Firm: Protiviti
Type of Work: Community Outreach Initiative
Client: i on hunger
Throughout Protiviti's history, the firm has conducted food drives, hosted meal-packing events and partnered with non-profit organizations to provide meals to the hungry across the 20+ countries in which it operates. In November 2013, the firm hosted a meal-packing event in Chicago for which over 200 volunteers from Protiviti and its clients gathered to pack more than 50,000 meals for people in need, the largest event the firm had held to date, according to Joe Tarantino, President and CEO of Protiviti
Recognizing the passion of its people in addressing hunger, the leadership team at Protiviti wanted to support and amplify its efforts. So the idea of i on Hunger was born. Working together through food drives, meal-packing events and meal-delivery efforts, and by donating the cost of ingredients for meal-packing projects, Protiviti is bringing food to those who need it most, helping them to create better lives for themselves and their families.
Tarantino says one in nine people around the world are deficient in nutrition. "As a firm, we had always supported hunger efforts on sort of an ad hoc basis, but we thought we should focus our efforts," he says. "As an organization, we thought it would make sense for us to stand behind the initiative of hunger and would give us more scale as a company in the way we approached it."
In October 2014, Protiviti formally launched its i on Hunger initiative, committing all its offices worldwide to providing 1 million meals to people in need globally in one year.
By the end of the campaign, Protiviti significantly exceeded its goal and served up 1.6 million meals. In addition, more than 2,000 of the firm's employees and many of its clients will have participated in i on Hunger activities, benefiting more than 40 non-profit organizations worldwide including: Stop Hunger Now, Feed My Starving Children, Feeding Children Everywhere, City Harvest, Food Lifeline, Harvester's Foodbank, Ronald McDonald House and many others, Tarantino says.
On June 15th Protiviti exceeded its goal of providing 1 million meals four months ahead of schedule during its annual summer intern orientation. The firm's incoming class of interns, who were in Orlando for a week of orientation and training, packed 108,000 meals for the non-profit Stop Hunger Now, joined by Protiviti executives and local employees, together they took us over the one million milestone, says Dan O'Keefe, Managing Director of Protiviti. The i on Hunger initiative was O'Keefe's brainchild.
"I think we tapped into something that's pretty special about Protiviti," O'Keefe says. "One driving force behind the initiative was a promise to our clients that we would find additional ways to connect and engage with them. We're doing that through this effort, and we're collectively serving a greater need at the same time."
Tarantino says the effort sort of caught on like wildfire within the firm. "It's been infectious and has sort of caught on with both our people and our clients," he says. "It's become a little bit of a friendly competition among our offices and they are driven to outdo each other, and I think that's been one of the factors that's helped us exceed the goal by such a significant amount."
Rod Brooks, President & CEO of Stop Hunger Now, says that his organization considers Protiviti a "true champion" whose "bold vision and successful execution of its i on Hunger campaign should be recognized as setting a high bar for corporate engagement in the fight to end hunger."
Meanwhile, Andy Carr, Vice President of Development and Marketing at Feed My Starving Children, says Protiviti has "done wonderful work in engaging their employees, clients and communities to help FMSC."
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