Where Most Needed

Charity Bake Sale Proponents Reject Nutritional Guidelines

A New York Times article about the impact of California regulation of food sales during school hours draws widespread scorn. 

New York's Largest Soup Kitchen Still Dishing It Out

A New Yorker writer offers an affectionate profile that manages to reveal some of the paradoxes of serving free food in church. 

Turkey Rescue a Thankless Task

Amid national feasting, a few charities look out for a handful of birds that escape the annual massacre.

Charity Restaurants Trade Work for Food

One World Everybody Eats in Salt Lake City and SAME Cafe in Denver try out different social venture models for feeding those in need. 

The Farm Bill, Foundations, & Food Banks

Journalists and documentarians rather than charities and foundations are at the front lines of advocacy for food-related reforms. 

Ellen Degeneres Pigs Out on Girl Scout Cookies

Talk show host buys 1,000 boxes from an Ashtabula, Ohio troop.  Cookie season runs through April, supporting the only major charity that supports itself primarily through sale of a non-donated product.

Also: see the related article "Girl Scouts Fib about Trans Fats (Legally)."

People in Need Don't Need Mac & Cheese

Food drives still sending the message that charity means giving the bare minimum. 

Charity Liquor Licenses Drive San Francisco's Festival Scene

But escalating costs of police and city services and new restrictions on noise and alcohol may be bringing the decades-long charity-sponsored binge to an end. 

Venture Philanthropy Missed the Boat: Sushi & Rev. Moon

Buzz words like "venture philanthropy," "social entrepreneur," and "social enterprise" have been the basis for many nonprofit conference sessions and even a journal.  The idea is to employ the techniques of capitalism to achieve a social mission.  Often this involves rather small scale community development ventures. 

But now the Chicago Tribune lays out the story of the connection between the Unification Church of Rev. Myung Sun Moon and the sushi industry.  Rev. Moon set out his plan in a 1980 sermon "The Way of Tuna," which is more of a strategic plan than a traditional sermon.  The story explains how it all then came to pass. 

True World Foods in Elk Grove Village now handles the distribution of 70% of the sushi fish in the United States.  Master Marine, an associated boat building venture, constructed the fleet (and does repairs for US Coast Guard and Navy ships).  The mass weddings made the Japanese members American citizens so they could fish in US waters.  Gloucester, Massachusetts has long settled into its life as a "Moonie town" (though few would use that term, now considered derogatory).

The story shows that "social enterprise" does work, but the current academic proponents of the idea are mere pikers.  To make a difference, entrepreneurial charities may have to think on a bigger scale, maybe even on a messianic scale. 

Liability Concerns Claimed as Wal-Mart Drops Local Food Donation

Communities even in Anchorage are compaining about Wal-Mart's change of policy to end local donation of food that has passed expiration date.  There is also major concern in Sacramento, which complained about the inadequacy of claims that liability concerns prompted the change in policy. 

But bloggers are doubting that this means much change in actual practice; they question whether many local Wal-Marts or Sams Clubs were donating much to begin with.  This is confirmed in Dallas, where the local food bank said it only received canned goods from the retailer.  It could be just a corporate policy to stamp out those relatively isolated cases of local compassion. 

My inclination is to agree with this interpretation.  Gleaning is in many ways the antithesis of efficiency, and it would seem likely that Wal-Mart's culture of efficiency would decrease the likelihood that a store manager would voluntarily participate in food donations.