BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Another man fighting hunger -- in a unique way -- is Bill Shore, a former public servant who decided 18 years ago that he personally ought to do something to help hungry people. He founded an organization called Share Our Strength, which is based on Shore's discovery that people will give really generously if you ask them to donate not money but what they know how to do.BILL SHORE (Founder, "Share Our Strength"): How are you? Great to see you.
Unidentified Man #1: Good to see you again. Yeah. This is great.
Mr. SHORE: Good to have you here. This is awesome, huh?
ABERNETHY: Bill Shore works the crowd at a fundraiser in New York. He's the founder and leader of an anti-hunger organization called "Share Our Strength." Over nearly 20 years, working primarily with prominent chefs and others in the food service industry, Bill Shore and "Share Our Strength" have raised more than $100 million to help people who don't have enough to eat. Shore's breakthrough invention was to figure out how a not-for-profit charity could not just redistribute wealth, but create it.Mr. SHORE: Everybody has a strength to share. Everybody's been given a gift of some type, and if we can tap into that, if we can create vehicles in which people can contribute whatever their particular unique talent or gift is, that that can really change the world.
ABERNETHY: It was his outrage at the famine in Ethiopia in 1984 that led Shore to create "Share Our Strength." SOS takes no money from government and relatively little from foundations, but it has made grants to more than 1,000 organizations, some abroad, most helping the 33 million Americans who cannot get through the month without food aid -- people such as these men in downtown Washington, D.C., three blocks from the White House.
The key to Shore's success was his discovery that people who might not want to write a check for a good cause will often respond generously if you ask them to share their skill, to donate work they're good at doing. Shore recruited 8,000 chefs to do for hunger what they do best, which is cook. Every year, around the country, there are 100 so-called Taste of the Nation events.Great chefs prepare and donate their best dishes; local volunteers do the organizing, people pay up to $200 to come sample the food; and all the money goes to fight hunger.
Mr. SHORE: When you add up the Taste of the Nations around the country for the last 15 years, Share Our Strength has raised over $50 million just through Taste of the Nation.
ABERNETHY: Shore also discovered that some corporations would pay to sponsor "Share Our Strength" events. One reason, says Shore, is good citizenship, another is that their participation helps companies build good relations with the chefs they want as customers.
In the 1990s, one sponsor, American Express, agreed to give three cents to "Share Our Strength" every time someone used its credit card. That deal brought SOS twenty-two and a half million. Bill Shore did the commercials.
Shore grew up in Pittsburgh, where his parents were non-observant Jews, who did not think he should be bar mitzvahed. They offered an explanation Shore has never forgotten.
Mr. SHORE: And I remember my parents said to me, "We are going to teach you to be a good neighbor, and to serve others, and if you understand both of those things, how to really be good to the people around you, you'll know the major principles of every religion in the world."ABERNETHY: Before starting "Share Our Strength," Shore was the top aide to two U.S. Senators. In 13 years at the Capitol, he says he learned that when it comes to helping the poor, government programs are necessary but not enough.
Instead of chefs, coaches, such as these at Notre Dame, giving their skills to teach sports, with parents or sponsors paying tuition to "Share Our Strength."
RICK COHEN (Executive Director, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy): The increasingly dominant corporate model of charity is strategic philanthropy, where the corporate image, the corporate bottom line and the corporate perspective on what it wants non-profits to do or not do is taking hold. And that is something that non-profits had better be careful about, otherwise they sacrifice their mission and their values.
ABERNETHY: Last week, Bill Shore and some of his supporters were in Mississippi and Tennessee exploring whether "Share Our Strength" could help programs there fighting poverty and hunger. Shore wants SOS to become a channel for which all social service groups can find out what the best of them have learned.
