Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Lowy
Hi Adam, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I founded Move For Hunger in 2009. My family has owned a moving company for 100 years – dating back to my great-grandfather – which meant I grew up working on a moving truck. Over the years, we saw people throw away and leave behind tons of stuff. Unfortunately, some of that stuff was perfectly good food that should’ve been given to families in need rather than be thrown away. We started asking our customers if they wanted to donate their food when they moved, and in a month we collected 300 lbs of food (from essentially doing our jobs). People want to do good, but they don’t always know how. If you make it easy, folks will often take the opportunity to help a family in need.
Fast forward to today, and we’ve mobilized more than 1,200 moving companies across the US & Canada to make food recovery a core part of their daily operations. We also teamed up with multifamily apartment communities (since 74% of people move without a moving company). We have more than 500k apartment units that participate.
After building this large network of transportation partners, we realized we had a bigger role to play in food recovery. Today, we work with farmers, CPG companies, and distributers to recover entire trailer loads of short dated product or rejected loads that are still perfectly good but could not be sold in grocery stores.
To date, Move For Hunger has helped feed nearly 50 million people in need, and we’re just getting started!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
We’ve had ups and downs across the way – especially in the beginning. Essentially I was launching a national non-profit organization that no one had heard of. I remember cold calling moving companies in the early days and getting hung up on quite frequently. Eventually we learned to team up the the associations that the movers were a part of (like the California Moving & Warehousemen’s Association for example) and they helped provide some early credibility and encouraged their members to join our work.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Move For Hunger?
Move For Hunger is a national non-profit organization that mobilizes transportation resources to deliver surplus food to communities in need. Today, we work with a network of 1,200+ moving companies, 500k+ apartment units, and the nations leading freight & logistics companies to recover food and deliver it to food banks across the nation.
In addition, we organize a ton of fun and impactful employee engagement events for large companies and conferences. Visit moveforhunger.org to learn how you can get involved today.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Luck always plays a role. In our organization’s early days, we had the opportunity to compete on the Chase American Giving Awards (the one where everyone asked their friends to vote for you on Facebook). There was really nothing like a Peer to Peer voting competition like that, and we had already built a national network at the time. We did a great job, and with a hail mary request to get out the vote on social media to Bruce Springsteen, we were able to make it into the finals and ended up winning $125k in a star studded live special on NBC.
Those opportunities don’t happen regularly, but when they come, you take full advantage of them and leverage them until the next break comes. Luck is certainly part of the equation, but also positioning yourself to take advantage of the resources around you and “looking for that luck” are important too.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.moveforhunger.org
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/moveforhunger
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/moveforhunger
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/move-for-hunger/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/moveforhunger
