Letter From a Winter of Paradox

Town and beach are deserted. Houses dark. Windows boarded. The only indication of more hospitable days are the white mooring buoys bobbing in the surf, like pearl earrings waiting to attach and fulfill their purpose.

When it’s this cold, gray and empty it is hard to imagine the other Goose Rocks I know: a sunny summer beach dotted with umbrellas, towels, and bathing suits, lobster boats chugging off in the distance, bees and butterflies leapfrogging each other onto the next bright flower petal.

Picturing that now is not easy. Transcending the reality of immediate experience never is. It requires a leap of imagination, a willingness to embrace paradox, a faith that to every thing there is a season. Share Our Strength is working through just such a season of paradox. I’ll share a few examples to give you a clearer sense of our strategy during this extraordinary time.

First and foremost is the impact of the economy. With credit and spending constrained and jobs hemorrhaging faster than one can count, I don’t have to tell you how bad it is. No one is insulated from the damage. Corporate partners are feeling the pressure and are harder to come by. Once significant donations of stock have all but ended.

On the other hand, with a record 30 million Americans on food stamps and food banks facing enormous demand, there is more media attention to hunger than before. Average Americans who see their neighbors in trouble understand and are doing more. When Hickory Farms asked customers before Christmas if they wanted to add a dollar to their order to help Share Our Strength end childhood hunger, 142,000 said yes. We had twice as many individual donations by the end of 2008 as we did in the more prosperous 2007. Thanks to careful management of expense reductions (without cutting staff capacity) this year’s balance sheet will be our best of the past four.

The second paradox is that the answer to hunger is not more donated food. Preventing hunger by donating food is like preventing fire by donating water to the fire department. Fortunately the charitable impulses of most Americans enable us to provide emergency food assistance to people who have nowhere else to turn. But the better course is to build systems that ensure people won’t be vulnerable in the first place.

Children in America are not hungry because our nation lacks food. We have no shortage of public and private food and nutrition programs either. Kids are hungry because they lack access to those programs. Hungry children eligible for food stamps, school breakfast or summer feeding, may find themselves in communities not organized to fully participate in those programs. In addition to funding the emergency food assistance that food banks provide we are driving unrestricted dollars into leadership and community organizing that gives hungry kids access to already authorized and appropriated funds and thereby leverages your support into substantially greater resources.

A third paradox is that the largest economic stimulus package in history provides billions for industries where demand for jobs and services has shrunk but almost nothing for the nonprofit sector for which demands for goods and services is increasing enormously. The legislation is unprecedented in size but not in substance. It expands traditional remedies like food stamps and unemployment benefits. But the kind of critical access issues described above are largely ignored. That vacuum must continue to be filled by organizations like ours.

Fourth, philanthropy faces its own paradoxical moment. Just as need is increasing to record levels, most foundations and charitable givers have experienced a dramatic decrease in their own assets. For a nonprofit it resembles the disconcerting feeling of relying on a doctor distracted by his own failing health. For Share Our Strength it reinforces the value of not being overly dependent on traditional philanthropy and instead building entrepreneurial and diversified revenue streams.

Foundations are responding by staying closer to their core mission and avoiding new commitments. For some it has reinforced the recent trend of investing more deeply in high performing organizations which mirrors our own philosophy that we often know the solutions and must focus on taking what works to scale and making it sustainable.

These paradoxes notwithstanding, it is a season like no other. President Obama committed to end childhood hunger by 2015. I discussed this with new Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack who is responsible for federal food and nutrition programs. Last week, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley concluded his State of the State message calling for Maryland to be first in the nation to end childhood hunger. Optimism, even at a time like this, is not unfounded.

Dawn is breaking and Nate is stirring so I’d better wrap up. He will soon pull boots and jacket over his pajamas, climb over the snow that drifted against our sliding glass door, and explore the beach, which offers its own paradox in winter. While all but empty, whatever “treasures” wash ashore are Nate’s to keep. A banged up lobster trap, a buoy, occasionally an old wooden oar - likely from the next town over, but just possibly from a pirate’s ship of centuries ago. So Nate will be a sea captain until the cold drives us back inside, where he can be astronaut, fireman, doctor, and chef – all before lunch.

Neither he nor we will fail for lack of imagination. Our vision of an end to childhood hunger – once held by a lonely few - has finally become a national goal. That is more than half the battle. Thanks for all you’ve done to help us come this far, and for all it will take to win that battle in the days ahead. I hope the new year is off to a good start for you and your family.