September 10, 2025 • 52 mins
Siblings Bill and Debbie Shore founded the nonprofit Share Our Strength in 1984 to help combat global hunger and poverty. Forty years later, the organization has raised more than $1 billion to provide hunger relief. Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign launched in 2010 works to connect kids in the U.S.A. to effective nutrition programs. In 2024 No Kid Hungry’s local partners served more than 374 million meals to kids and families. www.shareourstrength.org www.nokidhungry.org
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The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you
(00:20):
for choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts, Melanie
Young and David Ransom. You're insatiably curious culinary couple. We
travel the world to bring you the amazing people, the
thought leaders and legacies and movers and shakers who shape
the world of food, wine and hospitality, and we bring
them their stories you and want you to get involved
(01:01):
and expand your horizons and become active and support this
amazing industry. With this show, We're launching a new series
in the Connected Tape of Life called our Philanthropy Series,
and we are going to be interviewing leading philanthropists who
were really utilizing their connections and their strengths to make
an impact, and goodness knows we need that now with
(01:23):
so many things happening in the world. So this is
an amazing charity we're going to be talking about. It
celebrates forty years. So we're going to take you back
to when it started. Picture this year was nineteen eighty four.
I don't know about you, David, but I was thinking,
dreaming of coming to New York. There was a famine
raging in Ethiopia. You may know that. That's when they
(01:43):
did We Are the World. Bill Shore had been working
as chiefa staff for Gary Hart, who had an unsuccessful
campaign for president. After the campaign's over, he was in
that what am I going to do with the rest
of my life phase? Moved by the news about the famine,
he decided he was going to start a nonprofit And
now that is not easy to do, not at all,
(02:05):
not at all, And he tapped someone he cares about
that he trusts his sister, Debbie, and Bill and Debbie
Shore with guts, grit and about two thousand dollars in cash,
probably from a credit card a ATM. I'm not sure
they'll tell us. They create an organization called Share as
Strength Sharef's Strength has become a major leader in hunger
(02:26):
relief and fighting poverty, both on the global and national front.
You're talking over one billion dollars raised to provide hunger relief,
mobilizing many leaders in all sorts of cross industries, including
some very big, bold face names. And on the domestic front,
the campaign called No Kid Hungry has helped to provide
(02:49):
through over three hundred and seventy four million meals to
school kids who otherwise may not have that nutrition that
they need for the day because one in five children,
one in five children still are facing in food in security.
So the thing is, we're going to celebrate all the
successes that Share of Strength has done through its initiatives
(03:12):
and talk about how it started with Billy and Debbie
Shore who join us today, and we're going to talk
about the future as well, because we all know there's
a famine in Gaza, there's a famine in Sudan. Poverty
and hunger is pervasive, and we are the greatest country
in the world. I hope everybody still thinks that. And
as Bill has said, you can get food to people,
(03:34):
it's just you've got to have the procedures and mechanisms
in place. So we'd like to welcome to our show
as the first of our philanthropy series, Billy and Debbie Shore,
founders of Share Our Strength, Welcome.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Thanks you guys.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
We're honored to be among the first in this new series,
and I'm so glad you're doing it well.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
It's been something I've we've been dreaming about and we're
always trying to push the envelope further to think bigger
and broad and gosh, I personally have known your work
and been involved with it raising money through my work
in New York doing major events and through the Taste
of the Nation, which is really one of the great
fundraisers of all times.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
Sure is, Melanie, and I've actually actually been involved participating
in the events over the years, back in the day
when my family poured our family's wine at Share our
Strength Tastes of the Nation in New York, and so
it was one of my favorite events to attend and
participate in every year back in the days that we did.
Speaker 6 (04:31):
And so it's lovely to have you folks on.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So your brother and sister, you've been working together for
a long time. Her husband and wife, we've been working
together twenty years. We know it could be challenging. Where
did y'all grow up? Talk to us about, you know,
little Debbie and little Billy and what your interests were.
Speaker 7 (04:50):
Should have brought our baby pictures. We grew up in Pittsburgh.
We grew up in this Jewish community called Scroll Hill,
and we went to public school, and yeah, that's where
we grew up.
Speaker 8 (05:01):
And our father was a lawyer and a real public servant.
Mom was mostly a stay at home mom worked kind
of you know, on and off, but our dad was
like very engaged in community service and local politics, which
is probably where we where we got our sense for
politics and community work.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Yeah, our father was actually the district administrative assistant and
campaign manager for a congressman from Pittsburgh who served in
Congress for twenty two years. Our dad was with them
the entire time, and so our dinner table conversation was
always about what was going on in those days. It
was civil rights at Vietnam and then Watergate, but it
was a very political.
Speaker 9 (05:41):
Conversion health.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So that was inspired. I know, Billy, you went into
public service, Debbie, what did you go into it? Tell
us a little bit more about your path.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
Yeah, no, you know, so I I.
Speaker 8 (05:54):
Studied philosophy and literature, but I also worked on the
hard campaign in the first camp and the second campaign.
Started out as a volunteer and then and then got
on board. So I think so many I don't know
if Billy would say the same, he probably would, but
so many of the lessons that we got growing up
were you know, kind of subconscious, right, Like I weren't
really aware of all of the opportunities that you could
(06:15):
do in the country and in the community.
Speaker 7 (06:17):
But as Billy said, listening to our dad.
Speaker 8 (06:19):
And our mom and the neighbors would come over and
talk about politics, and you know, all that really makes
an impact on you.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Have an impact on you, whether you realize it or not.
Speaker 8 (06:27):
And so like the Gary Hart campaign, the lessons we
took from that campaign, and between that and growing up
in a political household, I think we just had a
lot of gems and a lot of.
Speaker 7 (06:38):
Wisdom when we started the organization.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Well, certainly as a calling of service. I've always wanted
to work on a political campaign. I've achieved a lot
in my life and I was ready to do it
with Kamala Harris, but we were still adapting moving to
new Orleans, but hopefully in the future because you can
always do it at every stage and age of your life. So,
you know a lot of people say, I want to
(07:01):
do something, I would love to be nonprofit is my mother.
My mother was very involved in the nonprofit world, and
his mother and our both of our late mothers instilled
service into everything we do. And I think every single
program that I did in New York, with multi chef
tasting events like the Taste of the Nation, I worked
with so many nonprofits. Everything had to have a purpose
(07:23):
and didn't make a difference. It could not just be
for profit. And I'm still that way. This show is
like that too. It's very purposeful. So you know a
lot of people say let's do something. I want to
make a difference, but they don't necessarily act on it
because it is a long, hard road. How did you
get started?
Speaker 7 (07:45):
You you?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Bill, I referenced, you had finished the campaign, so the
hard campaign's over. You're figuring out what you want to
do next. You have this idea, how did you get
that started and build it? Back when? Because I just
heard the John Grisha interview, there was no inn there
was no modern technology.
Speaker 9 (08:05):
Yeah, well you.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Know, w said campaigns are fun, and when the campaign ended,
I think we wanted to continue to not just have
the fun, but have the you know, the kind of
the purpose driven nature of it, the energy behind it.
And particularly I think we both felt that we had
left the campaign with some very specific skills that we'd developed,
or at least some experiences that we've been exposed to.
(08:27):
In a political campaign, you have to know a little
bit about fundraising, you have to know a little bit
about the media, you have to know a little bit
about organizing and community organizing. And as the Ethiopian famine
in nineteen eighty four, which was kind of the catalyst
for us, took hold, we started to think about can
we bring some of these skills to an issue like this?
(08:49):
And you know, campaigns are so intense for such a
long period of time and then they just end. You
either win or you lose, and in our case, we lost,
and so your face with this kind of you know,
literally an existential question what are we going to do
with ourselves? And we wanted to do something that continued
to feel meaningful and purposeful. But the you know, the
lessons from the campaign we really applied very directly to
(09:13):
starting share our strength. And the only other thing I
would say about it is, you know, now forty years in.
Speaker 9 (09:18):
I I'm sure w has as well.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
I have lots of folks that come to us with
ideas to start things, and they don't know if they
should hire a consultant or do a business plan, or
do a you know, a kind of an analysis of
the competitive landscape. And my answer is always the same,
if if you want to do it, put a sign
on the door. It's to say you're starting, start to
reach out to people and make it happen.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (09:43):
I mean, we're we're kind of brutal on this point
because I mean that's how we started.
Speaker 7 (09:48):
But but and I would say that's even how we.
Speaker 8 (09:51):
Start some of our more creative platforms for fundraising without
a lot of you know, research. But but but I
also feel like, you know, you do need a few
people that say, like I think you're onto something. You know,
you do need some validation, which we got early on
in the concept of Share of Strength, which was, you know,
(10:11):
a very simple concept at the time.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I don't know how much you remember about this, Melanie,
but when.
Speaker 8 (10:15):
We started the organization the idea was to we were
going to put our logo on windows, restaurant windows and
ask the restaurant or to make a contribution to hunger,
and it would sort of serve as a good housekeeping
seal where people would, you know, our our very naive
idea was that people would walk by the restaurant and say, oh,
this this restaurants you know, involved in feeding hungry kids,
(10:36):
and so we're going to you know, we're going to
patronize it.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
So we did that for a long time.
Speaker 8 (10:40):
I mean that was really kind of the idea, was
that we would get restaurants involved that way. But as
it evolved and as we you know, if you're if
you're open, if you're truly open to hearing ideas, if
you're truly open to trying things.
Speaker 7 (10:53):
You know, then you won't stick to your knitting, you'll
like try new things.
Speaker 8 (10:56):
And so Taste the Nation was a departure from the
original idea, but one that made a lot of sense.
And you know, the other thing I just say when
we started the organization that I always talk about as
the three kind of core philosophies that we had almost immediately, Billy,
I feel like from the very beginning, we believed that
(11:17):
everybody has his strength to share in the fight against hunger.
That was like even before we named it, that that
was the idea that everybody has his strength to share.
We wanted restaurants to be our first line of defense
because they feed people for a living, and we believed
then and it's true today, that they would it would
resonate with them, hunger would resonate with them, and that
they would act on I.
Speaker 7 (11:37):
Don't think we realized how very special.
Speaker 8 (11:42):
And different and unique those are the same thing, but
how unique restaurant tours, restaurant tours really are when it
comes to community activism. They're really in a classes their own.
And then, third, we wanted to create what we consider
new revenue, revenue that's not currently in the pipe line,
So we didn't want to compete with food banks and
(12:02):
other hunger groups. We wanted to create new money, which
case the Nation was a new novel idea at the time.
So those three things were kind of all simultaneously part
of that that core belief when we started the organization,
and they've served us really well and there's still I
think all three of those are still very much in play, and.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
I want to make sure we thank both of you
for getting involved as early as you did the way
you described, because you got involved with us when you
know you knew us, a chance on us, and it
made a big difference.
Speaker 9 (12:30):
It was really formative. So thank you.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Well.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
I just remember those events were a lot of fun
and a lot of good food and a lot of
good wine was served. And I actually still have an
umbrella that was given up by Tattenture Champagne at one
of the events and I still have the umbrella to
this day and I still use it.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I love that, you know, hunger relief is is important
and as I said, pervasive. You know, as this your
organization has grown. Forty years is a long time. Oh gosh,
I think about all the things that have chance to
hire you forty years. Oh my god, you got started,
(13:08):
you launched. I loved in the interview I just heard
with John Grisham. I'm visiting no, because I was there
with starting a business at the found the safe time.
There was just the phone book and the phone and
there wasn't you know social media. Think you wrote Alice
Waters because you looked people up and as you were talking,
(13:30):
I thought of how I was doing that for a
lot of the things I was doing whether it's James
Spirit Awards or some of the nine thousand fund raisers
I was doing. But you have to scale also too,
because nonprofit has still has to everyone like a business
at some point, How did you put the checks and
balances in place, which are so critical with a nonprofit
(13:51):
for reporting purposes, to be able to scale it beyond
what you were doing?
Speaker 4 (14:00):
Now you go ahead, Well, you know, first of all,
we had we had time to put the checks and
balances in place because we grew very slow, So not
all forty years have been like the last thirty five
or so. The early days were tough sledding, and we
looked for ways to you know, we looked for kind
of today we would call them influencers. That would be
(14:21):
you know, kind of force multipliers for what we did.
One of our lessons in Gary Heart's presidential campaign when
he ran in nineteen eighty four in the New Hampshire primary,
was very critical to you know, to going on for
the rest of the campaign. He ended up winning that primary,
but he kept telling me, and I didn't know as
nearly as much about politics as he did that you know,
(14:43):
it was a campaign for twenty people and if we
got the right twenty people to be for us. Then
they would influence the next twenty and the next twenty
and so forth, and we would win the primary. And
we took that very very literally, and it turned out
to be correct. And so when we started share our strength,
it took us a little while to remember that lesson,
but once we did, you know, we started to reach
(15:04):
out very selectively to folks, you know, like I think
Alice Waters was our first contributor, or one of our
first contributors, and then we asked her to reach out
to others on our behalf, and that started to kind
of pick up some steam for us. But in the
in the very early days, you know, when you talk
about pre internet, you know, you literally had to crank
letters out one at a time.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
It was pre.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Internet, but there was a the Apple Macintosh had just
been invented, and Steve Rosniak, who invented it, was a
Gary Hert supporter, and Debbie and I called him up
and asked him if he would donate a mac and
a printer.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
They printed out letters like once every six minutes in
those days, but it was really better than us typing
them ourselves.
Speaker 9 (15:46):
So that's that kind of got us started.
Speaker 8 (15:50):
You know, as you were talking, Billy, I was thinking
back to our those were crazy early days. But our
our our logo you know, that used to just be
called SOS back in the early days, and we just
we used a stencil, you know, and colored it in
and had it printed.
Speaker 7 (16:07):
That was our logo and we just had a typewriter.
Speaker 8 (16:10):
So it was yeah, it didn't it didn't feel it
didn't feel that hard. At the time, it felt like
we were exactly where we should have been. But when
you look back, it was obviously very hard and very slow.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah. You know, sometimes you think businesses and nonprofits having
a lot easier now, and it's easier to raise the
money because you've got social media. However, however, raising money
is still hard, particularly in tough economic times. And you
did I think you've you you have done a great
job creating partnerships. You created what we call the early influencers.
(16:46):
The chefs were your early influencers before the word influencer
was a word. But you also worked with actors like
Jeff Broaches and a referenced John Grisham. You have Pete,
You've you've harnessed the influential power and connections of people,
which is really important to do when you're working on
a cause admission. Give us an example some other things
(17:09):
besides tastes of the nation you're doing.
Speaker 8 (17:13):
Well, So a chef's cycle that a lot of the
things we're doing still involved chefs, because even though we
kind of had our first hundred or first two hundred,
were now probably you know, closer to twenty five or
thirty thousand restaurants at every level at the fine dining level,
which kind of took precedence for our first twenty years
(17:34):
or so, but also multi unit restaurants, casual dining, train chains,
quick service. We have programs now for every level of restaurant,
which has changed the landscape for us. We always knew
we needed to do that, we just didn't have the
programs or ideas in place, but now we do.
Speaker 7 (17:51):
But yeah, chef cycle that Billy just mentioned is a
great program.
Speaker 8 (17:55):
We just had our tenth anniversary this last year in
in Oregon, and it's what it sounds like. It's chef's
riding cycling for miles and miles and miles about the first,
you know, three hundred miles. We've dropped it down to
two hundred miles, but chefs ride one hundred miles a
day for two or three days.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
And what goes into the training over months.
Speaker 8 (18:17):
Whether you're a cycle you know, whether you're a training
cyclist or not, you still have to train and it's
really a challenge. So, you know, we always say it's blood,
sweat and tears, and it literally is blood, sweat and tears.
But we brought together a couple hundred chefs and they
rode in a beautiful place. We raised a million dollars
last year. We're trying to double it for next year.
(18:38):
Billy rides, which is amazing. I've never been on a bike,
and it was my idea to start this, so I'm
getting more and more agree from it every year from
the chefs. But yeah, I've never been on a bike
in my life, but I had this idea that it
would be a great way because I knew some chefs
who cycled and I thought that could be a new
and you know, the bonding that takes place, the camaraderie,
(18:59):
the relationships we've had, you know, marriages come out of it,
We've had business partnerships come out of it. It's a
very intense, fun fulfilling, challenging, emotional experience.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
It really is. You guys should join us next year.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
I b I bike almost every morning, about five days
a week.
Speaker 6 (19:17):
I'm on the bike.
Speaker 8 (19:17):
Will my my, I'm that you're a cyclist.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
I'm an I don't. I don't do one hundred miles
a day. I will tell you that.
Speaker 7 (19:26):
I don't. You know did it?
Speaker 6 (19:28):
You can anywhere.
Speaker 9 (19:32):
I anybody can do it.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I saw that on social media and that's when I said, Okay,
I'm reaching out.
Speaker 7 (19:37):
You know.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
I think they're a great a great vehicle to get
people together to because my brother did a when he
lived in New Hampshire.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
He did a big bike ride with mc Dreamy whatever.
That actor's name was the Dempty Challenge.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, the Dempty Challenge.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
So he did the Dempty Challenge for about ten years
and rode with Patrick Dempsey every.
Speaker 8 (19:53):
Day with us. We'll have some We had Pink ride
with us one year, really fun.
Speaker 6 (20:01):
She's great from she's from Pennsylvania also.
Speaker 9 (20:04):
Right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
So it just shows you it's not just you know,
the chefs, it's everybody can get involved. I think that's
really important for this show to let anyone can get
involved with share a strength and there's a lot of
different programs to do it because a lot of people
will say, oh no, I can't do that, and you
know it, for some people it is hard to write
the big check to go to the gaula. So that's
(20:29):
why it's important to have plenty of other options as well.
Do this now. In twenty ten, Share Strength started an
initiative part of the organization called No Kid Hungry Campaign,
which has had it has its legs, its own legs,
as we say, and the goal here is to focus
(20:51):
on ending childhood hunger, which I references one in five children.
Over thirteen million kids still face food and security here
in Louisiana. It's all a political problem, and you know
we're going to get a politics, but we know that
many federal there has been federal funding cuts and challenges
here in Louisiana. The governor, I think last summer cut
school lunch budget. For summer school lunch budget, I mean boom.
(21:14):
And there are a lot of underserved children in this committee.
So Isaac and Amanda Toops of tops Metery started a
program making the meals and corralling people and they start
seventy thousand this year for the summer school program because
otherwise these kids often as this is their meal, yeap.
So talk to us about the why behind, why you
(21:36):
decided to start it is as an initiative with an organization,
and where it has gone from here and where you're
taking it and also then how you're going back into
doing more in the global arena. But let's start with
no kid hungry.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Well, you know, one of the things that we thought
about a lot, and I would say for many years
because of Taste of the Nation and some of the
other things we've been speaking at about, you know, we
were honestly known more for the entrepreneurial ways in which
we generated revenues than what we actually did with them.
And at some point that got a little bit unsatisfying
(22:09):
because you know, we were always doing good things with
the money, but we were passing it on to other organizations,
granting it out. They were doing good things, but it
didn't have the power of everybody pulling in the same
direction to accomplish a really big goal. And we thought
about something that as a writer who writes on social
(22:29):
issues named Jonathan Cosel, and he always talks about picking
battles that are big enough to matter but small enough
to win and so we really asked ourselves, you know,
what would that be in our world? What's big enough
to matter but small enough to win? Because hunger, you know,
it exists internationally, it exists across all demographics and populations.
(22:49):
But we thought when it came to kids in the
United States who were hungry on a chronic basis, that
was big enough to matter and small enough to win,
and that it was in fact a solvable problem because
as we all know, we don't have shortages of food
in the United States, and we don't have shortages of
food programs, and so we started to look at programs
that were already existing but there were under enrolled or
(23:13):
there were barriers to participation, you know. Kind of the
best example is probably that twenty two million kids in
the country get a free or reduced price school lunch,
and all twenty two million are eligible for breakfast as well.
But when we started looking at this in twenty ten,
only nine million of the twenty two million we're getting breakfast.
(23:33):
And that's because you know, at lunch they're already there
breakfast they have to get to school earlier. There were
these kind of logistical barriers that really didn't make any sense.
Relative to the value of kids getting the meals, and
so we started to knock those down in different ways,
moved breakfast from the cafeteria to the classroom in thousands
of schools and school districts across the country, and again leveraged.
(23:54):
You know, the meals themselves are one hundred percent federally
reimbursed part of the school lunch program that was started
in nineteen forty six when generals and admirals came back
from World War Two and said to Congress and the
American people that our troops were not healthy and fit
and strong enough by the end of the war, so
we should start feeding kids in school. That's where this
really all began. So so we looked at it. We
(24:15):
realized that there was such leverage. If we could knock
down some of these barriers, these dollars that have bipartisan
support would flow, and we ended up having tremendous success
with that. Were not done yet, but I think we
see have a line of sight to getting to a
point in this country where we don't have kids who
(24:36):
are hungry. That may be poor, they still may have
other issues related to poverty, but they need not be hungry.
Speaker 8 (24:44):
Yeah, Bill, you were giving the statistic about the numbers
of kids who are eligible for lunch and also for breakfast,
but not getting at the eight or nine million that
we're not getting it out of the twenty and in
summer only three million of those twenty million were getting it.
So and that takes us into another whole level of
what Share Strength has been able to accomplish over the
(25:06):
last year or so with summer meals.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Once we're if.
Speaker 8 (25:08):
We're ready to talk about that, because that, to me
has been one of the biggest accomplishments that we've been
able to claim is being out front with other hunger groups,
but really in a leader ship role of getting summer
meals available in rural America for the first time without
having to eat and congregate, which has always been the policy,
(25:29):
but opening that up in rural America so kids can
pick up a meal or get them dropped off, and
that is to change the landscape. And I think of
thee I think we went from three million to thirteen million,
if that's right, Bill that are now getting summer meals
because of this legislation that the hunger community and share
Strength helps get past.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
It's really important, you know, we have a global audience.
So I think I just want to pause here and
say that you know that we may have viewers and
listeners who completely do not understand how children don't have
breakfast and lunch because it's not heard of in Italy
or France, and so, you know, but it is a
problem because you know, of poverty, because a lot of
the households are single mothers, there's an absent father. You
(26:15):
mentioned something very school starts earlier. Transportation getting to school
for a lot of these people is you know, you've
got to get on that bus early, so the meals
just may not be available due to limits of time, money,
the mom has to get to work, et cetera, and
as well as well as funding cuts, particularly in the
summer when they're not in school.
Speaker 9 (26:37):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
But those are manageable logistical challenges.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
You know.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
There's a congressman named Governor from Massachusetts that always says,
he always says, hunger is a political condition, you know,
and again it's not about shortages of food at least
in this country. Hunger in America as a political condition
when we have the political will, when we decide that
we want to kind of connect these dots and eliminate
these barriers.
Speaker 9 (27:00):
Kids can get fed and.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Everything else that you would hope what happened when they
get fed does happen. They attend school on a more
regular basis. Their grades are better, their disciplinary infractions are down,
their visits so the nurses office are down. Just you know,
it's it has a big ripple effect.
Speaker 6 (27:18):
To win win for everybody.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
It is. And they're healthier kids. You know, they're going
to grow up healthier, which is really really important. So
you brought something up I think is important when I
work with a major nonprofit. So the name it was
a big one. They you know, we always told how
much money and it's important. The p R machine was.
We raised all this money. We raised all this money,
and then somebody always would say, well, where's the money going?
(27:41):
How is it being used? And that has to be
a very succinct, very direct answer and response. So how
do you answer that to the people who say, okay,
you raise a million, you raise three million? How and
is the money allocated and funneled into the communities and
organizations that need it?
Speaker 9 (28:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Well, you know, the first thing we do is we
you know, try to get people to pay attention to
the impact that we're having, and people obviously want their
funds to be used efficiently and effectively, but efficiently and
effectively to a purpose, to a specific end goal or outcome.
And so you know, we know that we've added three
(28:23):
million kids to the school breakfast program. We know that,
for Debby's point, we've added ten million kids to summer meals.
These are big numbers. In fact, when we back them
all out, when we back out the number of meals
that we know kids have been able to receive with
the dollars we've spent against it, it turns out that
about one dollar unlocks about ten meals, and one dollar
(28:44):
doesn't pay for ten meals because we don't pay for food.
We do the kind of things we were describing earlier
in terms of getting schools to participate in the school
meals program and so forth.
Speaker 9 (28:53):
But there's a real obviously efficiency there.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
And a leverage there to one dollar unlocking ten meals,
and a lot of our funds are spent in grants
to community partners. I think of share Strength as almost
like a general contractor with a lot of subcontractors who
have the expertise on the ground in New Orleans, on
the ground in Philadelphia, on the ground in Omaha, Nebraska.
(29:18):
Organizations that are either working in the community. Sometimes they're
working with food banks and food pantries. Sometimes, more typically
in our case, they're working with school districts and making
sure the school districts have everything they need, all the
equipment they need. You know, we talked about the meals
being one hundred percent federally reimbursed, but if you add
three million kids to school breakfast, schools are going to
(29:38):
need more refrigeration, more transportation, more staffing. That's what share
Strengths dollars go to.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I don't think people realize how important transportation is to
this quot because so many people who will live in
poverty don't live in the somewhere in an inner city,
but a lot of them. We've traveled a lot to
rural areas and just.
Speaker 7 (30:01):
In terms of scale too, I mean, since twenty.
Speaker 8 (30:04):
Twenty, we've funded about three thousand organizations local, state, and nationals.
And it just gives you an idea of how many
organizations at every level. The SHAREFF strength is funny, about
a hundred million dollars went into three thousand nonprofits.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
That's the pandemic affect you. I mean iffected everybody. And
the first thing I'm thinking, I was just talking to
Drew new Porn, who's got a new book out and
you know, it killed his restaurant.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
He's an original Shriff Strength supporter from Way Way based,
like one of our very first in New York.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
His new book out is fabulous. Yeah, it's coming out
in a couple of weeks. He's going to be on
the show the twenty second. I called him yesterday just say, oh,
it just really hit home. He mentioned Sheriffs strengthen there
at the tasting domes.
Speaker 7 (30:54):
I gotta see it. That's great.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
So but but it made me think, oh my god.
You know, they were closed down, they lost everything and
they had to reopen and so much of what they
do in the restaurant world, and it related the suppliers,
you name it. They're large. Esse was sent to Hunger Relief.
A lot of their charo. So how did that impact
(31:18):
and how did you pivot to?
Speaker 9 (31:20):
Yeah, get through it. It really had a huge impact.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
It was in a way, it was a double hit
given some of the things that we've just spoken about. So,
you know, a lot of our revenue and the organization,
and our contributions are tied to the restaurant industry, and
all the restaurants either closed or had significant challenges of
their own, and our delivery system for so much of
what we do is the schools, and the schools were
all closed. So how do you get school meals to
(31:45):
kids when the schools are closed for months on end.
So it became a very big challenge, and we pivoted
in a couple of ways. One was that, I guess one,
you know, maybe a good thing that happened was people
became more aware of the hunger issue than they had before.
As jobs were lost and as businesses closed down. People
(32:07):
saw images in Atlanta and San Antonio and other places
of long lines of cars, sometimes a thousand cars lined
up at a food bank, and it gave people the
sense of, you know, a lot of people's lives are
pretty fragile economically. There are only maybe one step away
from needing food assistants for themselves. Sixty percent of all
the people that needed food assistants during the pandemic, it
(32:30):
was the first time in their entire lives that they'd
ever had to ask for.
Speaker 9 (32:34):
Help in that way.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
So it really created a new awareness of the hunger issue,
and people responded very, very generously. We had this very unexpected,
very large spike in revenues because people wanted to do
something that would help. The other thing that happened was
Congress passed a number of laws that we had been
(32:58):
asking for for a long time to make it more
efficient and more effective for us.
Speaker 9 (33:02):
To feed kids.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
There were all these regulations in place that just kind
of slowed everything down, and during the pandemic they waived
all of that. You know, some of them are kind
of arcane examples, so I'll war you with them, but
it enabled us to actually do a lot of the
things that we've been arguing for, and many of those
things stayed in place after the pandemic. So as terrible
(33:24):
as the pandemic was, it really created some energy around
this notion that you could actually solve the hunger problem.
Speaker 7 (33:33):
You know. It was so amazing though. I think about
the restaurants that were.
Speaker 8 (33:36):
Feeding people while they were going under as a restaurant,
I mean, they were still the most generous, hospitable, gracious,
helpful people you can imagine. It's really true. And we
actually did some granting to chefs around the country maybe
five or six. I can't remember all of them, but
in several markets there were chefs who were struggling, but
(33:59):
they wanted to feed their community. So we were giving
grants out to chefs who were staying open and paying
their staff so they could make food for the community.
And that was happening in New York, it was happening
in Connecticut, one in California, you know, a couple others
around the country.
Speaker 7 (34:15):
So, I mean, you know, as tough as it was.
Speaker 8 (34:17):
For the restaurants, they were like still stepping up, which
is just incredible.
Speaker 7 (34:21):
It says a lot about the industry.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
It's a wonderful industry to be in, and often they
get tapped out too much. I always felt like I
got to the point where I couldn't do another ask.
I had to pull back because I was feeling bad
because everybody was struggling up and down and up and down.
So we've been talking about the domestic front and the
(34:45):
progress being made, but there's always challenges. It still continues
because everything just seemed to be changing all the time.
Right now, what are you doing on the international front now?
Just to bring it full circle, Chares Strenks started because
there was a famine in Ethiopia. Here we are again.
(35:05):
There's I think I was researching famine to understand what
a famine was, because I don't think a lot of
people understand what a famine is. And there's criteria for
a famine. And I know that we have now Gaza
has now reached famine and Sudan has a famine. A
lot of people turn it off. Sadly. There's a lot
of people who are cynical, who say, I can't do
(35:26):
anything about it. It's Africa, I can't deal with it.
Speaker 7 (35:28):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
There's unfortunately a lot of people who say it's not
in my backyard. I can't deal with it. What do
you want to say to them? And what are you
doing on the international scale? Now? That is different and
going forward you're looking at.
Speaker 8 (35:43):
Yeah, well, I'm glad you raised the Gaza crisis because
it's you know, we're all looking at it every day
and it's just so heartbreaking. You know, we don't really
do a lot of emergency funding anymore. Internationally. We'll get
into one that we are working on. But in God,
there's two organizations that are doing great work and I'll
just who they are.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
So our listeners your listeners can can hear.
Speaker 8 (36:07):
One is World Central Kitchen who's on the ground there
and I'm sure you know some days getting through and
some not, but they are they are able to get
emergency relive through. And the other is one that we
just became aware of called Odesia ed E s i
A and they are providing emergency the Plumpy Knight supplement
(36:28):
uh and sending it into Africa, actually sending into sixty
countries including Gaza, and it's a life saving and prevention
product uh, you know plumpy knut that they're manufacturing in
the United.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
States and shipping over.
Speaker 8 (36:42):
So those are two organizations that are that are getting
through in Gaza and in other countries where there is
famine and hunger and starvation. So we have been looking
at where we can, you know, instead of only granting
a small amount of money, which is really our demands
domestically are such that we can't give that much internationally,
(37:04):
but we've always given a little bit internationally. So we
just started to think about are there other things we
can do to increase the revenue and increase the impact
that we're having internationally, And so we can kind of
land it on this idea of like what can we
transfer from our work that works. Are there things in
the culinary industry that could work in another country. So
we ended up in India for a lot of reasons
(37:26):
that so far making a lot of sense. I'm headed
for my eighth trip on Saturday back to India where
I'm actually speaking to a big hospitality conference in Goa,
and it'll be my first time to find a lot
of restaurant tourist which would be great because what we're
doing is similar to what we've done here, where we're
doing taste events and dinners and finding ways for the
culinary industry to step up, make a difference, collaborate with
(37:51):
each other, learn from each other, raise money and awareness
for school meals. In India, their programs are very different
from ours that they don't have kitchens in their schools
as much as they have big community kitchens that service
the school district. Right so as many as you know,
we help build a kitchen in Nagpor, which is a
(38:12):
city in Maharashtra, same state as Mumbai, Bombay, and that.
Speaker 7 (38:18):
Feeds twenty thousand kids.
Speaker 8 (38:20):
But we raise enough money to open it and start
serving in nagpoor. So they have these wonderful community kitchens
that crank out twenty thirty forty fifty thousand meals a
day and deliver them into the school system and the
kids have and with no packaging, which is unbelievable, never
seething like it, no packaging at all, steal vats.
Speaker 7 (38:39):
They go back and they steam clean them and then
start working.
Speaker 8 (38:44):
They work twenty it's a twenty four hour, twenty four
hour you know, work process.
Speaker 7 (38:49):
And then the kids have like their bowls and their forks.
Speaker 8 (38:51):
And their spoons and those get washed, you know, and
they get brought back out the next day.
Speaker 7 (38:56):
And that's how a lot of kids are fed in India.
There's lots of kids.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
I mean, there's eighty.
Speaker 8 (39:02):
Eight million or so, there's one hundred and forty million
who are eligible for a school meal in public school
and there's like eighty eight million that are not getting
regular daily nutritious meals. And so our work there kind
of just the playbook of Shriff Strength and going back
to how we started here in getting chefs involved and
just like you know, Alice Waters put us in touch
(39:24):
with chefs and we've got Steven Piles in Dallas and
Susan Spicer and New Orleans and you know Alan Custer
and Miami.
Speaker 7 (39:29):
Exact same thing is happening in India.
Speaker 8 (39:31):
You know, we're working with chefs in Mumbai and Delhi
and Calcutta and Bangalore and Goa.
Speaker 7 (39:38):
Because this this notion of and.
Speaker 8 (39:41):
I think particularly with chefs, you know, I mean, yes,
everybody has a strength to share, but when you tell
a chef.
Speaker 7 (39:45):
That they they can play a role on hunger, they're.
Speaker 8 (39:48):
Going to step up and so it's resonated with them
exactly the way it's resonated here. And so that's what
we're doing in India is thinking through how do we
transfer our is what has been s useful here. It
will be a little bit different, different culture, different business,
different industry, different you know, different everything, different economy. But
(40:08):
but that that instinct first you have to to do
something with kids is very much alive. And so building
an astronomer pipeline for school meals is what.
Speaker 7 (40:19):
We're what we're looking at right now, and.
Speaker 8 (40:21):
Adding a million kids in the next couple of years
to the school program.
Speaker 7 (40:24):
And then and then thinking about where else that could work.
Speaker 6 (40:28):
Very impressive.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
That's what I've been thinking about as you've been talking,
because it's it's great create the playbook and take the
playbook those we're much like a franchise.
Speaker 8 (40:36):
Yeah, and the playbook is foundational, right, it's not exact.
I mean everything you have to you know, what I
struggle with is knowing what I know, which is a
lot from share of strength, I mean forty years here,
and understanding what works with what I don't know, which
is a lot that I don't know. You know, in India,
so there's that constant, uh, you know, push pool.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
And also adapting to the local culture because the variable
there are a lot of variables, cultural variables involved and
what you can't eat don't eat, and treatment of women
for example. I mean it's it's.
Speaker 8 (41:10):
Even on a less serious note than that. But at
our food and wine events, like you know, a lot
of places where we can't even drink alcohol because they're
very religious and Hindu, and yeah there's alcohol out and
stuff like that.
Speaker 7 (41:23):
But yeah, there's there's adjustments to be made.
Speaker 8 (41:25):
But again that that instinct to serve and that instinct
to have food at the center of that is very strong.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Have you had as much ground swallow support from the
wine and spiritus industry as you have from the restaurant industry.
Speaker 8 (41:41):
I mean, yes, we've had a great response, but I
think dollar for dollar wouldn't match the restaurant contribution, which
I have somewhere around And it's just like the way
I add it up in my head when I think
of all the things we've done, somewhere around five hundred
and six hundred million dollars from the restaurant follow it from.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
All of our different campaigns over the years.
Speaker 8 (42:04):
I mean, because you know, as Billy said, like the
first the first five years we weren't raising that much,
but in the last thirty to thirty five years were
the bulk of the money, and really the last twenty
i'd say since the launch of the note, at every
campaign where we significantly increased our exposure, our brand strength,
and our revenue.
Speaker 9 (42:22):
We just have to stick around for the next thirty years.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Now, well, let's talk about that. Are you what is
in your crystal ball and each of you to talk
about that?
Speaker 4 (42:31):
Well, you know, I think one of the things that
we've learned we knew this early on in a way.
We had a tagline in the early days of Share
of Strength that said, it takes more than food to
fight hunger, and the point of it was that hunger
is really a symptom of a set of deeper problems.
It's a problem in and of itself, and we can
address it, but it's also a symptom of poverty and
(42:53):
lack of opportunity, and so to start to think about
how to get to the root causes of kids and
families experience hunger, and the root causes of why we've
had poverty in this country for so long. It has
gotten better, no doubt about it, but it still exists,
and it's more complicated than getting kids to school on
time or getting breakfast served in a classroom. Those are
(43:16):
kind of logistical challenges, but it's important for us to
turn our attention to it.
Speaker 9 (43:23):
So I think.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
That he's described in terms of our international opportunities and
ambitions and what I'm describing in terms of organizations starting
to think about how do you get to some of
the root causes. We're currently focused on a cohort of
single moms. About sixty percent of the kids in the
United States who live in poverty live in families households
(43:45):
by single moms, so they have a whole set of
needs of their own that we're trying to think through
how to address mostly by going into communities and listening
to them and partnering with them. But I think that
is kind of the next evolution of what we're about,
and it will always be in service of and nick
hunger in this country. But we can't ender and hunger
(44:08):
only with food. We're going to have to get to
some of these other issues.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah, and single mothers do have incredible challenge. The cost
of child care is up. So that's one of the
biggest problems everywhere is where do you you know, if
they're not in school and if you've got a young child,
what do you do? It's easier to stay home and
draw unemployment.
Speaker 9 (44:28):
Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
Speaker 6 (44:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Yeah, And unfortunately we have snap programs and ABT to help.
But you know, we don't know, if you know, we
never know in the crystal ball what's going to be
cut and what's going.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
To be funded, right, I mean there has been a
strong bipartisan My sister has come in here to visit
with us.
Speaker 7 (44:48):
My computer totally died.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
I am so sorry. So now well now you're together.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
That's so nice. Lang that technology.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
So you know, this is a you know, kind of
new territory for us and we have a lot to
learn in it, but you know, there has been the
good thing and we've just touched on this, but we
haven't really talked about it. We're obviously living through a
difficult time politically in terms of the cuts that some
of these programs will experience, but there has been a
kind of a core of bipartisanship that's existed around these
(45:23):
programs for a long time. So we'll have to deal
with cuts to SNAP and so forth, but I don't
think we're going to you know, when you think of
like what's going on internationally with USAI D right, that
was an existential you know, disaster for USAID.
Speaker 9 (45:37):
It really doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 4 (45:40):
We're not going to face that type of existential disaster
because we do have bipartisan support and because kids.
Speaker 9 (45:45):
Are a common ground.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
I think for a lot of Americans to rally around,
you know, many of us just have, you know, some
sense of wanting to protect children, and I think that'll
service well.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Well, I'm a big believer, and you may not like
what's happening, and we certainly don't. We don't want to
see federal funding cut for a lot of things that
we truly believe in, whether it's hunger relief and helping people,
the arts, you name it. But if you're not happy,
don't don't go hide about it, go say I want
to do something. Because the pendulum will switch. It's not forever,
so you just got to figure out how to deal
(46:22):
with it now and get stronger groundworks so that you
can move forward.
Speaker 8 (46:29):
I was going to I was going to say, I
have a plug for another future activity if you want
to hear it.
Speaker 7 (46:33):
Yes, So twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 8 (46:37):
The Los Angeles Olympics, we're planning to bring in fifty
the best chefs from around the world to do a
series of culinary events to raise money for world hunger
and stuff from the you know, for no kid hungry,
but to focus on not just the US but around
the globe and bringing in chefs from all over the country.
We'll do a grand tasting, we'll do private dinners, maybe
(46:57):
a chef competition, all kinds of stuff. So that that's
that's gonna be a fun one and that's you know,
that'll be here before we know it.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Well, having give me this our background, that is the
most exciting thing we've we've heard. I think that's just great.
You're hoping to do that in the Milan. I've been
trying to do that in Milan, but it's hard to cout.
You know, we don't speak Italian. But Los Angeles.
Speaker 8 (47:19):
Are you going to do for the for the Winter Olympics,
right for the Yeah, for twenty six you're looking at it.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah, yeah, but we haven't made much in roads getting
connections there.
Speaker 9 (47:30):
So we've got we've got to up you into this.
Speaker 7 (47:32):
Yeah, we'll rope you out.
Speaker 4 (47:33):
But you know, the other thing you just said was
so important because it is important for people to lift
up their their voices and to be heard on these issues.
And I think every time somebody does, it gives a
little bit more permission and a little bit more courage
to the next person to to say something as well.
And you know, in the categories of sharing strength, as
you said at the beginning, Melanie, not everybody can write
(47:54):
a big check for a gala, but everybody could write
a letter to the editor. Everybody could write to their
members of Congress, or meet with their governor, or get
involved with their school district. And those things add up
to a real critical massive of people saying, you know,
we're going to find ways to feed kids.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
If you don't have to give money, you can give time,
you can give intelligence or write the letter.
Speaker 7 (48:15):
Just expertise. I'm networking.
Speaker 8 (48:17):
You know, you have a lot of people have a
lot of expertise to share, so you can tap into
that as well.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Yeah, saying silent doesn't make Silence doesn't make progress. Listening
is good, speaking out is good. But doing nothing and
just saying oh, it's not it's not my problem. It
is everybody's problem because it is a civilization and it's
the future. I think we think what you're doing is awesome.
I mean, we've been long time supporters. I'm very excited
(48:43):
about the Los Angeles Olympic thing because that sounds like
a whole other level of excitement. We've got to get
something done in New Orleans. I mean, we have a
lot of global contacts around the world because we do
so much in the wine. That's why ask you about wine,
and hopefully our audience who we have, particularly in Europe,
we'll see this and understand that the opportunities are there
(49:04):
to do something in their countries as well. I mean
the fact you're doing this in India, which is not
an easy country, amazing.
Speaker 9 (49:11):
Yeah, yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 7 (49:13):
Yeah, it's so nice to be reconnected with those of us. Wow.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, it's been great. Thank you for responding to the email.
So let's wrap this up by saying where our listeners
can find and follow you, and one final wonderful inspiration
from you about what you're doing.
Speaker 9 (49:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:33):
Well, you know, like most organizations, our website is a
good place to start. No Kid Hungry dot org. With
two websites, No kid Hungry dot org and Share our
Strength dot org, and they connect to each other. There
you find a full kind of panoply of the things
we're involved in, the program activities, the fundraising activities, ways
that you can make a difference. And I think people,
(49:55):
you know a lot of people learn about us that way,
and we'll be very sponsor to anybody that reaches out.
And I think, you know, the thing that I think
for Debbie and myself let to w speak for herself,
but one of the things that's been so sustaining is
this notion of how in terms of like what's inspiring
for me, Melanie, is this notion that share our strength,
(50:18):
sharing strength can be so empowering. You know, we constantly
hear from chef's restauranteurs and others. You know, one of
the kind of the common refrains is I didn't realize
I could make a difference, you know, just by being
a chef. And we think, well, like, just by being
a chef, that's a really big deal in our world.
You know, there's nothing just about that. You know, these
are heroes to us. But you know, at the end
(50:39):
of the day, more people have to feel empowered to
be able to make a difference in their community and
to the extent that we can be the vehicle for that.
You know, every time it happens with somebody, and it
happens pretty frequently now as we've grown, I get kind
of reinspired to kind of steap that going, you.
Speaker 6 (50:57):
Know, and when you feed kids, you feed the future.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Yeah, well I just got to notice this time it's time.
So we're gonna have to wrap this up. We've been talking.
Thank you for your time and your inspiration and all
you do. We're inspired and we're all about eat, drink, explore,
inspire here. So you've been listening to The Connected Table
Live with Melanie Young and David Ransom. Our guests have
(51:22):
been Billy Sure and Debbie Sure, the co founders of
Share Our Strength and their initiative called No Kid Hungry.
You can go to Share our Strength dot org no
Kid Hungry dot org to learn more and we always
encourage you to stay and say she'll be curious. But
also it's you know, instead of just opening your mouth
and feeding yourself, open your mouth and speak out if
(51:42):
you want to make a difference. Thank you, see great
to see you.
Speaker 7 (52:00):
S
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
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comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you
(00:20):
for choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts, Melanie
Young and David Ransom. You're insatiably curious culinary couple. We
travel the world to bring you the amazing people, the
thought leaders and legacies and movers and shakers who shape
the world of food, wine and hospitality, and we bring
them their stories you and want you to get involved
(01:01):
and expand your horizons and become active and support this
amazing industry. With this show, We're launching a new series
in the Connected Tape of Life called our Philanthropy Series,
and we are going to be interviewing leading philanthropists who
were really utilizing their connections and their strengths to make
an impact, and goodness knows we need that now with
(01:23):
so many things happening in the world. So this is
an amazing charity we're going to be talking about. It
celebrates forty years. So we're going to take you back
to when it started. Picture this year was nineteen eighty four.
I don't know about you, David, but I was thinking,
dreaming of coming to New York. There was a famine
raging in Ethiopia. You may know that. That's when they
(01:43):
did We Are the World. Bill Shore had been working
as chiefa staff for Gary Hart, who had an unsuccessful
campaign for president. After the campaign's over, he was in
that what am I going to do with the rest
of my life phase? Moved by the news about the famine,
he decided he was going to start a nonprofit And
now that is not easy to do, not at all,
(02:05):
not at all, And he tapped someone he cares about
that he trusts his sister, Debbie, and Bill and Debbie
Shore with guts, grit and about two thousand dollars in cash,
probably from a credit card a ATM. I'm not sure
they'll tell us. They create an organization called Share as
Strength Sharef's Strength has become a major leader in hunger
(02:26):
relief and fighting poverty, both on the global and national front.
You're talking over one billion dollars raised to provide hunger relief,
mobilizing many leaders in all sorts of cross industries, including
some very big, bold face names. And on the domestic front,
the campaign called No Kid Hungry has helped to provide
(02:49):
through over three hundred and seventy four million meals to
school kids who otherwise may not have that nutrition that
they need for the day because one in five children,
one in five children still are facing in food in security.
So the thing is, we're going to celebrate all the
successes that Share of Strength has done through its initiatives
(03:12):
and talk about how it started with Billy and Debbie
Shore who join us today, and we're going to talk
about the future as well, because we all know there's
a famine in Gaza, there's a famine in Sudan. Poverty
and hunger is pervasive, and we are the greatest country
in the world. I hope everybody still thinks that. And
as Bill has said, you can get food to people,
(03:34):
it's just you've got to have the procedures and mechanisms
in place. So we'd like to welcome to our show
as the first of our philanthropy series, Billy and Debbie Shore,
founders of Share Our Strength, Welcome.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Thanks you guys.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
We're honored to be among the first in this new series,
and I'm so glad you're doing it well.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
It's been something I've we've been dreaming about and we're
always trying to push the envelope further to think bigger
and broad and gosh, I personally have known your work
and been involved with it raising money through my work
in New York doing major events and through the Taste
of the Nation, which is really one of the great
fundraisers of all times.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
Sure is, Melanie, and I've actually actually been involved participating
in the events over the years, back in the day
when my family poured our family's wine at Share our
Strength Tastes of the Nation in New York, and so
it was one of my favorite events to attend and
participate in every year back in the days that we did.
Speaker 6 (04:31):
And so it's lovely to have you folks on.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So your brother and sister, you've been working together for
a long time. Her husband and wife, we've been working
together twenty years. We know it could be challenging. Where
did y'all grow up? Talk to us about, you know,
little Debbie and little Billy and what your interests were.
Speaker 7 (04:50):
Should have brought our baby pictures. We grew up in Pittsburgh.
We grew up in this Jewish community called Scroll Hill,
and we went to public school, and yeah, that's where
we grew up.
Speaker 8 (05:01):
And our father was a lawyer and a real public servant.
Mom was mostly a stay at home mom worked kind
of you know, on and off, but our dad was
like very engaged in community service and local politics, which
is probably where we where we got our sense for
politics and community work.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Yeah, our father was actually the district administrative assistant and
campaign manager for a congressman from Pittsburgh who served in
Congress for twenty two years. Our dad was with them
the entire time, and so our dinner table conversation was
always about what was going on in those days. It
was civil rights at Vietnam and then Watergate, but it
was a very political.
Speaker 9 (05:41):
Conversion health.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So that was inspired. I know, Billy, you went into
public service, Debbie, what did you go into it? Tell
us a little bit more about your path.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
Yeah, no, you know, so I I.
Speaker 8 (05:54):
Studied philosophy and literature, but I also worked on the
hard campaign in the first camp and the second campaign.
Started out as a volunteer and then and then got
on board. So I think so many I don't know
if Billy would say the same, he probably would, but
so many of the lessons that we got growing up
were you know, kind of subconscious, right, Like I weren't
really aware of all of the opportunities that you could
(06:15):
do in the country and in the community.
Speaker 7 (06:17):
But as Billy said, listening to our dad.
Speaker 8 (06:19):
And our mom and the neighbors would come over and
talk about politics, and you know, all that really makes
an impact on you.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Have an impact on you, whether you realize it or not.
Speaker 8 (06:27):
And so like the Gary Hart campaign, the lessons we
took from that campaign, and between that and growing up
in a political household, I think we just had a
lot of gems and a lot of.
Speaker 7 (06:38):
Wisdom when we started the organization.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Well, certainly as a calling of service. I've always wanted
to work on a political campaign. I've achieved a lot
in my life and I was ready to do it
with Kamala Harris, but we were still adapting moving to
new Orleans, but hopefully in the future because you can
always do it at every stage and age of your life. So,
you know a lot of people say, I want to
(07:01):
do something, I would love to be nonprofit is my mother.
My mother was very involved in the nonprofit world, and
his mother and our both of our late mothers instilled
service into everything we do. And I think every single
program that I did in New York, with multi chef
tasting events like the Taste of the Nation, I worked
with so many nonprofits. Everything had to have a purpose
(07:23):
and didn't make a difference. It could not just be
for profit. And I'm still that way. This show is
like that too. It's very purposeful. So you know a
lot of people say let's do something. I want to
make a difference, but they don't necessarily act on it
because it is a long, hard road. How did you
get started?
Speaker 7 (07:45):
You you?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Bill, I referenced, you had finished the campaign, so the
hard campaign's over. You're figuring out what you want to
do next. You have this idea, how did you get
that started and build it? Back when? Because I just
heard the John Grisha interview, there was no inn there
was no modern technology.
Speaker 9 (08:05):
Yeah, well you.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Know, w said campaigns are fun, and when the campaign ended,
I think we wanted to continue to not just have
the fun, but have the you know, the kind of
the purpose driven nature of it, the energy behind it.
And particularly I think we both felt that we had
left the campaign with some very specific skills that we'd developed,
or at least some experiences that we've been exposed to.
(08:27):
In a political campaign, you have to know a little
bit about fundraising, you have to know a little bit
about the media, you have to know a little bit
about organizing and community organizing. And as the Ethiopian famine
in nineteen eighty four, which was kind of the catalyst
for us, took hold, we started to think about can
we bring some of these skills to an issue like this?
(08:49):
And you know, campaigns are so intense for such a
long period of time and then they just end. You
either win or you lose, and in our case, we lost,
and so your face with this kind of you know,
literally an existential question what are we going to do
with ourselves? And we wanted to do something that continued
to feel meaningful and purposeful. But the you know, the
lessons from the campaign we really applied very directly to
(09:13):
starting share our strength. And the only other thing I
would say about it is, you know, now forty years in.
Speaker 9 (09:18):
I I'm sure w has as well.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
I have lots of folks that come to us with
ideas to start things, and they don't know if they
should hire a consultant or do a business plan, or
do a you know, a kind of an analysis of
the competitive landscape. And my answer is always the same,
if if you want to do it, put a sign
on the door. It's to say you're starting, start to
reach out to people and make it happen.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (09:43):
I mean, we're we're kind of brutal on this point
because I mean that's how we started.
Speaker 7 (09:48):
But but and I would say that's even how we.
Speaker 8 (09:51):
Start some of our more creative platforms for fundraising without
a lot of you know, research. But but but I
also feel like, you know, you do need a few
people that say, like I think you're onto something. You know,
you do need some validation, which we got early on
in the concept of Share of Strength, which was, you know,
(10:11):
a very simple concept at the time.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I don't know how much you remember about this, Melanie,
but when.
Speaker 8 (10:15):
We started the organization the idea was to we were
going to put our logo on windows, restaurant windows and
ask the restaurant or to make a contribution to hunger,
and it would sort of serve as a good housekeeping
seal where people would, you know, our our very naive
idea was that people would walk by the restaurant and say, oh,
this this restaurants you know, involved in feeding hungry kids,
(10:36):
and so we're going to you know, we're going to
patronize it.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
So we did that for a long time.
Speaker 8 (10:40):
I mean that was really kind of the idea, was
that we would get restaurants involved that way. But as
it evolved and as we you know, if you're if
you're open, if you're truly open to hearing ideas, if
you're truly open to trying things.
Speaker 7 (10:53):
You know, then you won't stick to your knitting, you'll
like try new things.
Speaker 8 (10:56):
And so Taste the Nation was a departure from the
original idea, but one that made a lot of sense.
And you know, the other thing I just say when
we started the organization that I always talk about as
the three kind of core philosophies that we had almost immediately, Billy,
I feel like from the very beginning, we believed that
(11:17):
everybody has his strength to share in the fight against hunger.
That was like even before we named it, that that
was the idea that everybody has his strength to share.
We wanted restaurants to be our first line of defense
because they feed people for a living, and we believed
then and it's true today, that they would it would
resonate with them, hunger would resonate with them, and that
they would act on I.
Speaker 7 (11:37):
Don't think we realized how very special.
Speaker 8 (11:42):
And different and unique those are the same thing, but
how unique restaurant tours, restaurant tours really are when it
comes to community activism. They're really in a classes their own.
And then, third, we wanted to create what we consider
new revenue, revenue that's not currently in the pipe line,
So we didn't want to compete with food banks and
(12:02):
other hunger groups. We wanted to create new money, which
case the Nation was a new novel idea at the time.
So those three things were kind of all simultaneously part
of that that core belief when we started the organization,
and they've served us really well and there's still I
think all three of those are still very much in play, and.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
I want to make sure we thank both of you
for getting involved as early as you did the way
you described, because you got involved with us when you
know you knew us, a chance on us, and it
made a big difference.
Speaker 9 (12:30):
It was really formative. So thank you.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Well.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
I just remember those events were a lot of fun
and a lot of good food and a lot of
good wine was served. And I actually still have an
umbrella that was given up by Tattenture Champagne at one
of the events and I still have the umbrella to
this day and I still use it.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I love that, you know, hunger relief is is important
and as I said, pervasive. You know, as this your
organization has grown. Forty years is a long time. Oh gosh,
I think about all the things that have chance to
hire you forty years. Oh my god, you got started,
(13:08):
you launched. I loved in the interview I just heard
with John Grisham. I'm visiting no, because I was there
with starting a business at the found the safe time.
There was just the phone book and the phone and
there wasn't you know social media. Think you wrote Alice
Waters because you looked people up and as you were talking,
(13:30):
I thought of how I was doing that for a
lot of the things I was doing whether it's James
Spirit Awards or some of the nine thousand fund raisers
I was doing. But you have to scale also too,
because nonprofit has still has to everyone like a business
at some point, How did you put the checks and
balances in place, which are so critical with a nonprofit
(13:51):
for reporting purposes, to be able to scale it beyond
what you were doing?
Speaker 4 (14:00):
Now you go ahead, Well, you know, first of all,
we had we had time to put the checks and
balances in place because we grew very slow, So not
all forty years have been like the last thirty five
or so. The early days were tough sledding, and we
looked for ways to you know, we looked for kind
of today we would call them influencers. That would be
(14:21):
you know, kind of force multipliers for what we did.
One of our lessons in Gary Heart's presidential campaign when
he ran in nineteen eighty four in the New Hampshire primary,
was very critical to you know, to going on for
the rest of the campaign. He ended up winning that primary,
but he kept telling me, and I didn't know as
nearly as much about politics as he did that you know,
(14:43):
it was a campaign for twenty people and if we
got the right twenty people to be for us. Then
they would influence the next twenty and the next twenty
and so forth, and we would win the primary. And
we took that very very literally, and it turned out
to be correct. And so when we started share our strength,
it took us a little while to remember that lesson,
but once we did, you know, we started to reach
(15:04):
out very selectively to folks, you know, like I think
Alice Waters was our first contributor, or one of our
first contributors, and then we asked her to reach out
to others on our behalf, and that started to kind
of pick up some steam for us. But in the
in the very early days, you know, when you talk
about pre internet, you know, you literally had to crank
letters out one at a time.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
It was pre.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Internet, but there was a the Apple Macintosh had just
been invented, and Steve Rosniak, who invented it, was a
Gary Hert supporter, and Debbie and I called him up
and asked him if he would donate a mac and
a printer.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
They printed out letters like once every six minutes in
those days, but it was really better than us typing
them ourselves.
Speaker 9 (15:46):
So that's that kind of got us started.
Speaker 8 (15:50):
You know, as you were talking, Billy, I was thinking
back to our those were crazy early days. But our
our our logo you know, that used to just be
called SOS back in the early days, and we just
we used a stencil, you know, and colored it in
and had it printed.
Speaker 7 (16:07):
That was our logo and we just had a typewriter.
Speaker 8 (16:10):
So it was yeah, it didn't it didn't feel it
didn't feel that hard. At the time, it felt like
we were exactly where we should have been. But when
you look back, it was obviously very hard and very slow.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah. You know, sometimes you think businesses and nonprofits having
a lot easier now, and it's easier to raise the
money because you've got social media. However, however, raising money
is still hard, particularly in tough economic times. And you
did I think you've you you have done a great
job creating partnerships. You created what we call the early influencers.
(16:46):
The chefs were your early influencers before the word influencer
was a word. But you also worked with actors like
Jeff Broaches and a referenced John Grisham. You have Pete,
You've you've harnessed the influential power and connections of people,
which is really important to do when you're working on
a cause admission. Give us an example some other things
(17:09):
besides tastes of the nation you're doing.
Speaker 8 (17:13):
Well, So a chef's cycle that a lot of the
things we're doing still involved chefs, because even though we
kind of had our first hundred or first two hundred,
were now probably you know, closer to twenty five or
thirty thousand restaurants at every level at the fine dining level,
which kind of took precedence for our first twenty years
(17:34):
or so, but also multi unit restaurants, casual dining, train chains,
quick service. We have programs now for every level of restaurant,
which has changed the landscape for us. We always knew
we needed to do that, we just didn't have the
programs or ideas in place, but now we do.
Speaker 7 (17:51):
But yeah, chef cycle that Billy just mentioned is a
great program.
Speaker 8 (17:55):
We just had our tenth anniversary this last year in
in Oregon, and it's what it sounds like. It's chef's
riding cycling for miles and miles and miles about the first,
you know, three hundred miles. We've dropped it down to
two hundred miles, but chefs ride one hundred miles a
day for two or three days.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
And what goes into the training over months.
Speaker 8 (18:17):
Whether you're a cycle you know, whether you're a training
cyclist or not, you still have to train and it's
really a challenge. So, you know, we always say it's blood,
sweat and tears, and it literally is blood, sweat and tears.
But we brought together a couple hundred chefs and they
rode in a beautiful place. We raised a million dollars
last year. We're trying to double it for next year.
(18:38):
Billy rides, which is amazing. I've never been on a bike,
and it was my idea to start this, so I'm
getting more and more agree from it every year from
the chefs. But yeah, I've never been on a bike
in my life, but I had this idea that it
would be a great way because I knew some chefs
who cycled and I thought that could be a new
and you know, the bonding that takes place, the camaraderie,
(18:59):
the relationships we've had, you know, marriages come out of it,
We've had business partnerships come out of it. It's a
very intense, fun fulfilling, challenging, emotional experience.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
It really is. You guys should join us next year.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
I b I bike almost every morning, about five days
a week.
Speaker 6 (19:17):
I'm on the bike.
Speaker 8 (19:17):
Will my my, I'm that you're a cyclist.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
I'm an I don't. I don't do one hundred miles
a day. I will tell you that.
Speaker 7 (19:26):
I don't. You know did it?
Speaker 6 (19:28):
You can anywhere.
Speaker 9 (19:32):
I anybody can do it.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I saw that on social media and that's when I said, Okay,
I'm reaching out.
Speaker 7 (19:37):
You know.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
I think they're a great a great vehicle to get
people together to because my brother did a when he
lived in New Hampshire.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
He did a big bike ride with mc Dreamy whatever.
That actor's name was the Dempty Challenge.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, the Dempty Challenge.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
So he did the Dempty Challenge for about ten years
and rode with Patrick Dempsey every.
Speaker 8 (19:53):
Day with us. We'll have some We had Pink ride
with us one year, really fun.
Speaker 6 (20:01):
She's great from she's from Pennsylvania also.
Speaker 9 (20:04):
Right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
So it just shows you it's not just you know,
the chefs, it's everybody can get involved. I think that's
really important for this show to let anyone can get
involved with share a strength and there's a lot of
different programs to do it because a lot of people
will say, oh no, I can't do that, and you
know it, for some people it is hard to write
the big check to go to the gaula. So that's
(20:29):
why it's important to have plenty of other options as well.
Do this now. In twenty ten, Share Strength started an
initiative part of the organization called No Kid Hungry Campaign,
which has had it has its legs, its own legs,
as we say, and the goal here is to focus
(20:51):
on ending childhood hunger, which I references one in five children.
Over thirteen million kids still face food and security here
in Louisiana. It's all a political problem, and you know
we're going to get a politics, but we know that
many federal there has been federal funding cuts and challenges
here in Louisiana. The governor, I think last summer cut
school lunch budget. For summer school lunch budget, I mean boom.
(21:14):
And there are a lot of underserved children in this committee.
So Isaac and Amanda Toops of tops Metery started a
program making the meals and corralling people and they start
seventy thousand this year for the summer school program because
otherwise these kids often as this is their meal, yeap.
So talk to us about the why behind, why you
(21:36):
decided to start it is as an initiative with an organization,
and where it has gone from here and where you're
taking it and also then how you're going back into
doing more in the global arena. But let's start with
no kid hungry.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Well, you know, one of the things that we thought
about a lot, and I would say for many years
because of Taste of the Nation and some of the
other things we've been speaking at about, you know, we
were honestly known more for the entrepreneurial ways in which
we generated revenues than what we actually did with them.
And at some point that got a little bit unsatisfying
(22:09):
because you know, we were always doing good things with
the money, but we were passing it on to other organizations,
granting it out. They were doing good things, but it
didn't have the power of everybody pulling in the same
direction to accomplish a really big goal. And we thought
about something that as a writer who writes on social
(22:29):
issues named Jonathan Cosel, and he always talks about picking
battles that are big enough to matter but small enough
to win and so we really asked ourselves, you know,
what would that be in our world? What's big enough
to matter but small enough to win? Because hunger, you know,
it exists internationally, it exists across all demographics and populations.
(22:49):
But we thought when it came to kids in the
United States who were hungry on a chronic basis, that
was big enough to matter and small enough to win,
and that it was in fact a solvable problem because
as we all know, we don't have shortages of food
in the United States, and we don't have shortages of
food programs, and so we started to look at programs
that were already existing but there were under enrolled or
(23:13):
there were barriers to participation, you know. Kind of the
best example is probably that twenty two million kids in
the country get a free or reduced price school lunch,
and all twenty two million are eligible for breakfast as well.
But when we started looking at this in twenty ten,
only nine million of the twenty two million we're getting breakfast.
(23:33):
And that's because you know, at lunch they're already there
breakfast they have to get to school earlier. There were
these kind of logistical barriers that really didn't make any sense.
Relative to the value of kids getting the meals, and
so we started to knock those down in different ways,
moved breakfast from the cafeteria to the classroom in thousands
of schools and school districts across the country, and again leveraged.
(23:54):
You know, the meals themselves are one hundred percent federally
reimbursed part of the school lunch program that was started
in nineteen forty six when generals and admirals came back
from World War Two and said to Congress and the
American people that our troops were not healthy and fit
and strong enough by the end of the war, so
we should start feeding kids in school. That's where this
really all began. So so we looked at it. We
(24:15):
realized that there was such leverage. If we could knock
down some of these barriers, these dollars that have bipartisan
support would flow, and we ended up having tremendous success
with that. Were not done yet, but I think we
see have a line of sight to getting to a
point in this country where we don't have kids who
(24:36):
are hungry. That may be poor, they still may have
other issues related to poverty, but they need not be hungry.
Speaker 8 (24:44):
Yeah, Bill, you were giving the statistic about the numbers
of kids who are eligible for lunch and also for breakfast,
but not getting at the eight or nine million that
we're not getting it out of the twenty and in
summer only three million of those twenty million were getting it.
So and that takes us into another whole level of
what Share Strength has been able to accomplish over the
(25:06):
last year or so with summer meals.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Once we're if.
Speaker 8 (25:08):
We're ready to talk about that, because that, to me
has been one of the biggest accomplishments that we've been
able to claim is being out front with other hunger groups,
but really in a leader ship role of getting summer
meals available in rural America for the first time without
having to eat and congregate, which has always been the policy,
(25:29):
but opening that up in rural America so kids can
pick up a meal or get them dropped off, and
that is to change the landscape. And I think of
thee I think we went from three million to thirteen million,
if that's right, Bill that are now getting summer meals
because of this legislation that the hunger community and share
Strength helps get past.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
It's really important, you know, we have a global audience.
So I think I just want to pause here and
say that you know that we may have viewers and
listeners who completely do not understand how children don't have
breakfast and lunch because it's not heard of in Italy
or France, and so, you know, but it is a
problem because you know, of poverty, because a lot of
the households are single mothers, there's an absent father. You
(26:15):
mentioned something very school starts earlier. Transportation getting to school
for a lot of these people is you know, you've
got to get on that bus early, so the meals
just may not be available due to limits of time, money,
the mom has to get to work, et cetera, and
as well as well as funding cuts, particularly in the
summer when they're not in school.
Speaker 9 (26:37):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
But those are manageable logistical challenges.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
You know.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
There's a congressman named Governor from Massachusetts that always says,
he always says, hunger is a political condition, you know,
and again it's not about shortages of food at least
in this country. Hunger in America as a political condition
when we have the political will, when we decide that
we want to kind of connect these dots and eliminate
these barriers.
Speaker 9 (27:00):
Kids can get fed and.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Everything else that you would hope what happened when they
get fed does happen. They attend school on a more
regular basis. Their grades are better, their disciplinary infractions are down,
their visits so the nurses office are down. Just you know,
it's it has a big ripple effect.
Speaker 6 (27:18):
To win win for everybody.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
It is. And they're healthier kids. You know, they're going
to grow up healthier, which is really really important. So
you brought something up I think is important when I
work with a major nonprofit. So the name it was
a big one. They you know, we always told how
much money and it's important. The p R machine was.
We raised all this money. We raised all this money,
and then somebody always would say, well, where's the money going?
(27:41):
How is it being used? And that has to be
a very succinct, very direct answer and response. So how
do you answer that to the people who say, okay,
you raise a million, you raise three million? How and
is the money allocated and funneled into the communities and
organizations that need it?
Speaker 9 (28:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Well, you know, the first thing we do is we
you know, try to get people to pay attention to
the impact that we're having, and people obviously want their
funds to be used efficiently and effectively, but efficiently and
effectively to a purpose, to a specific end goal or outcome.
And so you know, we know that we've added three
(28:23):
million kids to the school breakfast program. We know that,
for Debby's point, we've added ten million kids to summer meals.
These are big numbers. In fact, when we back them
all out, when we back out the number of meals
that we know kids have been able to receive with
the dollars we've spent against it, it turns out that
about one dollar unlocks about ten meals, and one dollar
(28:44):
doesn't pay for ten meals because we don't pay for food.
We do the kind of things we were describing earlier
in terms of getting schools to participate in the school
meals program and so forth.
Speaker 9 (28:53):
But there's a real obviously efficiency there.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
And a leverage there to one dollar unlocking ten meals,
and a lot of our funds are spent in grants
to community partners. I think of share Strength as almost
like a general contractor with a lot of subcontractors who
have the expertise on the ground in New Orleans, on
the ground in Philadelphia, on the ground in Omaha, Nebraska.
(29:18):
Organizations that are either working in the community. Sometimes they're
working with food banks and food pantries. Sometimes, more typically
in our case, they're working with school districts and making
sure the school districts have everything they need, all the
equipment they need. You know, we talked about the meals
being one hundred percent federally reimbursed, but if you add
three million kids to school breakfast, schools are going to
(29:38):
need more refrigeration, more transportation, more staffing. That's what share
Strengths dollars go to.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I don't think people realize how important transportation is to
this quot because so many people who will live in
poverty don't live in the somewhere in an inner city,
but a lot of them. We've traveled a lot to
rural areas and just.
Speaker 7 (30:01):
In terms of scale too, I mean, since twenty.
Speaker 8 (30:04):
Twenty, we've funded about three thousand organizations local, state, and nationals.
And it just gives you an idea of how many
organizations at every level. The SHAREFF strength is funny, about
a hundred million dollars went into three thousand nonprofits.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
That's the pandemic affect you. I mean iffected everybody. And
the first thing I'm thinking, I was just talking to
Drew new Porn, who's got a new book out and
you know, it killed his restaurant.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
He's an original Shriff Strength supporter from Way Way based,
like one of our very first in New York.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
His new book out is fabulous. Yeah, it's coming out
in a couple of weeks. He's going to be on
the show the twenty second. I called him yesterday just say, oh,
it just really hit home. He mentioned Sheriffs strengthen there
at the tasting domes.
Speaker 7 (30:54):
I gotta see it. That's great.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
So but but it made me think, oh my god.
You know, they were closed down, they lost everything and
they had to reopen and so much of what they
do in the restaurant world, and it related the suppliers,
you name it. They're large. Esse was sent to Hunger Relief.
A lot of their charo. So how did that impact
(31:18):
and how did you pivot to?
Speaker 9 (31:20):
Yeah, get through it. It really had a huge impact.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
It was in a way, it was a double hit
given some of the things that we've just spoken about. So,
you know, a lot of our revenue and the organization,
and our contributions are tied to the restaurant industry, and
all the restaurants either closed or had significant challenges of
their own, and our delivery system for so much of
what we do is the schools, and the schools were
all closed. So how do you get school meals to
(31:45):
kids when the schools are closed for months on end.
So it became a very big challenge, and we pivoted
in a couple of ways. One was that, I guess one,
you know, maybe a good thing that happened was people
became more aware of the hunger issue than they had before.
As jobs were lost and as businesses closed down. People
(32:07):
saw images in Atlanta and San Antonio and other places
of long lines of cars, sometimes a thousand cars lined
up at a food bank, and it gave people the
sense of, you know, a lot of people's lives are
pretty fragile economically. There are only maybe one step away
from needing food assistants for themselves. Sixty percent of all
the people that needed food assistants during the pandemic, it
(32:30):
was the first time in their entire lives that they'd
ever had to ask for.
Speaker 9 (32:34):
Help in that way.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
So it really created a new awareness of the hunger issue,
and people responded very, very generously. We had this very unexpected,
very large spike in revenues because people wanted to do
something that would help. The other thing that happened was
Congress passed a number of laws that we had been
(32:58):
asking for for a long time to make it more
efficient and more effective for us.
Speaker 9 (33:02):
To feed kids.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
There were all these regulations in place that just kind
of slowed everything down, and during the pandemic they waived
all of that. You know, some of them are kind
of arcane examples, so I'll war you with them, but
it enabled us to actually do a lot of the
things that we've been arguing for, and many of those
things stayed in place after the pandemic. So as terrible
(33:24):
as the pandemic was, it really created some energy around
this notion that you could actually solve the hunger problem.
Speaker 7 (33:33):
You know. It was so amazing though. I think about
the restaurants that were.
Speaker 8 (33:36):
Feeding people while they were going under as a restaurant,
I mean, they were still the most generous, hospitable, gracious,
helpful people you can imagine. It's really true. And we
actually did some granting to chefs around the country maybe
five or six. I can't remember all of them, but
in several markets there were chefs who were struggling, but
(33:59):
they wanted to feed their community. So we were giving
grants out to chefs who were staying open and paying
their staff so they could make food for the community.
And that was happening in New York, it was happening
in Connecticut, one in California, you know, a couple others
around the country.
Speaker 7 (34:15):
So, I mean, you know, as tough as it was.
Speaker 8 (34:17):
For the restaurants, they were like still stepping up, which
is just incredible.
Speaker 7 (34:21):
It says a lot about the industry.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
It's a wonderful industry to be in, and often they
get tapped out too much. I always felt like I
got to the point where I couldn't do another ask.
I had to pull back because I was feeling bad
because everybody was struggling up and down and up and down.
So we've been talking about the domestic front and the
(34:45):
progress being made, but there's always challenges. It still continues
because everything just seemed to be changing all the time.
Right now, what are you doing on the international front now?
Just to bring it full circle, Chares Strenks started because
there was a famine in Ethiopia. Here we are again.
(35:05):
There's I think I was researching famine to understand what
a famine was, because I don't think a lot of
people understand what a famine is. And there's criteria for
a famine. And I know that we have now Gaza
has now reached famine and Sudan has a famine. A
lot of people turn it off. Sadly. There's a lot
of people who are cynical, who say, I can't do
(35:26):
anything about it. It's Africa, I can't deal with it.
Speaker 7 (35:28):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
There's unfortunately a lot of people who say it's not
in my backyard. I can't deal with it. What do
you want to say to them? And what are you
doing on the international scale? Now? That is different and
going forward you're looking at.
Speaker 8 (35:43):
Yeah, well, I'm glad you raised the Gaza crisis because
it's you know, we're all looking at it every day
and it's just so heartbreaking. You know, we don't really
do a lot of emergency funding anymore. Internationally. We'll get
into one that we are working on. But in God,
there's two organizations that are doing great work and I'll
just who they are.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
So our listeners your listeners can can hear.
Speaker 8 (36:07):
One is World Central Kitchen who's on the ground there
and I'm sure you know some days getting through and
some not, but they are they are able to get
emergency relive through. And the other is one that we
just became aware of called Odesia ed E s i
A and they are providing emergency the Plumpy Knight supplement
(36:28):
uh and sending it into Africa, actually sending into sixty
countries including Gaza, and it's a life saving and prevention
product uh, you know plumpy knut that they're manufacturing in
the United.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
States and shipping over.
Speaker 8 (36:42):
So those are two organizations that are that are getting
through in Gaza and in other countries where there is
famine and hunger and starvation. So we have been looking
at where we can, you know, instead of only granting
a small amount of money, which is really our demands
domestically are such that we can't give that much internationally,
(37:04):
but we've always given a little bit internationally. So we
just started to think about are there other things we
can do to increase the revenue and increase the impact
that we're having internationally, And so we can kind of
land it on this idea of like what can we
transfer from our work that works. Are there things in
the culinary industry that could work in another country. So
we ended up in India for a lot of reasons
(37:26):
that so far making a lot of sense. I'm headed
for my eighth trip on Saturday back to India where
I'm actually speaking to a big hospitality conference in Goa,
and it'll be my first time to find a lot
of restaurant tourist which would be great because what we're
doing is similar to what we've done here, where we're
doing taste events and dinners and finding ways for the
culinary industry to step up, make a difference, collaborate with
(37:51):
each other, learn from each other, raise money and awareness
for school meals. In India, their programs are very different
from ours that they don't have kitchens in their schools
as much as they have big community kitchens that service
the school district. Right so as many as you know,
we help build a kitchen in Nagpor, which is a
(38:12):
city in Maharashtra, same state as Mumbai, Bombay, and that.
Speaker 7 (38:18):
Feeds twenty thousand kids.
Speaker 8 (38:20):
But we raise enough money to open it and start
serving in nagpoor. So they have these wonderful community kitchens
that crank out twenty thirty forty fifty thousand meals a
day and deliver them into the school system and the
kids have and with no packaging, which is unbelievable, never
seething like it, no packaging at all, steal vats.
Speaker 7 (38:39):
They go back and they steam clean them and then
start working.
Speaker 8 (38:44):
They work twenty it's a twenty four hour, twenty four
hour you know, work process.
Speaker 7 (38:49):
And then the kids have like their bowls and their forks.
Speaker 8 (38:51):
And their spoons and those get washed, you know, and
they get brought back out the next day.
Speaker 7 (38:56):
And that's how a lot of kids are fed in India.
There's lots of kids.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
I mean, there's eighty.
Speaker 8 (39:02):
Eight million or so, there's one hundred and forty million
who are eligible for a school meal in public school
and there's like eighty eight million that are not getting
regular daily nutritious meals. And so our work there kind
of just the playbook of Shriff Strength and going back
to how we started here in getting chefs involved and
just like you know, Alice Waters put us in touch
(39:24):
with chefs and we've got Steven Piles in Dallas and
Susan Spicer and New Orleans and you know Alan Custer
and Miami.
Speaker 7 (39:29):
Exact same thing is happening in India.
Speaker 8 (39:31):
You know, we're working with chefs in Mumbai and Delhi
and Calcutta and Bangalore and Goa.
Speaker 7 (39:38):
Because this this notion of and.
Speaker 8 (39:41):
I think particularly with chefs, you know, I mean, yes,
everybody has a strength to share, but when you tell
a chef.
Speaker 7 (39:45):
That they they can play a role on hunger, they're.
Speaker 8 (39:48):
Going to step up and so it's resonated with them
exactly the way it's resonated here. And so that's what
we're doing in India is thinking through how do we
transfer our is what has been s useful here. It
will be a little bit different, different culture, different business,
different industry, different you know, different everything, different economy. But
(40:08):
but that that instinct first you have to to do
something with kids is very much alive. And so building
an astronomer pipeline for school meals is what.
Speaker 7 (40:19):
We're what we're looking at right now, and.
Speaker 8 (40:21):
Adding a million kids in the next couple of years
to the school program.
Speaker 7 (40:24):
And then and then thinking about where else that could work.
Speaker 6 (40:28):
Very impressive.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
That's what I've been thinking about as you've been talking,
because it's it's great create the playbook and take the
playbook those we're much like a franchise.
Speaker 8 (40:36):
Yeah, and the playbook is foundational, right, it's not exact.
I mean everything you have to you know, what I
struggle with is knowing what I know, which is a
lot from share of strength, I mean forty years here,
and understanding what works with what I don't know, which
is a lot that I don't know. You know, in India,
so there's that constant, uh, you know, push pool.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
And also adapting to the local culture because the variable
there are a lot of variables, cultural variables involved and
what you can't eat don't eat, and treatment of women
for example. I mean it's it's.
Speaker 8 (41:10):
Even on a less serious note than that. But at
our food and wine events, like you know, a lot
of places where we can't even drink alcohol because they're
very religious and Hindu, and yeah there's alcohol out and
stuff like that.
Speaker 7 (41:23):
But yeah, there's there's adjustments to be made.
Speaker 8 (41:25):
But again that that instinct to serve and that instinct
to have food at the center of that is very strong.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Have you had as much ground swallow support from the
wine and spiritus industry as you have from the restaurant industry.
Speaker 8 (41:41):
I mean, yes, we've had a great response, but I
think dollar for dollar wouldn't match the restaurant contribution, which
I have somewhere around And it's just like the way
I add it up in my head when I think
of all the things we've done, somewhere around five hundred
and six hundred million dollars from the restaurant follow it from.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
All of our different campaigns over the years.
Speaker 8 (42:04):
I mean, because you know, as Billy said, like the
first the first five years we weren't raising that much,
but in the last thirty to thirty five years were
the bulk of the money, and really the last twenty
i'd say since the launch of the note, at every
campaign where we significantly increased our exposure, our brand strength,
and our revenue.
Speaker 9 (42:22):
We just have to stick around for the next thirty years.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Now, well, let's talk about that. Are you what is
in your crystal ball and each of you to talk
about that?
Speaker 4 (42:31):
Well, you know, I think one of the things that
we've learned we knew this early on in a way.
We had a tagline in the early days of Share
of Strength that said, it takes more than food to
fight hunger, and the point of it was that hunger
is really a symptom of a set of deeper problems.
It's a problem in and of itself, and we can
address it, but it's also a symptom of poverty and
(42:53):
lack of opportunity, and so to start to think about
how to get to the root causes of kids and
families experience hunger, and the root causes of why we've
had poverty in this country for so long. It has
gotten better, no doubt about it, but it still exists,
and it's more complicated than getting kids to school on
time or getting breakfast served in a classroom. Those are
(43:16):
kind of logistical challenges, but it's important for us to
turn our attention to it.
Speaker 9 (43:23):
So I think.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
That he's described in terms of our international opportunities and
ambitions and what I'm describing in terms of organizations starting
to think about how do you get to some of
the root causes. We're currently focused on a cohort of
single moms. About sixty percent of the kids in the
United States who live in poverty live in families households
(43:45):
by single moms, so they have a whole set of
needs of their own that we're trying to think through
how to address mostly by going into communities and listening
to them and partnering with them. But I think that
is kind of the next evolution of what we're about,
and it will always be in service of and nick
hunger in this country. But we can't ender and hunger
(44:08):
only with food. We're going to have to get to
some of these other issues.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah, and single mothers do have incredible challenge. The cost
of child care is up. So that's one of the
biggest problems everywhere is where do you you know, if
they're not in school and if you've got a young child,
what do you do? It's easier to stay home and
draw unemployment.
Speaker 9 (44:28):
Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
Speaker 6 (44:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Yeah, And unfortunately we have snap programs and ABT to help.
But you know, we don't know, if you know, we
never know in the crystal ball what's going to be
cut and what's going.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
To be funded, right, I mean there has been a
strong bipartisan My sister has come in here to visit
with us.
Speaker 7 (44:48):
My computer totally died.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
I am so sorry. So now well now you're together.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
That's so nice. Lang that technology.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
So you know, this is a you know, kind of
new territory for us and we have a lot to
learn in it, but you know, there has been the
good thing and we've just touched on this, but we
haven't really talked about it. We're obviously living through a
difficult time politically in terms of the cuts that some
of these programs will experience, but there has been a
kind of a core of bipartisanship that's existed around these
(45:23):
programs for a long time. So we'll have to deal
with cuts to SNAP and so forth, but I don't
think we're going to you know, when you think of
like what's going on internationally with USAI D right, that
was an existential you know, disaster for USAID.
Speaker 9 (45:37):
It really doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 4 (45:40):
We're not going to face that type of existential disaster
because we do have bipartisan support and because kids.
Speaker 9 (45:45):
Are a common ground.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
I think for a lot of Americans to rally around,
you know, many of us just have, you know, some
sense of wanting to protect children, and I think that'll
service well.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Well, I'm a big believer, and you may not like
what's happening, and we certainly don't. We don't want to
see federal funding cut for a lot of things that
we truly believe in, whether it's hunger relief and helping people,
the arts, you name it. But if you're not happy,
don't don't go hide about it, go say I want
to do something. Because the pendulum will switch. It's not forever,
so you just got to figure out how to deal
(46:22):
with it now and get stronger groundworks so that you
can move forward.
Speaker 8 (46:29):
I was going to I was going to say, I
have a plug for another future activity if you want
to hear it.
Speaker 7 (46:33):
Yes, So twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 8 (46:37):
The Los Angeles Olympics, we're planning to bring in fifty
the best chefs from around the world to do a
series of culinary events to raise money for world hunger
and stuff from the you know, for no kid hungry,
but to focus on not just the US but around
the globe and bringing in chefs from all over the country.
We'll do a grand tasting, we'll do private dinners, maybe
(46:57):
a chef competition, all kinds of stuff. So that that's
that's gonna be a fun one and that's you know,
that'll be here before we know it.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Well, having give me this our background, that is the
most exciting thing we've we've heard. I think that's just great.
You're hoping to do that in the Milan. I've been
trying to do that in Milan, but it's hard to cout.
You know, we don't speak Italian. But Los Angeles.
Speaker 8 (47:19):
Are you going to do for the for the Winter Olympics,
right for the Yeah, for twenty six you're looking at it.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah, yeah, but we haven't made much in roads getting
connections there.
Speaker 9 (47:30):
So we've got we've got to up you into this.
Speaker 7 (47:32):
Yeah, we'll rope you out.
Speaker 4 (47:33):
But you know, the other thing you just said was
so important because it is important for people to lift
up their their voices and to be heard on these issues.
And I think every time somebody does, it gives a
little bit more permission and a little bit more courage
to the next person to to say something as well.
And you know, in the categories of sharing strength, as
you said at the beginning, Melanie, not everybody can write
(47:54):
a big check for a gala, but everybody could write
a letter to the editor. Everybody could write to their
members of Congress, or meet with their governor, or get
involved with their school district. And those things add up
to a real critical massive of people saying, you know,
we're going to find ways to feed kids.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
If you don't have to give money, you can give time,
you can give intelligence or write the letter.
Speaker 7 (48:15):
Just expertise. I'm networking.
Speaker 8 (48:17):
You know, you have a lot of people have a
lot of expertise to share, so you can tap into
that as well.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Yeah, saying silent doesn't make Silence doesn't make progress. Listening
is good, speaking out is good. But doing nothing and
just saying oh, it's not it's not my problem. It
is everybody's problem because it is a civilization and it's
the future. I think we think what you're doing is awesome.
I mean, we've been long time supporters. I'm very excited
(48:43):
about the Los Angeles Olympic thing because that sounds like
a whole other level of excitement. We've got to get
something done in New Orleans. I mean, we have a
lot of global contacts around the world because we do
so much in the wine. That's why ask you about wine,
and hopefully our audience who we have, particularly in Europe,
we'll see this and understand that the opportunities are there
(49:04):
to do something in their countries as well. I mean
the fact you're doing this in India, which is not
an easy country, amazing.
Speaker 9 (49:11):
Yeah, yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 7 (49:13):
Yeah, it's so nice to be reconnected with those of us. Wow.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, it's been great. Thank you for responding to the email.
So let's wrap this up by saying where our listeners
can find and follow you, and one final wonderful inspiration
from you about what you're doing.
Speaker 9 (49:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:33):
Well, you know, like most organizations, our website is a
good place to start. No Kid Hungry dot org. With
two websites, No kid Hungry dot org and Share our
Strength dot org, and they connect to each other. There
you find a full kind of panoply of the things
we're involved in, the program activities, the fundraising activities, ways
that you can make a difference. And I think people,
(49:55):
you know a lot of people learn about us that way,
and we'll be very sponsor to anybody that reaches out.
And I think, you know, the thing that I think
for Debbie and myself let to w speak for herself,
but one of the things that's been so sustaining is
this notion of how in terms of like what's inspiring
for me, Melanie, is this notion that share our strength,
(50:18):
sharing strength can be so empowering. You know, we constantly
hear from chef's restauranteurs and others. You know, one of
the kind of the common refrains is I didn't realize
I could make a difference, you know, just by being
a chef. And we think, well, like, just by being
a chef, that's a really big deal in our world.
You know, there's nothing just about that. You know, these
are heroes to us. But you know, at the end
(50:39):
of the day, more people have to feel empowered to
be able to make a difference in their community and
to the extent that we can be the vehicle for that.
You know, every time it happens with somebody, and it
happens pretty frequently now as we've grown, I get kind
of reinspired to kind of steap that going, you.
Speaker 6 (50:57):
Know, and when you feed kids, you feed the future.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Yeah, well I just got to notice this time it's time.
So we're gonna have to wrap this up. We've been talking.
Thank you for your time and your inspiration and all
you do. We're inspired and we're all about eat, drink, explore,
inspire here. So you've been listening to The Connected Table
Live with Melanie Young and David Ransom. Our guests have
(51:22):
been Billy Sure and Debbie Sure, the co founders of
Share Our Strength and their initiative called No Kid Hungry.
You can go to Share our Strength dot org no
Kid Hungry dot org to learn more and we always
encourage you to stay and say she'll be curious. But
also it's you know, instead of just opening your mouth
and feeding yourself, open your mouth and speak out if
(51:42):
you want to make a difference. Thank you, see great
to see you.
Speaker 7 (52:00):
S
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