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Community Involvement
At the heart of SUPERVALU's charitable giving is the idea that being a good corporate citizen is an ongoing responsibility. By helping to create stronger communities, we enhance the quality of life for our customers and employees. SUPERVALU has a significant presence in dozens of communities and we strive to give to those organizations where we can do the most good.
Last year SUPERVALU's charitable giving across the company reached approximately $72 million. We are also proud of our volunteerism. Throughout SUPERVALU, thousands of employees offer time, energy and support to many important causes.
Here's a look at just a few of the many ways SUPERVALU and our employees support the communities in which we operate.
Fighting Hunger
All of SUPERVALU's operations donate food to Second Harvest, the nation's leading domestic hunger relief organization. Through our national partnership with Second Harvest, we donated nearly eight million pounds of product in 2003 to help end hunger. SUPERVALU personnel also offer logistics support and expertise, and several sit on Second Harvest's Board of Directors.
SUPERVALU Foundation also participates in the Food for All campaign, a national, non-profit group whose mission is to help alleviate hunger and malnutrition by fostering long-term, self-help solutions. In 2003, our retail banners raised over $380,000 in customer and employee donations. Mike Jackson, SUPERVALU president and COO, also sits on Food for All's Board of Directors.
Go Red
SUPERVALU is honored to support the American Heart Association’s Go Red For Women Campaign – a cause that strives to bring attention to heart disease, which kills over 480,000 women a year, about one per minute.
Chairing the 2007-2008 Twin Cities Go Red For Women Campaign is SUPERVALU Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Pamela Knous, who will lead the charge to raise funds throughout the community to support local cardiovascular research, educational programs and to inspire women to commit to a heart-healthy lifestyle. SUPERVALU has already pledged $50,000 to the cause and hopes to raise even more to benefit the campaign.
Since 1924 the American Heart Association has helped protect people of all ages and ethnicities from the ravages of heart disease and stroke by raising money for research and public education campaigns. These diseases, the nation’s No. 1 and No. 3 killers, claim more than 930,000 American lives a year. In 2005, the American Heart Association awarded close to $2.4 million to research institutions in Minnesota. Nationwide, the American Heart Association invested $135 million for research last year and more than $1 billion over the last decade. Research funded by the American Heart Association has yielded important discoveries such as CPR, life-extending drugs, pacemakers, and bypass surgery.
Click here for more information about Go Red For Women.
Helping Local Schools
In 2004, SUPERVALU's Northern Distribution Region donated 20 mobile iBook computers, valued at over $20,000, to a local elementary school. The computers will be used for SUPERVALU's e-mentoring program with the school, which matches SUPERVALU employees with students to correspond via email throughout the course of the year to help with assignments and projects.
SUPERVALU's
bigg's banner uses the "Book Bananza" to challenge students
in Cincinnati schools to read for 100,000 minutes per school each month.
Students are motivated by hearing local celebrities read to them over
the school's public address system and by the promise of a banana split
from bigg's for each student if the school meets its goal. At one elementary
school, students read a total of 348,000 minutes in a single month.
Developing Tomorrow's Workforce
SUPERVALU's Save-A-Lot banner is a national leader in the hiring and retention of employees from communities of need. Over the past several years, Save-A-Lot has hired over 4,400 qualified employees through various partnerships and programs, and was recently recognized by U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House for its leadership role.
SUPERVALU sponsors the LEAD Summer Business Institute at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. Each summer, more than 30 high school seniors from underrepresented populations around the U.S. participate in a three-week program designed to help them gain an understanding of the functional areas of business and improve their skills in leadership and communication. SUPERVALU representatives also lead sessions in the classroom portion of the program.
Promoting Social Services
SUPERVALU's Farm Fresh Food & Pharmacy banner undertook a fundraising campaign to help purchase a new Mobile Intensive Care Unit for the Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters in Norfolk, Virginia. The unit is a newborn and pediatric special care unit that transports critically ill children from medical facilities throughout the region to the hospital.
SUPERVALU's Hornbacher's banner sponsors an annual week-long Cherries for Charity event that benefits the local Rape and Crisis Abuse Center in the Fargo, North Dakota and Moorhead, Minnesota areas. For every pound of cherries sold during the event, Hornbacher's donates 15 cents, which has amounted to more than $75,000 over the years.