legumes, 60 pounds of sugar, and 8 pounds of salt, among other items).

Each Mormon congregation has a designated "welfare and food storage specialist," and that person will put in orders for bulk items, such as wheat, that members can sign up to buy.

With that kind of commitment to food storage, it's no wonder that the Guinness world record for food collected in 24 hours at one location was broken Sept. 14, 2009, by a group of Mormons in Calgary, Canada.

But that just makes the two North Carolina stakes ever more competitive.

"The shorter the record lasts, the better," said Ron Willis, coordinator of the Apex stake's food drive. "Once it's broken, more people will benefit."