NEW FICAH

David Merrefield

A new era has begun at the Food Industry Crusade Against Hunger, an era that recognizes new industry realities and that should carry the organization nicely into the next century.

As most industry watchers know, FICAH was founded a dozen years ago by industry executives. Originally, it was intended to be a self-help feeding program aimed at providing renewable resources to people in less-developed parts of the world, and, as time went on, also to people in this country who could benefit from such programs. FICAH was sponsored in its formative years mostly by large donations made by major wholesalers, retailers and manufacturers.

Needless to relate, the world has changed a lot in the intervening years. The industry has consolidated, competition has increased markedly and the way companies generate profits has evolved. So, as years went along, it became less and less prudent for FICAH to rely entirely on industry donations as its funding source. In response, FICAH shifted a portion of its fund raising to a consumer-donation point-of-purchase program. The retailer program was confined to year-end holidays.

But now FICAH has entered a new era -- an era that might be seen as the logical outcome of these industry trends and the steps FICAH took to accommodate to them.

The era started last month with the completion of the merger of FICAH and Food For All. The latter is a California-based program, founded in 1985, that shares with FICAH the goal of raising and apportioning resources that would spawn self-sustaining solutions to hunger.

But there are internal differences between the two organizations, perhaps the chief of which is that Food For All has always been a consumer-driven fund-raising organization, and was never reliant on corporate donations for very much of its funding.

Food For All raises most of its funds by means of a year-round fund-raising program based on scannable POP coupons, in much the manner of FICAH's holiday program. As for deployment of funds raised, Food For All traditionally has been aimed more at the support of domestic programs: Some 70% of its proceeds are plowed into domestic programs. The combined organization, now known as FICAH, will proceed on the basis of combining the best of both, with the consumer-driven portion of its fund-raising program to be known as Food For All.

The goal of the combined organization is to raise by means of both seasonal and year-round POP programs, plus corporate grants, nearly $2.7 million this year. Most of the funds will be distributed domestically and in the same areas where funds were raised. Examples of domestic grant recipients include job-training programs, youth services and urban gardens.

The advantage of this union between the organizations is that the possibility of competition between these similar endeavors has been erased and that all aspects of the food industry -- retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, brokers and consumers -- now can look to the FICAH organization to represent them in the domestic and worldwide fight against hunger.

FICAH isn't the only organization worthy of support, but it's the industry's own organization and is well worth some form of participation. Retailers can support FICAH by authorizing the POP program. Those in other industry sectors also can cooperate by offering logistical support for the POP program, or in many other ways.