Hopelink, the largest social services agency serving east and north King County, has teamed up with Lake Washington Physical Therapy for the second annual March Can Madness food drive, to run through April 15.

The drive is patterned after the famous national spring college basketball tournament, matching up businesses in weekly competitions to see which one can bring in the most food. Each week, the winning business in every pairing or “bracket” will advance to the following week.

Registration is underway and will continue through March 11. Competing teams will have until March 18 to collect cans of food, and the single-elimination weigh-ins will run every Friday from March 18 through April 8. Teams will be bracketed together in pairs and one winner from each two-member bracket will advance to the next week. The winner will be crowned April 15.

To ensure that businesses of all sizes are able to compete on a level playing field, the competition uses a unique scoring system: the total pounds of food donated by a business are divided by the total number of employees, resulting in that businesses final score.

The 15 local businesses that competed in last year’s drive collected nearly 7,800 pounds of food for the Redmond food bank.

The March Can Madness drive comes at a critical time for local food banks. Donations traditionally drop off after the holidays, while demand is continuing to grow. Last year, 6,600 families were helped through Hopelink’s five food banks — up 12 percent from the previous year. Demand has increased 47 percent over the past three years.

Additional information and registration materials are available at http://www.hope-link.org/events/march_can_madness.