Fingerpaint packs 80,000 meals in Operation Lunch Lady

 

For the second year in a row, Fingerpaint used its creative talent and passion for giving back as an opportunity to meet the needs of hungry families across the country. On June 28, Fingerpaint employees suited up in hairnets, aprons, and gloves to pack 80,000 nonperishable meals for food pantries in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Arizona in the communities surrounding their offices.

Fingerpaint management says the effort was born from the knowledge that food pantry donations dwindle in the summer while the demand goes up, as families who rely on free and reduced lunch programs during the school year do not have access to those resources during the summer. As a result, Fingerpaint started Operation Lunch Lady, an initiative supported by a robust creative campaign developed in-house, in which the agency’s employees raise awareness and funds to fuel the company-wide Philanthropy Day on the last Friday of June. This year, Fingerpaint raised more than $20,000.

“We look forward to this day all year long,” says Bo Goliber, Fingerpaint’s head of philanthropy. “It’s amazing to watch our staff donate and reach out to their networks to ask for support – and offer their creative talents to create a full advertising campaign around the initiative. Packing the meals together at each of our offices, working toward our common goal, is a uniting force for our company and an incredible way to give back to our respective communities.”

In partnership with Midwest-based humanitarian organization The Pack Shack, each Fingerpaint office hosted “Feed the Funnel Parties,” where employees packed meals made from shelf-stable ingredients in an assembly line. Once packed, the meals were picked up by hunger-relief organizations in each community where Fingerpaint has a presence.

The organizations receiving the packed meals were Food Pantries for the Capital District (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.), which distributes food to multiple member food pantries in the region; Community FoodBank of New Jersey and Interfaith Food Pantry and Resource Center (Cedar Knolls, N.J.); MontCo Anti-Hunger Network (Conshohocken, Pa.), which distributes to multiple member food pantries in the region; and Chicanos Por La Causa (Phoenix, Ariz.).