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 Share Our Strength (SOS) Executive Director Bill Shore recently discussed his organization’s mission to end childhood hunger in America with Volunteer Leadership magazine editor, Cindy Vizza. The article appears in the Fall 2006 issue.
It Takes More than Food to Fight Hunger
Ending childhood hunger in America is the aspiration of Bill Shore, founder and executive director of Share Our Strength (SOS). Since 1984, the nonprofit organization has led the fight against hunger and poverty by inspiring individuals and businesses to share their strengths. Through innovative partnerships and fundraising, more than $205 million has been directed to the most effective community-based programs that feed hungry children, pursue long-term solutions to end hunger and poverty, and help families help themselves through nutrition education programs.
Shore also is chairman of Community Wealth Ventures, a for-profit subsidiary of Share Our Strength — whose aim is to provide strategic counsel to corporations, foundations and nonprofit organizations interested in affecting social change through profitable enterprises.
Shore has written several books, including “The Cathedral Within” (1999), which profiles a new breed of community leaders who are tapping into every sector of society to improve community life, and “The Light of Conscience” (2004), which explores how acts of conscience can and have changed the world.
In 2005, Shore was selected by US News & World Report as one of America’s best leaders.
You write that everyone has a strength to share… as valuable as donating money… that sometimes sharing your strength is more valuable because it can’t be bought. How do we create vehicles for people to see themselves as community activists, civic leaders and social entrepreneurs?
This is an intellectual design challenge: finding ways to identify unique, value-added skills and apply them in a way that leverages them to serve the community. Share Our Strength tries to do this by not only encouraging our chefs to cook food for the cause, but also to see that they can teach nutrition education and grocery budgeting skills, and make a huge difference in the community.
In your book, The Cathedral Within, you describe the fundamental principles responsible for the success of cathedral builders. What are the principles and how do they give meaning and purpose to our lives?
The first principle is to realize that you are a part of something larger than yourself — that you can be gratified even if you don’t see your work finished. Second, build on the foundation of others. Just as some of the greatest cathedrals in the world were built on top of other church foundations, build on social change and progress already started. Finally, you need to be a great storyteller — just as the paintings in a cathedral conveyed the ethos of the time, you can help foster the culture by telling the story.
Has the way to tell the story changed in a society where information is available on the Web and in print and broadcast media?
Web sites and other media are transmission vehicles for telling the stories, but they don’t dictate the stories. My friend Jeff Swartz [president and CEO of Timberland] always says, “Don’t tell me the ‘what,’ tell me the ‘so what.’ ” We shouldn’t be so literal and always quantify the story — it needs the emotional bond to convey the value of the story.
You met and funded numerous organizations and social entrepreneurs through Share our Strength. Who are the people and organizations that inspire you the most?
Early on, City Year and Teach for America inspired me. Today, it’s exciting to see new organizations like the Institute for One World Health, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company that distributes drugs to developing countries, blend philanthropy and entrepreneurship.
There are tens of thousands of programs supporting children, and combating hunger and poverty. Why are so many under-funded, un-replicated and unnoticed?
There’s a lot of competition in the marketplace. You need to tell your story better and dedicate resources to measuring outcomes and communicating the story. Organizations need to invest in this type of expense that’s not direct service to clients because if you have found a way to “build a better mousetrap,” then you have a moral obligation to share this information with the general public.
How do you measure the success of the $205 million given by Share Our Strength to support anti-hunger and anti-poverty groups?
We measure success by whether we were able to build the capacity of our partners so that they are stronger and more effective organizations, more successful in ending hunger in their communities. Increasingly though, we will be using one common and specific measure, which is the number of hungry children and whether they have succeeded in decreasing it.
Tell us how SOS became a community-wealth-building organization and why this is an important component for long-term success.
For Share Our Strength, we wanted to raise money without competing with our brother and sister hunger organizations, so we didn’t go after government or foundation monies. Our approach using cause-related marketing, merchandising and licensing have raised more than $205 million. We fund programs from direct service food banks to advocacy groups that are doing good work and doing it well. The benefits to our partners are clear. For instance, in our licensing partnership with Calphalon, revenues from the sale of the “Taste of the Nation” pan were $180,000 the first year but grew to $350,000 by year four and eventually totaled more than $1 million. But during that first year, Calphalon sold about four times as many pans as in the previous year. When the partnership is properly structured and sustainable, it directs profits back into the community.
How is SOS structured? Have you changed over the past 20 years? How do you sustain and grow social change?
The idea when we started was build a critical mass in the food service and restaurant industry and fuel ownership to help alleviate hunger. Share Our Strength methodically identified and recruited key people who influenced others in the food business. Today we are in 90 cities across the country, each operating by a committee of volunteers that has grown organically — as so many entrepreneurial initiatives do — that range in size from 15 to 20 committee members to groups with 50 to 60 local leaders. We have a small Washington, D.C., office and we stay in touch with each community, constantly providing feedback. We have been able to grow by sharing credit and decision-making and by empowering new, young volunteers and staff to use their own strengths.
Can you tell us about the creation of your consulting firm, Community Wealth Ventures?
The reactions from people around the country upon hearing about our Calphalon partnership lead many people to ask “can you teach us?” We decided that we could help create community wealth by consulting with nonprofits on revenue generating opportunities. We’re approaching our 10th anniversary as a profit-making business that allows Share Our Strength to fund our own organizations.
How many nonprofit organizations do you work with annually and how do they pay for your services?
We consult with 40 to 50 nonprofits a year. Oftentimes they obtain funding to pay Community Wealth Ventures from another foundation that sees the value in nonprofits being able to generate their own revenues to support their work.
Where are you headed?
We’re a general grant-maker — the majority of our grantees have been funded by SOS for more than 15 years — and we are trying to leverage our grant-making to pull everyone in the direction to end child hunger in our nation in the next 20 years. That sounds like a lofty goal. But one that we feel is attainable because there’s broad bi-partisan support and public policy backing. We know how to solve hunger; we just need to make the solutions affordable and sustainable. It’s ambitious but not impossible.
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