Town Pump, Thompson Distributing lead charity drives Some businesses are satisfied to maximize profits and returns to shareholders. Others see the obligations of enterprises extending well beyond the bottom line.
Healthy businesses understand they have an responsibility to enhance the well being of the community where they operate and where their workers live. Town Pumps and Thompson Distributing are excellent examples of this philosophy.
Town Pump enjoys a sky-high profile across Montana for its convenience stores, fuel business, taverns and casinos, motels, car washes and more. Thompson is the southwest Montana Anheuser-Busch beer distributor.
The Town Pump Charitable Foundation is noted for public service campaigns such as its successful drive to equip every fire department in Montana with defibrillators to aid cardiac arrest victims.
But it is now also associated with an annual drive to provide funding for Montana's food banks, which contribute greatly to the nutrition requirements of the needy. These institutions, facing escalating demands, require cash for operations and to purchase perishables, but also need a continuous stream of non-perishable items.
So while Town Pumps raises cash, Thompson, on the other hand, concentrates on collecting actual food for the food bank in Butte, but also accepts cash donations in lieu of food.
This year, The Town Pump Foundation guaranteed a matching contribution of $300,000 for food banks across the state, $50,000 more than the previous year. They also ear-marked a $30,000 match in Butte, their corporate home town, for both the local food bank and the Butte Rescue Mission for the indigent.
The $300,000 was more than matched by individual contributions from Town Pump customers...way more than matched. In fact $1.45 million was raised in total! That beat last year's mark by $350,000! For the Butte operations, the $30,000 match guarantee raised a total of $109,000!
During the seven years Town Pump has been running the campaign, it has raised $4.85 million for food banks state-wide from the foundation and from its customers.
Speaking for the Town Pump Foundation, Maureen Kenneally said reports from around the country indicated giving to food banks in 2008 had declined significantly. "That contributions were up in Montana this year really says something wonderful about our residents. We've set new records every year since we launched this campaign," she said.
Town Pump has also started boosting the "Adopt-A-Family" campaign to provide Christmas gifts for the needy, this year contributing $50,000 in seed money to create 100 $500 grants, Kenneally noted.
Thompson Distributing for 20 years has put all its resources—employees, fuel, rolling stock and the requisite logistics—to work in early December to effect a massive food collection drive, assisted by the I-15/90 Search and Rescue group.
Scott Thompson quickly noted, "We get a lot of help from other local businesses as well. Each year we provide 120 pizzas, 20 gallons of chili, 20 dozen donuts, 20 dozen cookies, 50 cases of Pepsi and 20 cases of water for the 700 volunteers, all with the assistance of our local retailers."
The Butte Food Bank reports the Thompson campaign this year netted $35,000 in cash, but more importantly, 143,000 non-perishable food items estimated to weigh 56 tons! That takes a lot of folks and a lot of trucks to achieve such a scale in one day.
"In the 20 years we've been conducting the campaign," Thompson said, "a grand total of 1,575,000 items and $218,000 has been collected. Of course, none of this would be possible without the volunteer efforts of our crew, the I-15/90 Search and Rescue, volunteer fire departments and the hundreds of people who pitch in and do their part each year. The people of Butte are without equal in the way they care for one another."
JoAnn Cortese, who with her husband, Jim, is a co-director of the Butte Food Bank, said, "It always amazes me. I don't know of any other community that has a for-profit entity do
something like this for the community.
"We were getting anxious; it looked like touch and go in September, but we're more comfortable now," Cortese said. She also noted the food bank had been the recipient of $500 from the Butte-Silver Bow Tavern Association.
Demand for food assistance has been relatively steady for 10 years, Cortese reported, but that changed this year: the Butte Food Bank distributed 390,000 pounds of food in 2007 to 12,873 individuals; that jumped to 501,000 pounds and to 16,145 folks in 2008, she said.
Thompson Distributing works for the betterment of its communities year-around, though.
It was recently announced Thompson had been working closely with Anheuser-Busch to secure a major cash and in-kind corporate sponsorship for the National Folk Festival, which will be in its second year of a three-year run in Butte.
"The National Folk Festival coming to Butte is an important event to support because of everything it brings to the community," Scott Thompson, was quoted as saying in the Montana Standard in January. "As we saw last July, the immediate benefits of the festival are big."
The festival features music and culture from around the nation in a three-day program that last year drew upwards of 75,000 people to Butte from around the state, the country and world.
It is scheduled to run July 10-12 in 2009. There is no charge for any of the entertainment or events.
For more details about the 71st National Folk Festival, visit <www.nationalfolkfestival.com>.