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Share Our Strength
P.O. Box 75475
Baltimore, MD 21275-5475
Or call (800) 969-4767

2010 Expenses

We Want You To Know

Donors deserve to know how the money they give will be used.  Here's what you should know about your contribution to Share Our Strength.

Our Goals
Share Our Strength's primary goal is to end childhood hunger in America.  Working with others, we believe we can do this.

It's not enough, though, to make sure our children have enough to eat; we must make sure that they are getting the nutrition they need to live healthy, active lives.

This, then, is Share Our Strength's strategic objective: To make sure that every child in America gets the nutritious food he or she needs to learn, grow and thrive.  This objective is embodied in our logo's tagline: No Kid Hungry®.

By 2015:

  • Establish "ending childhood hunger" as one of every state's top priorities.
  • Create a sustainable public-private partnership in all 50 states. 
  • Increase the number of kids participating in school breakfast programs to at least 60% of those receiving free or reduced-price school lunchesIncrease participation in summer meals programs to at least 40% of free or reduced-price school  lunch participation.
  • Increase SNAP (food stamp) participation to at least 90% of those eligible.
  • Engage 1 million citizen activists through Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry Campaign.
  • Establish a Share Our Strength's Cooking Matters™ program in all 50 states. (The program was previously known as Share Our Strength's Operation Frontline®.)
  • Serve 50,000 families per year through Cooking Matters and reach 500,000 more people through education-based tools. Raise an estimated $150 million to invest in solutions to childhood hunger.
  • Achieve brand recognition in the marketplace as THE resource for childhood hunger and nutrition information, action and solutions.

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Our Strategy for Reaching Our Goals
Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry strategy for ending childhood hunger in America is one of access. If families don't have reliable access to healthy, affordable food, they can't possibly feed their children well.  Our strategy is to provide that access to families all across the nation. The most effective way to do this is to work at the state or major city level. This is why we take a state or city-based approach to our strategy.   

Our No Kid Hungry strategy has four key components: 

  • Creating state - or city-based public-private partnerships to map out comprehensive plans to end childhood hunger in those areas.Four Key Components
  • Building public awareness about the problem of childhood hunger and solutions to end it.
  • Investing in communities with grants to organizations whose work improves access to nutritious foods through one of our six programmatic priorities (below).
  • Educating children and families about nutritious, affordable eating.

Every form of Share Our Strength fundraising - whether through our culinary or restaurant events, grants from foundations, individual donations, corporate sponsorships or cause marketing campaigns - supports one or more of these components and our overall objective. That's why we say that everything we do is to make No Kid Hungry a reality.

Learn about our strategy to end childhood hunger in our Annual Report, pages 5 through 25.

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Our Capacity for Achieving our Goals and Putting our Strategy into Action
Share Our Strength has a long history of practicing cutting-edge social entrepreneurialism to raise funds to fight hunger. We have earned the dedicated support of the culinary and restaurant industry. We are nationally recognized for establishing corporate partnerships that provide a universally appreciated way for corporations to give back to the communities where they do business while helping us increase awareness and understanding of childhood hunger and solutions to it.

In 2007, we refined our brand to better communicate our focus on making sure no kid in America goes hungry.

In 2010, we took major strides toward making No Kid Hungry a reality in the U.S. We...

  • Created a Committee for Strategy within our Board of Directors.
  • Brought in experts in the areas of training, program development and management, evaluation and outreach to support  the growth of Cooking Matters™.
  • Developed a national three-year plan to reach our goal and are writing a five-year plan to carry us to the finish line.
  • Established a proven process for recruiting and developing effective, sustainable state- and city-based public-private partnerships to end childhood hunger in those areas.
  • Increased our public outreach through social media, blogging and traditional media publicity with Larry King, Oprah and National Public Radio hosts.
  • Brought on our first celebrity spokesperson, Academy Award winning actor and anti-hunger activist Jeff Bridges, to bring new attention to the cause.
  • Captured and shared stories from organizations and families we've helped, through our Web site Strength.org and No Kid Hungry blog.
  • Leveraged our relationships with policymakers to get the Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010 passed in the Senate.
  • Launched the No Kid Hungry consumer marketing campaign to provide everyone - individuals, companies and organizations - with ways to get involved in ending childhood hunger in America.
  • Created  NoKidHungry.org, complete with an online Action Center  to build  and sustain the No Kid Hungry movement, and the No Kid Hungry Pledge to give people real, tangible actions that will connect kids to the food they need.  
  • Increased our revenues and our donors significantly in a year when many nonprofits saw record declines.

Like never before, we saw public and political will shift in our favor. The recession turned the media's attention to hunger in America. Policymakers gave bipartisan support to the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill, which was signed into law in December. State governors and major city mayors joined us to form No Kid Hungry program partnerships (details below).  And Share Our Strength shared active support with the Obama Administration, the First Lady and White House Assistant Chef and Senior Policy Adviser for Healthy Food Initiatives Sam Kass.

This all builds on our 26 years of experience as a successful grantmaker to nonprofits often overlooked by larger grantmakers and foundations.  Today we enjoy strong, successful relationships with more than nearly 300 community nonprofits all working to end childhood hunger in America.   

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Measuring our Progress
Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry strategy is a measurable one.  It's not about measuring food (we have plenty of it to go around). It's about measuring and leveraging programs that are effective and already in place. If every eligible child used these programs, No Kid Hungry would be reality in America.

But millions of eligible kids don't participate. That's why the programmatic priority of our No Kid Hungry strategy is focused on increasing participation in five programs that provide nutritious food at home, during school and when school is out:

  • SNAP (formerly "food stamps") Live, Learn, and Play
  • WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children)
  • School Breakfast
  • Afterschool Snacks and Meals
  • Summer Meals

We have established target 2015 participation rates for SNAP, school breakfast and summer meals programs (see "Goals" above), and are working with expert, objective third parties to establish target rates for WIC and afterschool snacks and meals programs.  

We measure participation through our No Kid Hungry program partners and the community organizations that we support with grants.  Each partnership or grant recipient submits an annual report of their progress. We have also developed a "dashboard" mechanism  for tracking the key indicators for each programmatic partnership. The tool allows the partnership to display trends, make projections, and identify trouble spots early enough to address them. 

Nutrition education is our sixth area of measurable programmatic focus.  Share Our Strength's Cooking Matters program teaches low-income families and children how to make healthy, affordable meals on their own. The program includes a disciplined evaluation component that documents the before-and-after course knowledge, skills, behaviors and attitudes of class participants. The data are stored and processed through an online database and reported annually in the Cooking Matters Annual Review.

We will measure the progress of our No Kid Hungry consumer marketing campaign through: 

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Our Progress to Date
Much of our progress in 2010 is related to capacity building (see "Capacity," above) to put momentum behind the No Kid Hungry movement.  Beyond this, our progress through 2010 includes:

State- or city-based No Kid Hungry programmatic partnerships

  • Established seven partnerships: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, New Orleans, Washington state and the District of Columbia.
  • Identified 18 additional possibilities for 2011, with a goal of establishing 10 of them.

Nutrition Education

  • Added four Cooking Matters programs in as many states--California, New Jersey, Maine and Connecticut--for a total of 26 programs in 22 states.

School Breakfast

  • With the Childrens Alliance and End Childhood Hunger Washington, increased participation in Washington state by 32% between 2005 and 2009, and served 1 million more school breakfasts in 2009 vs. 2008.
  • With the Partnership to End Childhood Hunger in Maryland, increased participation 7% in Maryland in 2009.  

Summer Meals

  • As part of the Campaign to End Childhood Hunger, increased sites providing summer meals in Colorado to 309, a 54% increase, and served 900,000 more summer meals, more than ever before.
  • With our partners, increased participation in Maryland by 17% (the second-highest increase in the country) and served 8,000 more children.
  • As part of the Florida Partnership to End Childhood Hunger, brought summer meals programs to all 67 counties in Florida, a 78% increase over 2004 levels. In Orange County alone, 5,100 more children received summer meals in 2009.

SNAP (food stamps) 

  • With our partners, increased participation in Washington state by 64% between August 2008 and May 2010, helping 370,000 more families receive benefits.
  • Increased number of farmers markets accepting Basic Food Program (SNAP) debit cards by 76% in2009. Basic Food Program redemptions at farmers markets rose $108,738 during that time.

WIC

  • With the Partnership to End Childhood Hunger in the Nation's Capital, increased participation in the District of Columbia by 17% in two years, providing benefits to nearly 2,500 more pregnant women, infants and children under 5.

Community Investment (grants)

  • In 2009, provided 284 nonprofits with grants totaling just over $4.5 million to support our programmatic priorities.

Public Awareness and Advocacy

  • Launched the No Kid Hungry Campaign® Nov. 10, 2010 with national spokesperson and Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
  • Through extensive broadcast, print, and on-line coverage related to the No Kid Hungry launch, dramatically raised the profile of childhood hunger in the U.S. and the solutions provided by the No Kid Hungry strategy. Engaged 26 corporate and anti-hunger alliance partners in public-awareness, cause marketing and employee involvement aspects of the No Kid Hungry Campaign before its November 10 launch.
  • Successfully advocated Congress to add a State Hunger Challenge Grant program to the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill.
  • Brought top chefs to Congressional offices to advocate for a strong Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill.
  • Recruited 700 chefs for the launch of First Lady's "Chefs Move to Schools".

Fundraising

  • Raised $24.8 million in 2010 through our fundraising platforms (Share Our Strength's Taste of the Nation, Great American Bake Sale, Dine Out for No Kid Hungry and A Tasteful Pursuit), donations and corporate sponsorships.
  • Welcomed 20,000 No Kid Hungry Pledge-Takers
  • Provided grants to 305 organizations in 2010, totaling $3.9 million.

Learn more in our 2009 Annual Report »

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Privacy and Donor Bill of Rights

Above all, we value your privacy, and we won't sell or rent your name or any other personally identifiable information to others. Period.

When it comes to your gift, we will honor and practice organizational values of respect, relationships, responsibility, reasoning and reciprocity.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us via email or by phone at (202) 649-4352.

Thank you for supporting the Share Our Strength! Together we can end childhood hunger in America.

*Gifts made to Share Our Strength and the No Kid Hungry Campaign represent a gift to our organizational mission and will be used to reach the highest number of children facing hunger in America. Share Our Strength does this by combining your gift with others to address child hunger community by community, state by state, and by leveraging federal dollars to reach the highest number of children facing hunger in America.. Your gift today will also leverage the time, expertise, and additional funds needed to end childhood hunger once and for all. And because we are an outstanding 5013c organization, you gift is tax deductible.

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