PhilanTopic

[Infographic] Hunger in America

This week's infographic, courtesy of Feeding America and Upworthy, expands on last week's theme, disparities in diet-related diseases in NYC, to illustrate the growing problem of hunger in America.

That so much want exists amidst so much plenty will come as a surprise to many. And yet, as David Nasby, a former vice president of the General Mills Foundation and founder of the nation's first food bank network, noted in a speech a few years ago: "Tonight, thousands of your neighbors will go to bed hungry. It may be your child's schoolmate who is undernourished and has difficulty learning on an empty stomach. Or it could be a co-worker, a working mother whose low-wage job doesn't make ends meet. Perhaps it's an elderly neighbor who has to make a decision whether to delay filling a prescription or buying groceries. The faces of hunger are as broad as the faces of America."

 

 

Is hunger a problem in your community? What, if anything, is your local community foundation doing to address it? And how do we eliminate the stigma that so often attaches to going hungry in a society where eating out is a national pastime and almost everything is super-sized? Share your thoughts in the comments section below....

-- Mitch Nauffts

[Infographic] Healthy Food and Community Change in NYC

On Thursday, the New York City-based Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund launched its Healthy Food & Community Change initiative with a commitment of $15 million over five years for healthy food programs across the city.

As the fund-created infographic below illustrates, there are vast disparities in diet-related diseases across New York City. The initiative aims to address these disparities by supporting strategies designed to increase the availability, affordability, and knowledge of healthy foods while promoting healthy food choices in high-need neighborhoods.

In everything it does, the fund tries to leverage its impact through partnerships with nonprofits and other foundations, public-sector agencies, businesses, colleges and universities, and individuals. Do you know of any efforts that have made headway against the food-desert problem and or diet-related diseases? Share them with us -- and the folks at the Illumination Fund -- in the comments section below....

-- Mitch Nauffts

From Global to Local: Partnerships Are Critical to Success

(Nancy E. Roman is president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank, which she joined in January 2013 after serving as director of public/private partnerships and communications at the United Nations' World Food Programme. Prior to joining WFP, Roman was vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.)

Moving from a job with the World Food Programme -- the world's largest humanitarian agency -- to the Capital Area Food Bank, a local NGO, has afforded me a bright-line look at the advantages and challenges of global versus local. The global humanitarian arena allows for scale but little flexibility or agility. The local environment allows for just the reverse: we move swiftly, like a speedboat, toward the problem but must depend on others to scale up our best solutions and practices. But one common theme emerges for both: the importance of partnerships.

Whether tackling hunger or clean water, disease eradication, literacy, or social justice, solutions to the great humanitarian and social problems of our day have eluded us. Both global and local hunger persist, despite the heroic efforts of many. And from both global and local vantage points, it becomes ever clearer that we urgently need to collaborate more effectively with our partners to meet the challenges we face.

For millennia, the human race has been finding ways to help others in need. But addressing social problems through agencies designed and built to tackle particular problems is a relatively new phenomenon. The International Committee of the Red Cross, founded in 1863, is one of the earliest. United Nations organizations such as UNICEF and the WFP are but fifty years old. Many of the largest and best-known NGOs are even more recent players. Founded in 1980, the Capital Area Food Bank was created to end hunger in the Washington, D.C., metro area. Unfortunately, over the last thirty-three years, the need has not diminished. Poverty is on the rise, in our region and nationally. Indeed, we have witnessed a 25 percent increase in hunger since the beginning of the economic downturn in 2008. Today, more than 680,000 individuals, including 200,000 children, in the District of Columbia, northern Virginia, and Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland look to us for help. And while the ranks of the working poor are growing, the middle class is also under stress, as many people who have never needed emergency food services find themselves at the doors of our neighborhood partner agencies and food pantries, which depend on CAFB for food and household items.

There was a time when many of us looked forward to ending the scourge of hunger, poverty, and homelessness. But as days become months and months become years, these stubborn social problems have outlasted our commitment, our resources, and sometimes even our compassion. So we ask: Given that these problems are overwhelming and persistent, might not we fight them more effectively in partnership rather than alone? If that's the case, how can we maximize impact through collaboration? And how should we think about these critical relationships?

At WFP, it became abundantly clear that our work, once deemed the purview of "donor governments," required a broader set of players. Back then, I was focused on engaging the private sector, in particular, to join with government and civil society to more effectively reach hungry people around the world. During my five years with the UN, our unconventional thinking about public-private partnerships became conventional wisdom, as governments began to embrace the idea that they, too, needed partners -- not just for additional funding but for the expertise that private-sector partners often are uniquely positioned to provide. As the UN partnered with Fortune 500 companies and governments to take on child malnutrition, the process of coordinating the work was always harder than we'd initially thought -- yet always turned out to be more worthwhile than we'd expected.

At CAFB, our partners include not only private companies such as Marriott and philanthropic entities like the Philip L. Graham Fund, but also hundreds of nonprofits, from local churches to area YMCAs to Martha's Table, Bread for the City, and other community groups. In working with these partners, however, we have come to realize that it is not enough to address immediate needs in our communities; we must also find ways to create a long-term plan to collaboratively and systematically tackle the problems we face.

To that end, I have just completed a round of conversations with forty or fifty agencies that are working with us to combat hunger in the region. CAFB's role is to provide our partners with leadership, expertise, training, and food resources to meet the needs of children, seniors, and families in their areas of service. But as we think through the challenges of how to do this effectively, we are also mapping the food insecurity needs and the reach of our and our many partners' efforts. When that effort is completed, we will be better positioned to empower and support the community agencies best suited to address these challenges.

Just like leaders in the humanitarian aid field, we grapple with how best to work with our partners. Collaboration and information sharing is critical if we are to repair and weave stronger social safety nets that contribute to sustainable reductions in hunger, preventable diseases, and a host of other pressing problems.

We realize that collaboration, to be effective, will require an understanding of the comparative advantages of our various partners. It may also require bringing them together more often -- not just to share best practices, but to plan better. Finally, it may require demanding answers to tough questions from all of us. Questions like: Which solutions are most effective? Which should be scaled first? Which should be phased out?

In the end, the best solutions are likely to be implemented street by street, block by block, one community at a time. At CAFB, we're convinced that working with our partners to understand what works best and then to share best practices and scale solutions as we work toward our collective goals will make it more likely we achieve them.

-- Nancy Roman

Hunger in America: A Q&A With Julie Gehrki, Walmart Foundation

In 2010, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation launched a five-year, $2 billion effort to help end hunger in America. In partnership with Feeding America and five of the country’s largest food companies -- ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Kellogg Company, Kraft Foods, and Unilever -- Walmart has since launched a variety of initiatives to encourage its customers to join the fight against hunger. Earlier this fall, Philanthropy News Digest spoke with Walmart Foundation senior director Julie Gehrki about the company's Fighting Hunger Together campaign and what the foundation is doing to address hunger in America.

Philanthropy News Digest: What effect has the sluggish economic recovery and the drought in the Midwest had on hunger and food insecurity in the United States?

Julie Gehrki: In early September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released the results of its most recent survey, which found that more than fifty million Americans are suffering from food insecurity. And a recent survey conducted by Feeding America found that 65 percent of its foodbank directors are very worried about food supply in the coming months. While we're hopeful the economy will continue to improve, we want to make sure that those who may not be benefiting from the improvement are taken care of. Feeding America foodbanks are on the frontlines of need in our communities, and Walmart wants to make sure they have the food they need to help those who need it -- particularly if food prices rise, as some are predicting, and as we head into the holiday season.

PND: What are some of the best ways for individuals to fight hunger in their communities?

JG: One of the things we're doing is called the Golden Spark campaign. Through Sunday, October 14, people can go to Walmart.com/hunger or our Facebook page and vote for a community to win $50,000 to start or expand a backpack program -- that's a program that provides meals to food-insecure children over the weekend, when they don't have access to free- or reduced-price school meals. A lot of people understand that kids get fed through school, lunches and sometimes breakfasts, during the week. But the backpack program forces people to think about what a kid does on the weekend. Studies have found that teachers have noticed that many kids are less attentive on Monday mornings, and that's because many of them have not eaten enough over the weekend. Backpack programs are largely run by volunteers. Individuals pack backpacks with food that's easy for kids to open and prepare on their own over the weekend. Walmart believes this is a local issue, something that communities and individuals in those communities have to rally around, because it's their neighbors who are feeling the pain.

PND: As a parent of two small children who have some eating issues, I know that a lot of food goes uneaten. What, if anything, are you doing to control for or take advantage of that?

JG: A lot of people are thinking about that. We're working hard with a number of nonprofits to make sure the food that's provided through the program is both healthy and appealing to kids. For example, some kids will not eat an apple unless it's in slices. We also address things like the school breakfast program by providing food in classrooms. Everyone eats together and we do everything we can to make sure there's no stigma attached to receiving food from a foodbank.

PND: Is Walmart using social media to engage its customers in the effort?

JG: The Golden Spark campaign relies on Facebook. Again, to vote for a community, visit our Facebook page or Walmart.com/hunger. You can also share the page with your friends on Facebook. The campaign is about broadening the number of people who are involved in hunger-alleviation efforts, and social media is a great way to do that. Our Facebook fans also can visit the "Live Better" section of our page to learn about our ongoing work fighting hunger across the United States and to view videos that highlight local stories of Americans making a difference in their communities.

PND: How many people do you hope to reach?

JG: This year, between the meals we donate, those donated by our suppliers, and those donated by Walmart customers, it'll be fifty-three million meals -- and that doesn't include the $2.5 million Walmart will give in cash to support hunger-alleviation efforts. When we started in 2007, we donated about nine million meals.

As you know, this is part of our $2 billion commitment to combat hunger in the United States. One of the things we know we can do as the nation's largest grocer is raise awareness of the issue. And so we're supporting our efforts through a multi-channel marketing campaign that kicked off in September, which was Hunger Action Month. It's really about using the combined resources of nonprofits, corporations, foundations, and individuals to say that this is a real issue, this is an important issue, and that together we can make a difference.

-- Matt Sinclair

Romney, Ryan, and Charity

(Mark Rosenman, a Washington-based scholar-activist and director of Caring to Change, a D.C.-based effort to promote foundation grantmaking for the common good, is a frequent contributor to PhilanTopic. In his last post, he argued that nonprofits are missing from critical policy debates.)

With the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate, Mitt Romney has changed the stakes of the 2012 presidential race. Well beyond Republican versus Democrat, the question now before Americans is who we are as a nation and a people. Over the next four years, we must make decisions about public responsibility for the common good, about what we expect of government, and of what we expect of one another. The nonprofit and philanthropic sectors cannot afford to ignore this debate.

Developed by the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee and already passed by the House of Representatives, the so-called "Ryan Plan" would have an immediate impact on many nonprofits, especially those serving low- and moderate-income people. Ultimately, however, it would affect each and every area of government support for charitable causes.

Indeed, after announcing Ryan as his running mate, candidate Romney issued a statement trying to distance himself from the plan, even though previously he had described it as "marvelous" and said he was "on the same page" as Ryan in terms of budget priorities. Charities are prohibited involvement in electoral politics, but helping to shape a public discussion about policy and our values as a nation is essential; nonprofit and foundation leaders must declare which page they are on.

Before we take a closer look at the unfolding debate, let me point out that Mitt Romney has himself already proposed similar policies. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concludes, for example, that Romney's detail-deprived proposal for tax reform would give the wealthiest Americans a significant tax cut while imposing tax increases on the remaining 95 percent of Americans.

This parallels Ryan's proposed budget, which would reduce tax revenues by $4 trillion over ten years -- and even more than that in the future. Those breaks, in turn, would save million-dollar-a-year earners an additional $265,000 annually on top of the $129,000 they'll get to keep if the Bush tax cuts are extended for everyone.

What's more, despite its draconian spending cuts and self-justifying rhetoric, the Ryan Plan will actually increase the deficit by $3.1 trillion between now and 2022, according to the House Budget Committee's own projections. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) goes further and says the plan, if adopted, wouldn't balance the federal budget until 2040.

What kind of cuts am I talking about? Let's start with Medicare. The Ryan Plan calls for the program to eventually be turned into a voucher-style subsidy that would result in individuals having to buy more expensive medical insurance in the private market. The CBO analysis suggests that the typical Medicare beneficiary would face an additional $6,400 in annual costs by 2022, although Rep. Ryan has tried to tweak his plan since CBO's analysis was made public.

Furthermore, according to the same analysis, the Ryan Plan raises the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67, creating a two-year gap when Americans wouldn't have access to either Medicare or the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges. What would these changes portend for already over-stretched charities and foundations working to support and assist this growing population?

Although the cuts in the Ryan Plan go even further, the plan's most pernicious aspect involves its assault on programs serving low-income people at a time when poverty rate in America is estimated to have climbed to 15.7 percent -- or about 47 million Americans -- the highest level since 1965. Indeed, more than 60 percent of the budget cuts in the Ryan Plan -- at least $3.3 trillion -- comes from government and nonprofit programs serving the poor and those at risk of falling from the ranks of the middle class. Not counting the Medicare cuts, over $2.4 trillion of the total would be sliced from funding for health initiatives for low- and moderate-income people, while the food stamp program would be cut to the tune of $134 billion, denying assistance to between eight and ten million food-insecure people.

Moreover, cuts in low-income programs for education, training, employment, and social services are estimated to total more than $463 billion, while discretionary programs in the same areas are targeted for an additional $291 billion in cuts. Consider what it would mean, for instance, to gut the Pell Grant program and deny low- and moderate-income students desperately needed tuition at a time when higher education is increasingly promoted as the route to economic self-sufficiency.

Beyond Medicare and safety-net programs, the Ryan Plan wreaks havoc in most other areas of concern to charities and the larger public. Agriculture and food safety, the environment, highways and transportation, medical and scientific research -- all are on the chopping block, as are veterans' programs, water infrastructure, national parks, border patrol, law enforcement, and initiatives in every area of government except national security. In fact, according to the CBO, if the Ryan Plan is implemented, spending by the federal government would essentially be reduced to Social Security, health care, and defense by 2050.

In the aggregate, nonprofit organizations depend on government for about a third of their annual revenue. Foundations cannot and will not make up for these missing dollars. And individual giving, especially from individuals whose own economic circumstances increasingly are precarious, isn’t going to fill in for a government that withdraws from most of its long-recognized responsibilities.

That is exactly the possibility, however, that confronts charities and foundations today. Radical policy promoted by "Republican Social Darwinists," as Robert Reich has characterized Ryan and his supporters, cannot remain unchallenged by nonprofit organizations and those who support them.

But what can charities and foundations do? First, their leaders must speak forcefully about the essential role of government in their areas of programmatic concern. While they may be concerned about a backlash, especially from their wealthier supporters, there is a great deal of polling data to suggest that nonprofit leaders can expect to find a supportive audience on many of these tax and funding issues. A factual presentation on the Ryan Plan joined to an invocation of shared American values is likely to bring even more support for the policy positions supported by charities.

Second, charities and foundations, regardless of their mission, must invest in voter registration, voter education, and get-out-the-vote campaigns focused on their constituencies, volunteers, staff, and members of their larger communities. Such activities are permissible under law (see www.nonprofitvote.org), and they are critical to helping people understand the fundamental issues and what is at stake in this election.

In 2012, Americans will do more than elect a president, a vice president, a House of Representatives, and one third of the Senate. They will determine whether or not we believe in shared responsibility for ourselves and each other. Charities and foundations that choose to sit on the sidelines have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

-- Mark Rosenman

‘Fair and Square’ and Philanthropic

The JCPenney Company, which was founded over a hundred years ago by James Cash Penney on the principle of treating customers "fair and square," recently launched a new charitable giving program called jcp cares that aims to build stronger communities across the country.

Through the program, the company plans to support a different cause or charity each month, for at least the next six months, with direct contributions and donations from customers. The first six charities selected to receive support through the program are the USO (July), 4-H and the Boys & Girls Club of America (August), Teach for America (September), the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (October), Share Our Strength (November), and the Salvation Army (December).

As someone not privy to the closed-door discussions that led to the selection of the six charities, I find myself wondering how the company came up with its list. Okay, some of the choices are obvious. This month's charity, the USO, supports military personnel and their families -- an entirely appropriate choice in a month that includes Independence Day. Similarly, Teach for America is an obvious choice for everyone's favorite back-to-school month, and what could be more appropriate than supporting the Salvation Army's Red Kettle campaign in December.

But in an era when companies, like almost everybody else, need to compete for the dollars and attention of consumers, you might expect JCPenney to be a little more creative about how it engages customers in its philanthropy. For example, what about asking customers for nominations of organizations deserving of the company's support via Facebook or Twitter? Or, taking it a step further, being more transparent about the actual selection process it did employ?

The company has said that, from July 23 to July 31, it will donate $1 -- up to $50,000 -- to its July partner, the USO, for every customer that checks in at a JCP location via foursquare. It has also launched a dedicated page on BroadCause where customers can share their personal stories and has said in its press release that it will engage charitably minded customers through the Facebook game WeTopia. I just hope the company has a long-term vision for its corporate giving that goes beyond "clicktivism."

What do you think? Am I being grumpy, or should the company be doing more to engage its customers in its new charitable giving program? Share your thoughts in the comments selection below.

-- Regina Mahone