48 of 50: Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin
Most people don’t know what it feels like to be truly hungry. But for about one in ten people in southwestern Wisconsin, hunger is a reality.
So where can they turn for help?
Since 1986, Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin has been helping to feed hungry people by organizing and leading a network of community partnerships dedicated to relieving hunger. As the region’s largest hunger-relief organization, it meets almost a million requests for support each year. A dollar donated to Second Harvest provides three meals, and for every one of those dollars, 94 cents goes directly to providing meals.
Partnering with others in the community is crucial for the effectiveness of Second Harvest, which is why support from people and businesses in the area is so important.
What could be more essential than having enough to eat?
“No one in our community should go hungry,” says M3’s Tom Golden. “Food is a basic need and when people are hungry it can negatively affect so many things—especially children in school who may struggle because they simply don’t have enough to eat.” When Tom came to M3 in 2005, he brought with him his passion to support Second Harvest, and it wasn’t long before others at the company got swept up in that passion. Today, M3 has a Second Harvest committee that organizes a campaign each year that includes:
- A silent auction event. M3 raised enough money to provide over 11,600 in 2018.
- A campaign favorite, the Pie in the Face competition. Select employees put their faces on the line. Employees “vote” with cash and the individual raising the most money gets a pie in the face at the end of the campaign. Pie in the Face raised enough money for nearly 17,100 meals in 2018.
- M3 employees volunteering at the Second Harvest warehouse or its distribution centers by sorting and organizing donated food and getting it onto to refrigerated trucks.
- M3 employees working as donation sorter and phone bank volunteers during the Share Your Holidays event.
M3 has ranked 3rd in the top 10 companies for our personal donations made to Second Harvest. Overall, M3 donated the equivalent of 59,565 meals in 2017 while our total 2018 campaign is tracking at 59,388 meals at the time of this post. Giving back to the communities in which we live and work has always been an integral part of M3’s culture. Not only does the company give back at a corporate level, but we encourage our employees to give back personally as well. For some this means giving money, while others choose to donate their time—or do both.
M3 has been a wonderful supporter of Second Harvest and the clients we serve for many years. It started back in 2002 with a basic food drive, and now since 2011 they have been a sponsor of our largest campaign of the year, the NBC15 Share Your Holidays campaign. But their dedication to the Share Your Holidays campaign is more than just a financial donation. There is a commitment to ending hunger that permeates through every level of the organization. We are incredibly grateful for everything M3 has done to make our community a better place to live!
— Dan Stein
President & CEO | Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin
