Tyson shifts strategy on charity donations

— When organizers put together the first Washington County Bar & Grill fundraiser in 2010, they called on Tyson Foods Inc. to contribute all the party’s protein.

Local law firms and area chefs gathered one Saturday afternoon at the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks in a battle to see who cooked the best ribs, brisket, pulled pork and chicken thighs. The garden was the beneficiary.

When it came time for the 2011 event, planners said Tyson was not able to provide the meat, but the company was willing to make a monetary donation or sponsor a table instead. The failure to secure the meat donation was a major contributor to the event being canceled. The garden was also denied products for its recent Chefs in the Garden event.

The days of casual donations - the simple “ask and you shall receive” - appear to be over for the world’s largest meat company.

Over the past year, Springdale-based Tyson has restructured its charitable giving programs to make more of an impact with its gifts. An application process and strict guidelines are set for donation requests, and beneficiaries are asked to generate reports showing that Tyson’s investments paid off.

“As the company’s grown, as the number of requests we get has grown, it’s become continually difficult to manage things the way we had been managing them,” said Annetta Young, director of corporate philanthropy at Tyson. Young was mentored by Tyson figurehead ArchieSchaffer, who retired from the company as executive vice president of corporate affairs and charitable giving.

It varies from year to year, but Tyson’s product and monetary donations generally range from $10 million to $15 million annually. Young said she doesn’t foresee any cutbacks in funding, though product donations could fluctuate.

“We just wanted to move to a program that was a little more aligned with our business, that would allow us to make more of an impact in the communities we’re in and be a little more strategic,” Young said.

THEN AND NOW

Previously, the company’s philosophy was to try to give to any and all organizations in which its employees were involved, “but over time, you’d be hard pressed to find a nonprofit in Northwest Arkansas or most of our communities that either don’t service our team members or that we don’t have volunteers or board members or involvement with,” Young explained.

Since 2000, Tyson’s national philanthropic focus has been hunger relief.

In the past dozen years, the company has donated upward of 90 million pounds of meat to hundreds of foodbanks, food pantries and relief agencies in 48 states. Last year’s launch of the KNOW Hunger campaign encourages people to “know” the scope of hunger in their communities and help reverse the trend. The company also partners with all the major hunger-relief organizations, including Share Our Strength, Lift Up America and Feeding America.

The Charitable Giving Guidelines section of the Tyson website specifies that major hunger-relief donations are made through Feeding America “and requests for direct product donations to other food pantries and soup kitchens are not accepted.”

Company policy also prohibits in-kind product donations for special events including galas, fundraisers, barbecue/cooking contests and the like. Maura Daly, chief communication and development officer for FeedingAmerica, explained Tyson’s desire to avoid “one-off ” product donations outside the company’s now-centralized process.

“First and foremost, it ensures that the food is going to the communities that need it the most,” she said. It also ensures better tracking of donations and ensures food safety.

“There will be winners and there will be losers in this new age of corporate philanthropy,” said Mark Shambley, president and chief executiveofficer of the Association of Corporate Contributions Professionals, a peer-to-peer professional network for executives such as Young.

“For years, companies just gave money away for the sake of giving it away without any real purpose or expectations, other than just ‘doing good,’” Shambley said.

He also referred to it as “checkbook philanthropy.”

A company wrote a check to one charity to keep others from asking, or made donations to groups or organizations that were near and dear to the heart of the chief executive or the chief executive’s spouse, he said.

The trend over the past 10-15 years has been to balance altruism with business priorities, which is what Tyson is doing, Shambley said.

“It’s not just about aligning with a cause,” he said. “It’s about whether you’re influencing that cause in a positive way.”

Corporate giving does not make much of a splash in the country’s overall philanthropy bucket, Shambley added. Statistics from the Giving USA Foundation’s 2012 report show that donations from corporations made up just 5 percent of the $298 billion of contributions in 2011. The majority of the giving routinely comes from individuals.

SEEKING TANGIBLE RESULTS

Young said there was a lot of input within the company - among executives, seniormanagement and employees - before setting the new rules for giving.

Research began in the spring of 2011 and the guidelines were put into place in April. In addition to hunger relief, projects or programs submitted for funding are limited to health and human services, education, community development and military/veterans.

Those whose requests are accepted are required to submit a grand impact report. It’s easier for some organizations than others to prove their cause is worthwhile, especially in writing.

For example, the Northwest Arkansas Children’s Shelter in Bentonville relies heavily on funding from grants and is familiar with the reporting process Tyson now requires.

“[Tyson], like many other organizations, are going to more of an evidence-based process that requires documentation of the needs that you’re meeting,” said Greg Russell, the shelter’s director of marketing. “We totally understand that. It’s a process we’re very familiar with, having to state the case for support.” Last month, the company gave $64,000 to establish the Tyson Foods’ Nutritious Meals Program at the shelter. The one-year grant funded the majority of the emergency shelter’s $112,000 budget for meals and snacks.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 11/05/2012

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