Finding a Way: Making Your CSR Efforts Stick

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Apr 02, 2016 Finding a Way: Making Your CSR Efforts Stick

Our production team had the very fortunate opportunity last week to help one of our longtime clients build a significant CSR component into their annual association event. On behalf of ACG San Francisco, event producer Tim Landherr challenged our vendor partner The Palace Hotel to help find a way to relay the excess food from a large plated lunch. Historically, saving the excess food from such an F&B function presents several challenges, not the least of which is one of resources.

Our first step towards a solution was partnering with Food Runners to pick up and relay the food. Next the Meetings and Events team at Palace Hotel accepted the challenge. Tim says, “It just took some coordination with the hotel to approve the pack-up with the kitchen and then calling Food Runners to come pick it up.” Although a simple sounding solution, there can often be more than a couple of roadblocks in this situation. But with a little more dialogue we developed a plan that made the situation work for all parties with the hotel’s internal team stepping in to assist with resources.

The results were overwhelming. After the event, Food Runners sent us the following message:

Thanks for encouraging the Palace to donate the leftover food from your event yesterday. The donation was fantastic and all packed up beautifully. The receiving shelter was beside themselves!

But the story does not end there. The hotel, for their part, let us know that they “…loved doing this” and that they were “…going to make sure we do more of this type of donations.” This is an illustration of a true win/win and something that is at the core of all of our CSR efforts here at Wilsonwest: sustainable solution models.

So what was the role of the event producer and Wilsonwest in all of this? We helped find a way to make the plan actionable by adding a framework to the overall process as well as both identifying and helping to eliminate roadblocks.

Thank you to ACG for supporting these kinds of efforts within their event framework and to The Palace Hotel for rising to the occasion!

 

Finally, we want to take a moment to recognize Food Runners. Their message about Community strikes a resonant chord with our core values:

Food Runners is a focal point where food donors, volunteers and recipients connect with their community. As Mary [Risley, Founder] explains, “People who like to cook are generous, and they like to see others being fed. The volunteers who pick up and deliver the food have an immediate sense of helping others at the most fundamental level. And the recipients have tangible proof that their fellow San Franciscans really care.”

We strongly encourage you to follow this link to learn more about the organization and the great work that they are doing.