Share Our Strength

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Share Our Strength
Abbreviation SOS
Motto No Kid Hungry
Formation 1984 (1984)
Type Non-profit
Legal status 501(c)(3)
Purpose/focus To end childhood hunger in America.
Headquarters Washington, DC
Region served United States (w/ some international grants funding)
Budget $31.1 million in 2012 [1]
Website NoKidHungry.org
Remarks Share Our Strength is a national organization working to end childhood hunger in America. Through its No Kid Hungry° campaign, Share Our Strength is connecting kids to the healthy food they need, every day.

Share Our Strength is a national organization working to end childhood hunger in America. Through its No Kid Hungry® campaign, Share Our Strength is working to make sure all children get the healthy food they need, every day. By connecting kids in need with nutritious food and teaching their families how to cook healthy, affordable meals, the No Kid Hungry campaign makes sure kids have children have access to healthy food where they live, learn and play.


Mission

Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry® campaign is working to end childhood hunger in America by ensuring all children get the healthy food they need, every day. The No Kid Hungry campaign connects kids in need to effective nutrition programs like school breakfast and summer meals and teaches low-income families to cook healthy, affordable meals through Cooking Matters. This work is accomplished through the No Kid Hungry network, made up of private citizens, public officials, nonprofits, business leaders and others providing innovative hunger solutions in their communities.

The national campaign is at work in all 50 states through state and city-based campaigns, nutrition education programs, and investments in local community partners. The No Kid Hungry campaign through its programs, platforms and initiatives connects kids in need with nutritious food, teaches their families how to cook healthy, affordable meals, and engages the public to make ending childhood hunger a national priority:

Access: The No Kid Hungry campaign connects kids to effective nutrition programs like school breakfast and summer meals. This work is accomplished through partners who work together, implementing solutions that break down the barriers that keep kids from healthy food.

Education: Through its Cooking Matters program, the No Kid Hungry campaign educates and empowers low-income families to stretch their food budgets so their kids get healthy meals at home. Cooking Matters participants learn to shop strategically, use nutrition information to make healthier food choices, and cook delicious, affordable meals.

Awareness: The No Kid Hungry campaign works to spotlight the crisis of childhood hunger in America, creating a powerful movement of individuals committed to action. The campaign builds partnerships that enlist individuals in the cause and advocate policy changes needed to achieve its goals.[2]

Programs and partners

Share Our Strength works with various organizations and entities needed to make its mission a reality. These sustainable partnerships are fighting childhood hunger in communities across America. [3]

State and Local Partnerships

Share Our Strength works with private citizens, public officials, nonprofits, business leaders and others providing hunger solutions in local communities to address hunger at a local level. These partners implement an action plan that has measurable goals, and overcomes the barriers to making sure every child in that state or city gets the food they need, where they live, learn and play. [4] While No Kid Hungry campaign plans are unique to every location, plans focus on the following fundamental objectives:

  • Provide all kids with a healthy breakfast
  • Improve access to after school meal programs
  • Encourage healthy food choices
  • Help eligible families access food stamps
  • Improve access to summer meals programs
  • Ensure access to balanced, nutritious diets for all pregnant women and preschool children


Anti-Hunger Allies

Through its campaigns, Share Our Strength helps to fund anti-hunger organizations in their work to connect families with the nutritious food they need. The No Kid Hungry Allies program recognizes organizations committed to making the No Kid Hungry campaign model work in their state. They are chosen based on their potential to build an effective public-private partnership model bringing together elected officials, corporations, government agencies and nonprofits on the state and local level to connect kids to federal child nutrition programs. Allies also have expertise in anti-hunger issues, federal child nutrition programs and work with low-income families; demonstrated the ability to develop creative strategies for ending childhood hunger; and presented a long-term, metric-driven plan with innovative solutions to ending child hunger in their community.[5]

Share Our Strength’s grant program helps to fund nonprofit organizations, schools, and other eligible organizations that can make a real difference in the fight against hunger.


Community Grants

To complement and expand upon its work with state partners and allies, every year, Share Our Strength makes grants to organizations across the country who share the goal of ending childhood hunger. Many of these grants are made in collaboration with our state partners, and help ensure that their strategies for ending childhood hunger are implemented in local communities across their state. Additional grants are made with funds raised from corporate partners, Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation events, Dine Out For No Kid Hungry, the Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry.

Share Our Strength awards grants to nonprofit organizations, schools, and other eligible organizations who are involved in the following activities:

  • Increasing access to after school snack and meal programs, or meals in child care settings, supported through the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP)
  • Increasing access to summer meals programs supported through the Summer Food Service Program or the National School Lunch "Seamless Summer" Program
  • Educating and enrolling more eligible families in SNAP/WIC
  • Increasing participation in the School Breakfast program
  • Advocacy around any of the above anti-hunger issues
  • Nutrition education programs provided by Share Our Strength's Cooking Matters partners


Corporate Partnerships

Share Our Strength partners with corporations through strategic marketing programs that engage customers, employees and partners to help end childhood hunger in America. Supporters of Share Our Strength include some of America’s most recognized companies. [6]

Center for Best Practices

The No Kid Hungry Center for Best Practices provides the tools and resources needed to help elected officials and their staffs, educators and community leaders achieve success in fighting childhood hunger.[7]

Cooking Matters

Parents and caregivers are learning the cooking, budgeting, and decision-making food skills they need to get the most out of federal food and nutrition programs through Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters program. Cooking Matters participants learn to shop strategically and use practical nutrition information to guide their food choices and cook healthy meals.[8]

Other Initiatives

In addition to core programs, Share Our Strength spearheads other initiatives throughout the year.

  • No Kid Hungry Starts With Breakfast - In 2012, Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign collaborated with Deloitte on a project to identify and quantify the potential long-term impacts associated with children participating in the federal School Breakfast Program. [9]
  • Hunger in Our Schools: Share Our Strength's Teachers Report - Every day across America, teachers see the effects of childhood hunger. Hunger in Our Schools: Share Our Strength's Teachers Report, shares a unique perspective on this American crisis with a formal national survey of teachers and their experience with hunger. [10]
  • No Kid Hungry This Summer – The No Kid Hungry campaign is working to ensure kids are fed when school is out for the summer by connecting more children to summer meals in their communities. Working with partners, the organization recruits new summer meals sites, reaches out to low-income families, and makes grants to support the start-up, operation and expansion of summer meals programs. [11]

Impact

Since 2012, the No Kid Hungry campaign has helped connect kids in need with an additional 34 million meals. [12]

Financial information

Share our Strength is a registered 501(c)(3) private, nonprofit organization. Federal identification number: 52-1367538. Share Our Strength is a nonprofit and uses donations to connect children facing hunger with nutritious meals in their communities, homes and schools. Gifts made to Share Our Strength will leverage the time, expertise, and additional funds needed to end childhood hunger in America, and all donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. In fiscal year 2012, Share Our Strength had total operating expenses (excluding in-kind and the New York City Wine & Food Festival) of $31.1 million in pursuit of ending childhood hunger in America. [13]

Awareness and fundraising platforms

Working closely with the culinary community and relying on volunteers, the restaurant community, and other supporter, No Kid Hungry hosts innovative fundraising events and develops pioneering cause marketing campaigns that support ending childhood hunger. This work also allows the organization to invest in community organizations effectively fighting hunger on the local level. [14]

  • Dine Out For No Kid Hungry - Share Our Strength’s Dine Out For No Kid Hungry is a national fundraising event that brings together thousands of restaurants and millions of consumers every September to help raise funds for and awareness of the No Kid Hungry campaign.[15]
  • Taste of The Nation - Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation is a culinary benefit dedicated to making sure no kid grows up hungry. [16]
  • No Kid Hungry Dinners - Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry dinners are hosted by the nation’s finest restaurants, with renowned chefs joining together to prepare a multi-course meal with a cause: ending childhood hunger in America. [17]
  • Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry - Share Our Strength's Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry is a grassroots fundraising initiative that encourages people to host bake sales in their communities and donate the proceeds to No Kid Hungry, to help end childhood hunger in America. [18]
  • No Kid Hungry 2 - No Kid Hungry 2 is the place for youth to engage with the issue of childhood hunger, and for teachers and parents to learn what youth can do to help end childhood hunger in America. [19]

History

Share Our Strength was founded in 1984 by brother and sister Billy and Debbie Shore, who continue to lead the organization today. It "began in the basement of a row house on Capitol Hill", and from the beginning was focused on looking for long-term solutions to seemingly eternal problems. During these early years, Share Our Strength focused almost exclusively on fundraising, and granted its funds out entirely to other nonprofit organizations.[20]

Timeline

  • 1984: Inspired by the Ethiopian famine, siblings Billy and Debbie Shore founded Share Our Strength to help end global hunger and poverty.
  • 1988: First Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation event raises nearly $250,000 in a single day when 25 of the nation’s best restaurants hold food and wine tastings.
  • 1993: Launch of Share Our Strength’s Operation Frontline (now Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters), a program that teaches low-income families about food and how to cook healthy meals on a limited budget.
  • 1997: Share Our Strength launches Community Wealth Partners to help other change agents solve social problems at the magnitude they exist.
  • 2004: Share Our Strength turns 20, and announces its strategic focus on ending childhood hunger in America.
  • 2005: Launch of Share Our Strength’s Great American Bake Sale (now Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry), a grassroots program that engages kids, families and bakers to raise funds to feed kids in need.
  • 2006: No Kid Hungry pilot programs launch in communities across the country with dedicated focus on connecting kids to summer meals and school breakfast programs, and helping families provide nutritious food at home.
  • 2007: Food Network selects Share Our Strength as its charity of choice, beginning a lasting partnership to bring “No Kid Hungry” home to its millions of viewers.
  • 2008: Share Our Strength unveils its new brand and logo bearing the tagline, “No Kid Hungry”. Share Our Strength’s Great American Dine Out (now Share Our Strength’s Dine Out For No Kid Hungry) engages 3,900 restaurants (including chains) and their patrons in a national restaurant week that raises $575,000 in its first year.
  • 2009: Cause Marketing Forum awards Share Our Strength its 2009 Golden Halo Award for outstanding leadership in cause marketing. Share Our Strength releases a study, Hunger in America’s Classrooms: Share Our Strength’s Teacher Report, creating a national dialogue about the crisis of childhood hunger in America and the link between child hunger and education.
  • 2010: The No Kid Hungry campaign launches with Academy Award-winner and anti-hunger advocate Jeff Bridges and 20-plus corporate sponsors. The No Kid Hungry pledge is introduced as an easy first-step for individuals eager to work for the cause. For the first time in its history, Share Our Strength brings top chefs to Congressional offices to advocate for a strong Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill. It passes as the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. Operation Frontline rebrands itself as Cooking Matters, counts a total of 26 lead partners in 22 states and unveils Shopping Matters curriculum. Share Our Strength reports a record $24.8 million in revenue earned through fundraising platforms, donations and 35 corporate sponsorships.
  • 2011: The organization releases Tackling Summer Hunger: Ensuring No Kid Goes Hungry When School Is Out, its first report on No Kid Hungry’s progress increasing participation in summer meals programs.
  • 2012: Share Our Strength releases It’s Dinnertime, an eye-opening report on low-income families’ efforts to plan, shop for and cook healthy meals. Corporate partner Food Network premieres “Hunger Hits Home,” a primetime documentary that tells the story of American families struggling with hunger, and how the No Kid Hungry campaign is working to end that struggle. Eight Taste of the Nation events celebrate 25 years working hand-in-hand with the culinary community to fight hunger. Share Our Strength and Feeding America collaborate to focus the public’s attention in September on hunger in America; Share Our Strength calls the month “No Kid Hungry month” and leads its calls to action with Dine Out For No Kid Hungry and corporate cause marketing efforts.

Notes

  1. ↑
  2. ↑ http://www.nokidhungry.org/solution/ending-childhood-hunger
  3. ↑ http://www.nokidhungry.org/partners
  4. ↑ http://www.nokidhungry.org/partners#community
  5. ↑ http://www.nokidhungry.org/partners#champions
  6. ↑ http://www.nokidhungry.org/partners#nationalpartners
  7. ↑ http://bestpractices.nokidhungry.org/
  8. ↑ http://cookingmatters.org/
  9. ↑ http://www.nokidhungry.org/back-to-school/
  10. ↑ http://www.nokidhungry.org/pdfs/NKH_TeachersReport_2013.pdf
  11. ↑ http://www.nokidhungry.org/summer
  12. ↑ http://impact.nokidhungry.org/
  13. ↑ http://www.nokidhungry.org/about-us/financial
  14. ↑ http://www.nokidhungry.org/solution/programs
  15. ↑ http://join.nokidhungry.org/site/PageServer?pagename=GADO_homepage
  16. ↑ http://ce.strength.org/
  17. ↑ http://ce.strength.org/
  18. ↑ http://gabs.nokidhungry.org/site/PageServer?pagename=GABS_homepage
  19. ↑ http://nokidhungry2.org/
  20. ↑ strength.org/about/our_history
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