This module gives students the opportunity to learn concepts through real examples of nonprofit management issues.

Reading assignment: opinion about Case #2: Share Our Strength/No Kid Hungry

Billy Shore grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Pittsburgh, where his father instilled in him a concern for the plight of people who were facing challenges in their lives. Motivated by those values and by the social activism of the 1960s, he had gravitated toward politics and by 1984 held a staff position in the first presidential campaign of Senator Gary Hart. Following the senators withdrawal from the race, Shore took a brief vacation. He was on his way back to work in the senators office when he saw a headline in the Washington Post: 200,000 to Die this Summer in Ethiopia. The threat of imminent famine that would claim so many lives caused Shore to reflect on his own lifes work. As Shore recalls,

I sat thinking about what the famine meant, what it would be like for the ravaged families who lived there. For the first time since my involvement in the presidential campaign, I really felt something about world events; I made an emotional connection to something beyond the usual calculations of how they could be turned to political advantage. It just seemed that since I felt so strongly about it, I ought to pay attention to that impulse. (More Than Food, 1998)

Later that year, working in the basement of a row house in Washingtons Georgetown neighborhood, Shore and his sister Debbie acted on the impulse by founding a new nonprofit organization, using a $2,000 cash advance on a credit card (Q&A, 2015). Believing that everyone has a strength to share in the global fight against hunger and poverty, they named the new organization Share Our Strength (Share Our Strength, n.d.).

CREATING COMMUNITY WEALTH

By 1986, the Shores were again working for Senator Hart while running Share Our Strength (SOS) on the side. Their fundraising for SOS consisted primarily of mailings to chefs and restaurant owners, whom they thought might have a particular interest in food. The results from this traditional method were modest. Then, while working for Hart in Denver, the Shores persuaded local chefs to participate in a special event to benefit their young organization. The chefs would offer a sampling of gourmet dishes to guests, with the ticket fees going to benefit SOS. The event raised $10,000, and the Shores calculated that the chefs had given far more in the form of gifts-in-kind and their own time and effort than they ever would have given in cash in response to direct-mail solicitations. This success provided an important insight: [N]onprofits needed to move away from seeking charitable contributions and toward building strategic partnerships with companies (Crutchfield & Grant, 2012, p. 91).

Despite having numerous historical antecedents, the term social enterprise was not as widely used in 1984 as it is today, but Shore became convinced that organizations working for social change needed to pursue a new model. He argued that too many nonprofits were dependent on traditional sources of revenue, primarily philanthropy, and were struggling to achieve impact. Too many nonprofit CEOs were distracted from building programs by the constant need to engage in fundraising. Traditional revenue sources were insufficient to bring successful programs to a scale at which they could achieve lasting change or assure the sustainability of even successful organizations. Wealth was being created at a historic rate in the business sector, but nonprofit organizations [had] been left behind (Shore, 1999, p. 212). Most were wed to practices that rely on redistributing wealth, rather than committed to the entrepreneurial activities that create wealth (p. 212). SOS would join other pioneering nonprofits taking a different approach: creating community wealth through business enterprise, cause-related marketing partnerships, and licensingdirecting profits back into the community [italics added] (p. 143).

PARTNERING WITH BUSINESS

For its first 20 years, Share Our Strength operated primarily as a funding intermediary that raised funds and made grants to other nonprofits providing direct services, including food banks and other emergency food assistance programs (Crutchfield & Grant, 2012). The funds were raised by mobilizing the food and restaurant industry through sponsored events. Based on the Shores experience in Denver, Taste of the Nation was launched in 1988.

The event brought together dozens of chefs and charged diners an entry fee to sample the fare of participating restaurants. The first event, held simultaneously in several cities, raised nearly $250,000 in one day. Over just the next two years, Taste of the Nation expanded to 18 American cities (Crutchfield & Grant, 2012). The events were mutually beneficial to all participants, providing funds for SOS; helping chefs and restaurateurs to get publicity and to visibly associate with SOSs cause; and providing corporate sponsors, such as Anheuser- Busch, opportunities to develop relationships with participating chefs and restaurants.

In 1993, a partnership between Share Our Strength and American Express achieved breakthrough success and became a widely studied example (Crutchfield & Grant, 2012). Share Our Strength already had established relationships with restaurants through Taste of the Nation and other programs. The Charge Against Hunger campaign leveraged those relationships to provide another source of revenue for SOS and a marketing benefit for its corporate partner. Consumers were encouraged to dine out at participating restaurants to help fight hunger. American Express donated to the Charge Against Hunger campaign three cents from each of its credit card transactions occuring at these restaurants during October, November, and December from 1993 to 1996 (Nelson et al., 2007). Over the four-year period, Charge Against Hunger raised $21 million for Share Our Strength, as well as increasing awareness of hunger issues and raising the profile of American Express, which was working to improve its image within the restaurant industry (Nelson et al., 2007). The campaign was lauded as a model for future cause-marketing endeavors. Other corporation-sponsored events were developed, including the Great American Bake Sale, Restaurants for Relief, and A Tasteful Pursuit. Although not all events succeeded, SOS became a cause-marketing machine (Crutchfield & Grant, 2012).