Guest Blog Post from Matt Pakula, Senior Manager, Social Responsibility for Tyson Foods, Inc. 

Helping our hungry neighbors takes more than cash contributions, product donations, and volunteer hours. At Tyson Foods, we know that the agencies and organizations that make up emergency food networks benefit through training in new tools, skills, and peer-to-peer connections that strengthens their ability to build capacity.

We’ve partnered with Forefront to provide up to 25 Illinois hunger relief organizations with capacity assessments, relevant training, and the support of Forefront’s community and their peers. The assessments use the Impact Capacity Assessment Tool (iCat) to identify strengths, challenges, and capacity building needs for each organization. The iCAT converts anonymous input into an online report that summarizes the identified strengths and challenges, and then takes it a step further by proposing recommendations for improvement. One participating organization may find they need help creating theories of change and working with outcomes and indicators, while another finds they need assistance with volunteer management, enhancing board development, or increasing individual fundraising. Perhaps it’s something completely different or unexpected!

And that’s when the opportunity to nurture the growth of each organization becomes real and tangible steps are developed. Specifically, the curriculum is tailored and curated to meet the learning needs of each cohort member. We want each participant to build new foundations of information, practice, and skills that they can use to strengthen and grow their organization.

Since 2000, Tyson Foods has donated more than 100 million pounds of protein in the United States. Now we want the world to see how much good that food can do by building the capacity of the organizations serving the hungry day-in and day-out.

Would you like to participate? Learn more about the program and how to apply here.