Have you ever come up with a wildly ambitious goal — then decided to multiply it by 10? Have you ever achieved way more than you thought possible by setting an intention seemingly far beyond reason?
That kind of bold thinking with the capacity for mind-blowing results is at the heart of a partnership between the grocery store chain Hy-Vee and Feeding America, the nation’s largest food rescue and hunger relief organization. Their award-winning campaign is an inspiring example of how impact-minded businesses and nonprofits can collaborate on innovative, long-term projects that achieve greater outcomes than any one entity could accomplish alone.
At the 2024 Engage for Good conference in Minneapolis, Feeding America and Hy-Vee received the 2024 HALO Gold Award for Best Consumer Donation Initiative, earned for the groundbreaking 100 Million Meals Challenge. In early 2023, Feeding America and Hy-Vee launched the campaign with a monumental goal: Collect $10 million in food and funds to provide the equivalent of 100 million meals to food banks across America.
So far the campaign has raised enough to fund nearly 82 million meals and has benefited thousands of food agencies. Feeding America anticipates the campaign will achieve its target before it concludes in December 2024. If you would like to help them cross the finish line, you can donate here during Hunger Action Month in September or before the end of the year. Additionally, Hy-Vee customers can round up their purchases to the nearest dollar during checkout at all Hy-Vee, Dollar Fresh Market, and Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh locations.
At Engage for Good, Bark Media Senior Project Lead Kristen Miles connected with members of the Feeding America team. In this Q&A, she chats with Bridget Carney, Director of Corporate Partnerships at Feeding America, about the innovative thinking that fueled the success of this massive endeavor to fight food insecurity, and the mutual responsibilities and benefits that can come with values-aligned partnerships between corporations and nonprofits.
Kristen Miles: First of all, congratulations on the HALO Award! How did Feeding America and Hy-Vee initially come together to address the national crisis of food insecurity?
Bridget Carney: We were so honored to be recognized at Engage for Good, especially since Feeding America and Hy-Vee have been working together since 2008 and we’ve discovered a lot of alignment over the years. Of course, we both work in food. Also, Hy-Vee’s autonomous model — every store is employee-owned — is similar to the Feeding America food bank structure. It’s beautiful how we’ve grown into this transparent relationship. They listen to us, we listen to them. They’re incredibly generous in all sorts of ways.
A few years ago, it became clear that Hy-Vee was looking to do more with our partnership and work together more dynamically. At the same time, food insecurity rates were skyrocketing. I’d been communicating with them about the increased needs we’re seeing at the food banks, especially recently. They were seeing it, too, because they’re so rooted in their communities. They wanted to help meet that local need and support their employees and consumers.
We did a one-off cause marketing campaign back in 2022. It was a traditional donate-at-the-register campaign and it raised $1 million in one month. Their employees loved it, their consumers loved it. So next, Hy-Vee decided to go big. They came to us with an idea for a campaign to raise enough money for 100 million meals, which is $10 million. At Feeding America, we were kind of like, “Wow, that’s a big goal.” But of course, we were also like, “Yes, we have a big need, so let’s do it. Thanks for listening to us and your consumers and employees.” They stepped up at a time when, possibly, we’ve never needed it so much.
Describe the process for planning a campaign of that scale.
Carney: It’s kind of wild, but this campaign only had a three- or four-month lead-up. Once Hy-Vee leadership gave the directive to move forward, their team had a deck ready with pretty fleshed-out ideas by our first conversation. They were engaged and aligned with Feeding America and our goals right from the start.
In March 2023, we kicked off the 100 Million Meals Challenge, which focused on fundraising through register roundup but also involved product donation, marketing support, brand awareness, and all of these incredible pieces that really make a successful campaign. Hy-Vee dedicated an incredible amount of energy, time, resources, and channels.
Hy-Vee led the communication around the campaign, but they always made sure there was time for us to lean into it, review, make adjustments and approve. We’ve worked hard to evolve our brand guidelines and language to be people-centric, so it was important to us for that to come through in the campaign. The Hy-Vee team really loves doing this kind of work and they did it in a beautiful way that showed how much they were listening.
How did you and Hy-Vee work together to draw attention to the campaign?
Carney: Hy-Vee considered the full breadth of its resources as an organization and brought them all to bear for the success of this campaign. The heart of the effort was facilitating incredible financial donations from their communities in small amounts — they have hundreds of thousands of customers who come through their stores on a daily basis, so they used that resource. But they also have a very strong social media presence. They brought their relationships with sports into the campaign promotions — INDYCAR, Caitlin Clark, and Post Malone were all involved in race days!
At Feeding America, we created toolkits with materials for our food banks to promote the campaign locally. It’s a turnkey way for them to engage and use their channels of communication to increase awareness and drive people to the stores.
How were those local relationships between Feeding America and Hy-Vee critical to the success of this campaign?
Carney: Every Hy-Vee associate is ultimately a fundraiser. If the associate working at the checkout understands the impact of that 10 cents, it helps them ask folks to round up. We know the extra work those associates are putting in to talk about our mission, so we want to make sure they feel our gratitude. We are always asking ourselves, how can we thank them? Can we put up a sign in the break room? Can we record a video for their employee newsletter? Throughout the campaign, a lot of our food bank volunteers and staff have visited their neighborhood Hy-Vee store to talk to the associates and say thank you. That personal connection makes a huge difference.
Of course, it comes down to strong relationships at every level. Our leadership team has also been excited to express their gratitude to Hy-Vee’s leadership team, because the dedication and resources they empowered the company to commit to this campaign is extraordinary. Aligned values, aligned goals, strong communication. That’s leadership.
How has this campaign benefited Hy-Vee?
Carney: Hy-Vee leadership found that this campaign was really meaningful to them — as a company and to their associates and consumers. A lot of people have been struggling over the past few years, so it can be hard to make a big gift to charity. This campaign gave folks the opportunity to feel good about giving back to their communities by rounding up at the register.
Hy-Vee was also able to use this campaign as a way to build up their own relationships — vendors, suppliers, marketing partners — through a cool community effort. Many of their suppliers provided financial and product donations. We then provided the suppliers and vendors with materials to share their involvement. It benefited them, too, because they wouldn’t be able to do a campaign of this size on their own.
What role do nonprofits play in addressing systemic issues like food insecurity within the broader landscape, including government and corporations?
Carney: Advocacy is incredibly important for systemic policies that affect people experiencing food insecurity, and one of our responsibilities as a nonprofit is to represent and make space for the individuals we serve. So we work with the government in a totally nonpartisan way to advocate for our communities. Feeding America has evolved in a human-centered, community-centric way. We avoid anything prescriptive and instead co-create with our neighbors, focusing on their experience and expertise.
We also want to raise the stakes in our corporate partnerships. It’s our role in the partnership to talk about the reality facing our communities, to provide research and on-the-ground storytelling. We hope to work with corporate partners that focus on having a two-way relationship, as opposed to a model where “you tell us what you want and we do it.”
Hopefully, companies and the government will continue to trust and work with us. There are long-term advantages for companies to support healthy communities. Companies do better when communities are healthier. The more money and stability folks have, the more likely they are to stimulate the economy.
What did you learn from this campaign that might inform your initiatives and partnerships going forward?
Carney: Wow, we’ve learned so much from 100 Million Meals. Taking home the HALO Award was exciting. It’s easy for us to stay focused on the problems — we are always aware of all there is to do, from advocacy and fundraising to capacity-building for food banks. So it’s good to stop and celebrate the wins sometimes.
The ambitious goal and dynamic alignment we had with Hy-Vee is an amazing case study: Look at this company that is now at a visionary partnership level with us and what we achieved together in just a few years. It’s so inspiring that when we talked about the increased need we were seeing, our partners came along on that ride with us.
The campaign has energized us to always be exploring: How can we think outside the box? What can we do differently? How can we work with new and different types of partners? How can we maintain and increase engagement from our current partners? Although, yes, Hy-Vee has given us generous corporate gifts, companies don’t always have to be ready to give millions to make a difference as a partner to a nonprofit. There are so many ways for companies to get involved, whether it’s providing products, investing, or engaging.
The 100 Million Meals campaign showed us that our work can inspire companies to come to nonprofits with their own big ideas. Companies that have philanthropy in their DNA are able to think about their goals broadly and dynamically, then find ways to build and grow toward those goals.