By Ryan Jewett, Kellogg National Account Executive, Costco
Earlier this year, I looked back at 2020 and considered the strife that so many people experienced.
As I thought about the year we’ve all had, I realized the importance of supporting each other through these difficult times – to put some good fortune back into the ether.
I’ve always wanted to do more to give back, personally. There are a lot of people on our Kellogg Costco team who feel the same way and probably many more in our company. We need to give back to the communities and customers who are enjoying our food.
So, instead of going off on our own, I figured it was better to pool our resources.
We had three priorities when choosing who and what to support:
- We knew our cause had to be around hunger, because it’s the focus of ourKellogg’s Better Daysglobal purpose platform. Plus, there are still millions of people struggling with food insecurity in the U.S.
- Our cause had to be easily accessible for the Costco team who are spread across the country.
- And our cause had to be achievable – we wanted to make an impact, but not overburden our people.
We chose to support Feeding America, because the organization meets all of our criteria above and they are a long-time partner of Kellogg’s (our company supports Feeding America annually on a corporate level).
Our goal is to donate 100 volunteer hours and $1,000 to Feeding America in 2021. But we won’t necessarily stop there.
Kellogg also has an initiative called Kellogg’s Cares, whereby the company donates $100 for every ten hours an employee or retiree volunteers at one charity. That can help us double (triple, even?) our support of Feeding America.
It’s a lot easier to make an impact when you’re doing it with a team.
COVID-19 has made our ability to volunteer a little tougher, since a lot of Feeding America locations aren’t currently accepting in-person volunteers. But they are offering virtual volunteering, which is an opportunity to learn what Feeding America is doing to combat hunger in our communities and help us as volunteers propagate the organization’s efforts.
Of course, we hope to volunteer in person very soon.
Though our Costco team spearheaded this effort, I encourage you to join us in supporting Feeding America by making a donation here – or consider other ways you can give back to your community.
Lucky or not, we all can benefit from more good karma these days.