Pete Nebhut

By Ed Nicholson

Tim Cipriano calls himself a "lunch lady."  That's simplifying things a bit.  Actually, he directs one of the most progressive school lunch programs in the country, for New Haven (CT) Public Schools, which prepares more than 17,000 lunches and 11,000 breakfasts a day for schools across the district.  It's a tremendous program, that focuses on quality, nutritious food, prepared from scratch, where possible.

Tim is a passionate, articulate and tireless advocate for hunger relief.  In his job, he sees directly the effects of hunger on children.  He knows the scope and the depth of the problem. 

In addition to effectively managing a daunting day job, Tim also has a leadership role in Taste of the Nation New Haven, and has volunteered his time to lobby state legislatures on behalf of child nutrition appropriation. 

We caught up with Tim last week, when we made the WeCanEndThis donation in New Haven (for which he was largely responsible). 

He's an inspiring guy.  It's a privilege to know him

By Ed Nicholson

The second stop of my mini-tour last week was in Bloomfield, Connecticut, where Scott Henderson and I visited Foodshare foodbank to help fulfill the donation brought about by lots of Connecticut people engaging in the WeCanEndThis.com digital can drive.  We were also privileged to see Darryl Ohrt, whose company Humongo played a big role in the success of WeCanEnd This. 

As I've mentioned before, visiting foodbanks is always inspiring, especially when the leadership takes the time to visit with us, as Foodshare President and CEO, Gloria McAdam did.  Here's a bit of an interview I did with Gloria in which she describes the landscape of the issue of hunger in her area, plus the work of the foodbank.

By Ed Nicholson

Just getting back from a great trip to Connecticut, where we made  WeCanEndThis donations to the Connecticut Food Bank and to Hartford's Foodshare.  

It was a great trip in many ways: Traveling with my friend Scott Henderson; getting to see Tim Cipriano, passionate hunger fighter and Share Our Strength supporter,  who also runs what might be the most progressive school lunch program in the nation for the New Haven School District;  meeting great folks like Nancy Carrington, Gladys Alcedo and all the folks at CFB, and Gloria McAdam, Amanda Renna and all the folks at Foodshare; going to Wednesday evening's Taste of the Nation New Haven event at Yale's Woolsey Hall (wow!). 

One of the most inspiring things about visiting foodbanks is meeting and talking with the people who make it happen every day for hunger in their communities.  I try to get interviews with foodbank E.D./CEOs when I go out.  Which brings me to the title of this post.

Nancy Carrington, who's been with the Connecticut Food Bank for 26 years, was particularly articulate about the work of the food bank, hunger in her community and misplaced stereotypes of hungry people.  She related a story about  a single mom she'd met at a soup kitchen, who provides a great example for us of how hunger is affecting people in our own neighborhoods.  The story starts right before the 3 minute mark in the video above.

Do you have any stories like this?  I'd like to hear them.

By Ed Nicholson

Joe Waters has an excellent post today, "Are Non-Profits Ready for the End of Corporate Philanthropy," in which he posits a new world order is emerging, in which corporations will demand ROI for their philanthropic engagement.  Joe's post was prompted by a Scott Beaudoin post in PR Week, prompted by comments by Nestle SA Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe made stating that he opposes corporate philanthropy because shareholder money can be misused.   So this discussion is going around recently, mostly focusing on cause marketing as an alternative to "pure" philanthropy. 

At Tyson, it's been going around for a while.  You see, unlike a lot of companies that trade in higher margin products, our philanthropy budget is in relative terms quite modest.  We don't begin with a large budget.   We've had to build what we're doing in hunger relief from a very modest position, showing greater good, but also illustrating ROI for the shareholder resources we're using.  We do that in a number of ways, including measuring media attention and stakeholder engagement.  As a result, we've been able to grow the pounds donated each year over the past ten years.  We haven't done much cause marketing. 

It's been our direct experience that proof of ROI makes philanthropy more sustainable.  It's easy to give when profits are plentiful.  But when there's red ink flowing, the "nice to do" things tend to get jettisoned quickly.  I believe our showing ROI kept the Tyson hunger relief efforts through some pretty tough financial times, from which we're just now emerging.

Our marketing groups (at least at this point) don't see a self-sustaining ROI from cause marketing.  They tend to perceive it as marketing application of philanthropy dollars, or as I've heard it described, "strategic philanthropy."   In my humble opinion (not necessarily that of Tyson Foods, Inc.), that's all good and well as long as the marketing communications paid media spend doesn't dig too deeply into the benefit to the recipient.  I recently heard the head of a large (extremely large) corporate foundation declare,  "I don't like cause marketing because the resources allocated to the marketing are generally greater than those going to the cause."  Something to think about.   

So where do you think this is all going?  Do you like it/agree with it?

 I originally put this post up last February.  As we near the end of the school year, it's important to consider just how important school lunch is to the nutritional needs of some kids.  And what is going to happen in a few weeks when summer vacation begins.

 

By Ed Nicholson                                                                           photo by eyeliam--Creative Commons

A colleague of mine came into the office last year with a compelling story.  Her eight year-old grandson frequently spent time with her on weekends. Often he was accompanied by a good friend: a normal looking kid; clean, well-dressed, well-mannered.. The friend had a voracious appetite, eating just about everything in his path.  When my colleague made a lighthearted comment about how much he could pack away, he said, “We don’t eat much at my house on the weekend.”   Turns out, life was pretty tough for this kid.  His single dad was making some choices that didn’t exactly put nutrition at the top of the priority list for his family.

Unfortunately, this kind of story is way too common in our land of plenty.

It’s Friday afternoon here in the Ozarks.  Along about the time this posts, school kids around the country will be eating lunch.  For some of them, it will be the last good meal they’ll have until Monday.  If  I’m reading the charts correctly, over 15 million kids participate in the free school lunch program.  For a lot of these kids, the school lunch program is their lifeline; there just aren’t three squares on the weekends and holidays. 

We know there are lots of stories about these kids out there.  If  you have one  and would like to tell it here, leave us a comment, and we’ll get with you.  You can guest post, or just let us tell it.

Meanwhile, there are lots of ways you can help.  Go to the Share Our Strength or Feeding America web sites.  Or go visit your local food bank. 

No kid should dread the weekend.