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hello I'm Katherine Klein I'm the vice dean for social impact here at the
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Wharton School and I'm really delighted today to be interviewing Billy sure Billy sure is the executive chairman of
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no Kid Hungry and its parent organization share our strength Billy and his sister Debbie co-founded the
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organization thirty four years ago and in that time they have raised over six hundred million dollars to fight hunger
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and food insecurity and poverty in the United States so Billy thanks so much for joining me today thanks thanks for
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having me great to have you with us so my guess is that some of the people who are gonna be reading and listening
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to this interview don't spend a little a lot of time thinking about hunger poverty food insecurity in the United
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States they may vaguely have some sense of the nature of these problems but help
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us understand what is the problem of hunger in the United States what is the problem with food insecurity what's
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hunger what's food insecurity well hunger in the United States I'll start
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with hunger because hunger and food insecurity are actually pretty different but hunger in the United States affects
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various populations but the most vulnerable and the least responsible for the situation that they're in are
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children and we've got millions of kids in the country about one in six who suffer or struggle with hunger in some
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way or with food insecurity I guess the most important thing to understand about
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hunger in the u.s. is that it's a solvable problem you know and I would have to give you a single-factor
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statistic for you to know that kids here aren't hungry for the reasons the kids
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around the rest of the world are hungry it's not war or famine or drought kids
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are hungry here because not because we don't have food not because we don't
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have food programs like the food stamp program or school breakfast school lunch but because we haven't done a good job
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of connecting them so hunger is solvable food insecure and hunger is kind of a physiological issue are you getting
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three meals a day are you getting the proper nutrition are you getting what your body the calories and then the
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protein that your body needs to grow food insecurity is a measure that comes from surveying people and asking a whole
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series of questions that are more socio-economic in nature do you make enough money to feel like you can buy
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your family the best do you ever have anxiety that you're not going to be able to feed your children
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as well as you'd like to so there are a lot of families and children and food
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insecure who live in food insecurity but who may not actually be experienced hunger they're both important but in a
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triage sense you want to make sure that kids at a minimum are not hungry that they're not missing meals and having all
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the the negative effects that come with that right right and I suppose the question may be obvious we answer may be
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obvious but why focus on kids why not focus on families communities well for a couple reasons so when sheriff's trains
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started as you mentioned 34 years ago we were focusing on hunger and Ethiopia we
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were focusing on hunger all across the United States seniors families and one of the things that we thought about was
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how do we actually not just alleviate the problem or ameliorate it behind we actually solve it or is there some piece
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of what we're doing that we could solve there's a writer named Jonathan Kozol
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who says that you should pick battles that are big enough to matter but small enough to win and I love that construct
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because there's so many things that all of us care about and you know when you
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think about what's big enough to matter if it's small enough to win maybe we
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can't solve Syria or the Middle East or climate change or organizations can but
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when it comes to kids who are in this country who are hungry that is big enough to matter but small enough to win
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and it's solvable and as I as I mentioned a moment ago kids are the most vulnerable the consequences of being
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hungry when you're a child developmentally can last you the rest of your life and they're the least
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responsible for the situation they're in they're just they're kind of born into
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it so we thought that that was the a winnable issue and we've actually made tremendous progress against it if you
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ask me this question five or six or seven years from now I'm pretty sure we'll say that we've still got poverty
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we still got food insecurity and we still got hunger but we don't have hungry kids in the United States great
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so I want to explore that more with you but but first you've written and talked
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about how you made a significant shift and share our strength about ten years ago so talk with us about what made you
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make an organizational pivot what was that pivot how did no it was time to make one you know
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what's right there yeah well shower strength was a grant maker to probably three hundred to four hundred other
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nonprofits around the country well you all were raising money and passing it then yeah and I'd say first for the
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first twenty years of our existence what most people knew about us if they knew anything was that we had this very
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entrepreneurial way of generating revenues we didn't have any government money or foundation money or high donor
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program or direct mail we basically made money we organized chefs and restaurant
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tours to do events for us corporate marketing partnerships cause related marketing we did even today we have
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contracts with dozens of corporate partners that fund our organization it puts us in the position of not competing
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with brother and sister organizations and not having any strings attached to the dollar so we can spend them as
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strategically as we wish so we were raising that money bringing new money into the into the field granting it out
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it was satisfying to almost everybody except for a handful of us at the center of the organization who were asking
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ourselves you know in effect is the glass half empty or half full are we moving the needle are we solving a
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problem or we're just putting a bandaid on it and so we realized that we really
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needed to put kind of a stake in the ground we need it in this Jonathan Kozol sense of what's big enough to matter but
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small enough to win could we pick an area and hold ourselves accountable to actually solving it and again in that
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case it felt like childhood hunger would be the the place to do that it required
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a big culture shift on the part of the organization all of a sudden we weren't
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just the good guys giving out money to others we were accountable to achieving a very specific outcome some people felt
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that pressure and it's it's a very different feeling so it's interesting
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because one way I could interpret what you're saying is you made a decision to
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focus your efforts but it sounds like it's and I think many organizations do
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that though or you know we're too broad where our messaging is too unfocused we
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need to focus sounds like you're saying this was a change that was yes about
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focusing but it was more than that yeah I I think that's a really interesting
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distinction you're making because it was about focusing and accountability and
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the accountability piece was so important for us in one sense it's kind of absurd
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that one little nonprofit organization would say we're accountable for ending
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childhood hunger we're just one of many organizations the government plays a
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much bigger role than we do but one of the things that we observed in the space that we were working in is there was a
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real dynamic of almost everybody pointing the finger at somebody else so advocates in Washington would get
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legislation passed and then the governor's wouldn't implement it the way
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they should or the local organizations wouldn't everybody else was saying I did
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my job but somebody else's fault and so we thought in it just kind of the classic the buck stops here since
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somebody's got to raise their hand and say we'll be responsible for getting
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this done until it's done so as I say in one sense a little bit audacious but in
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the other sense it gave our stakeholders a real palpable sense of we can judge where these guys are against their goal
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in a world where you don't know if you're getting a better return on investment by giving money to Habitat
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for Humanity or Teach for America or City Year or Share Our Strength here's at least an organization that's saying
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we welcome you we invite you to judge us here's here's our role and here's how
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far we are from it and some years we came closer and some year so we didn't come as close as we said we would and
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and this has energized your your donors your partner's I gather I think so I
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think in a very big way it had a really catalytic impact on them again just kind
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of the confidence that we would succeed and the notion that this is not something we're going to be asking them
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to support forever there is an endpoint there's a I think the the consulting
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firm Bridgespan calls it an arrival point you know there is an arrival point that you'll achieve and you'll know that
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you can then go on and climb the next higher Hill right so with the no Kid Hungry campaign really capturing that
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with those those three words no Kid Hungry you shifted the focus and said we're gonna end childhood hunger how
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what is what share our strengths what is the no Kid Hungry campaign do to end hunger so we defined ending hunger as
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making sure kids had three meals a day usually at least whether parents are poor or food
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insecure or what-have-you they're probably able to afford at least one meal for their kids they may not be able
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to afford three but low-income kids in this country get a free or reduced-priced school lunch that's a
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program that was set up in 1946 when generals and admirals returned from World War two and they said to Congress
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our recruits by the end of the year we're not strong enough and there they weren't fit enough so we need to start
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feeding kids in school better then they added the school breakfast program in 1964 so we've got today 22 million kids
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in the country who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch all 22 million are eligible for
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breakfast as well but when we looked at this eight years ago only nine million of the 22 million we're getting it so
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less than 50% but the crazy thing Catherine is that it's bought and paid for for all 22 millions so try to think
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about another issue that we work on in this country where there's a pot of money literally billions of dollars
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sitting in Washington that can only be used for this and yet in less than half of them are being used so that was the
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opportunity to start enrolling kids and we've done that with breakfast and we've
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done it with summer meals and other programs that you're not a government agency so you're not a government agency
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saying hey school district put in this program or hey you know whatever the place is to deliver those kids breakfast
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so what do you actually do so what we're doing is we're going into school
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districts and we're saying there's this program available if you want to
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participate in it there may be some things you need in terms of startup cost that we will pay you might need
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insulated carts on wheels you might need to redo your cafeteria you might need to
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hire more cafeteria workers but we will pay for that if you do what you need to do to enroll in the federal government
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school breakfast program the meals are 100% federally reimbursed so you can go to any governor in the country and say
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governor did you realize that you've left 150 million dollars or whatever the
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number is in Washington and no matter how conservatory how liberal they are they all say what do I have to do to get
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it it's so interesting that's so interesting so you made this shift in around 2010 you said you're making good
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progress on the met you count so tell us about that progress well we've added about 3.2 million kids
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to the school breakfast program of the 22 million kids who get lunch not all 22 million of them should get breakfast
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because some will have breakfast at home with mom and dad or grandparents or whatever and that's great but the right
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number is probably about 15 or 16 million and today we're at about 12 and 1/2 closer to 213 so adding 3 million
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kids to school breakfast program over just five or six years has been a really an enormous task and we did it in one
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very simple way so I described this program started you know 50 years ago it's always run the same way forever
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with almost no changes and somebody said what if we moved breakfast from the cafeteria where kids have to get there
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early and many of them can't because the bus driver scheduled their mom and dad
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scheduled or what have you and then there's the stigma attached to being the
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kids who get to school early what if we move breakfast from the cafeteria to the
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first 10 minutes of first period every way so when you propose that two things happen one is everybody you possibly
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think oh I can think of objects to that idea yeah in the classroom etcetera etcetera but the other thing happens is
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participation rates go to almost 95 percent and after sometimes as short as a week the teachers embrace it and they
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say oh now I see why this is a good thing of the 3.2 million kids that we've
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added which is across thousands of schools nobody's ever gone back to the old way nobody's ever said I wish we
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were doing in the cafeteria again it's just it just works too well but it's
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changed I mean changes you know is uncomfortable for people right so having made this this this shift and pursue
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this change in strategy for 10 years what's the advice that you would give to
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other organizations whether it's a for-profit or a nonprofit that may be thinking you know we're not doing as
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well as we could we're not having the impact whether it's social impact whether it's financial performance we're
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not where we should be we need to focus hold ourselves accountable know I'd say
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there's three or four things that apply doubt I think many efforts not just our
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work in hunger and food security one is what I put under the umbrella of kind of
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go big or go home to have a big goal you know put a stake in the ground stand behind it have a goal that's you know
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big enough to inspire people the second is to be willing to build your own capacity and to make the assertion that
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building your capacity will lead to impact in the nonprofit world as you know everybody wants to know what your
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overhead costs are and how much you paying salaries and they want you to put as much money out into the community as
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you possibly can and that's great and for the most noble of reasons but if you
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don't have professional staff if you don't train them well if you don't
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retain them then you're really wasting donors money so building your own capacity is key this accountability
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issue which we both mentioned I think is also you know a very important one and then finally I'd say what we came too
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late later than we should have was this notion that public policy has to play a very important role then not there are
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very few problems that nonprofits can solve on their own there are things they can do in terms of innovating and taking
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risks but when it comes to scaling up a good idea that they've created or that
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they've advanced you're gonna need public support and do you think that there are other sectors other problems
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where there is you know as you put a money left on the table where the public where the public policy exists but isn't
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being implemented you know as effectively as it could and should be well I think yeah I think there are a
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lot of places where the advocates work so hard to get a policy to become law that once it does they're on to the next
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thing and that nobody really looks back so I had this interesting conversation with Marian Wright Edelman from the
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Children's Defense Fund who is this iconic leader you know in this space and
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we were talking about you know what battles we should be fighting and we're going around the table and she said well
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I think we should pay attention to what she our strength is doing because we won
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these we fought and won these battles 40 years ago so and before we go fight the
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next ones let's make sure that what we won actually happens and comes to pass
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there's a little bit of this in the healthcare and the child health space in
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particular there states that don't fully utilize the child health insurance program but there's lots of you know in
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terms of just performance and executional issues separate from money there's a lot of improvement that
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be made across the board and terminate different pollinators yeah right it makes sense and I think of all the
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benefits that they do exist but they're difficult for people to access interesting so one of the big part of
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your model has been this partnering with corporations so I'd love to hear more
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about you know what corporations give you what these businesses are giving you what they get from it and then I'd like
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to kind of talk more expansively about the role of business in fighting hunger and food insecurity well we've thought
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from the beginning that there's a really big role for the business community and
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that there's a role for nonprofits to think about not just redistributing wealth but actually creating wealth you
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don't think of nonprofits being in the business of creating wealth of generating revenues but there's no
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reason they shouldn't I have a friend who always says that nonprofits should
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be a tax status not your management philosophy right you you want to make money and use it for the the things that
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you do and so when we had this notion early on and we part of it we understood part of it we stumbled into frankly but
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we as we started to organize chefs and restaurant tourists to get involved in the hunger issue since they made their
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livelihoods from food we thought they would feel connected to the issue of hunger as we started to do that
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companies that market it into the chef and restaurant industry that had something to sell them we're coming to
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us saying you're you're a more efficient marketer than we are you've got 500 of
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the chef's that we want to be carrying our product how about instead of us going up 500 of them one at a time we
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strike up a partnership with share our strength so Citibank is a good example they want chefs and restaurant ORS to
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use a Visa card instead of an American Express card and they want to go into the restaurant and have a conversation a
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little bit different than here's the point spread on our cars and the fees they want to go in and say hey you and I
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are we're both partners with share our strengths why don't we do this like why
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don't we have a partnership together williams-sonoma Fiji water lily espresso
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lots of companies have realized that there are some benefits of doing that and then I think there's also the
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important issue of just because they're human things like you and me they want to be
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doing something meaningful they want to be having an impact and some of them get
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involved for kind of marketing reasons but then stay involved because they find it really fulfilling to be able to offer
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their employees this opportunity to to have a big difference and so we often hear about engagement and social impact
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engagement by corporations for all those reasons right you know through philanthropy for marketing for
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engagement for reputation and even a real belief and the social issues is there you know as you think about the
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next 10 years you've been quite visionary about this is there you know as this conversation changes about the
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role of business and this notion that businesses should pay more attention to social issues business can and should
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have a social impact and it should be part of the social well the the the mission of the organization and the
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business model so not necessarily philanthropy or marketing but this is actually core to our business you have
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thoughts on that and in this space yeah I think well I think it's related to
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what's going on in social media and the pressures that creates on business so
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you and I are having this conversation on the day that dicks the sporting goods store announced that they're no longer
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going to stock the ar-15 right so there's been this you know terrible incident in in parkland Florida and gun
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safety is now risen to the top and we've seen just in the last 10 days dozens of
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companies start to change their relationship with the National Rifle Association because they believe it's
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important for their business it's probably something that they've you know
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wanted to do perhaps anyhow but maybe didn't have the courage or didn't realize it aligned
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with business reasons so yeah I think I think business leaders are going to play
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a larger and larger role and certainly in our case if we've got the CEO of a of
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a company that can write a letter to the governor the CEO of Deloitte did a press
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conference with us in which he said this was at the time a man named Joe Echevarria s' and he said you know we
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hire 30,000 young people a year so we've got to make sure that we've got a pool
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of young people who are healthy and fit and fed and do well in school and that's
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the reason we're so supportive of the school breakfast work so you have that all of a sudden the lens shifts
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from kind of this anti-poverty advert me to this very respected business leaders
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saying this is good for the economy so yeah I think business will play more of a role right right it's interesting
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interesting challenges for CEOs they start to have this larger and a public role so great well it's and if if
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somebody wants to learn more about food insecurity hunger or volunteer make a difference you know resources for people
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to pursue yeah we've got a lot of them so our our best link to our website is
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no Kid Hungry org but we've also got there a Center for best practices that talks about all of the ways that
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communities around the country are working on these issues of hunger and food insecurity and poverty we've got a
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list of all the events that people can volunteer at or donate to but yet no Kid Hungry or gets the place to go perfect
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great well Billy sure thanks so much for talking with me great to greta's hear
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all about your continuing good work at Share Our Strength thanks for more insight from knowledge at Wharton please
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