Corporate-nonprofit alliance benefits Israel’s needy and hungry

One positive trend emerging from the current global economic climate: Charity organizations looking to lock in long-term support are turning to the commercial sector to establish social ventures with mutually beneficial returns.

A perfect example of this can be found in Israel. The American Friends of Meir Panim, a U.S. charity established to support Meir Panim Relief Centers — the largest supplier of food and social services for needy children and families in Israel — recently formed a corporate-charity alliance with Schulz Quality Catering, Israel’s largest corporate food service provider.

According to AFMP President David Roth, who spearheaded the alliance, Schulz Quality Catering has signed a lease for the institutional kitchen at Meir Panim’s Mortimer Zuckerman and Abigail Zuckerman Israel Nutrition Center in the town of Kiryat Gat in Israel’s Negev region.

In addition to using the kitchen to supply its existing clients, Schulz Quality Catering will manage Meir Panim’s 24-hour-a-day food service operations.

Through its large network of relief centers and food service centers throughout Israel, Meir Panim prepares, packages, delivers and serves tens of thousands of free, fresh, hot meals a day to impoverished Israeli families and children.

When production begins during the fourth quarter of 2010, the Israel Nutrition Center will feed more than 30,000 needy Israeli children and families a day, totaling more than a million meals a year.

The alliance began when a commercial kitchen consultant advising both Schulz and Meir Panim sensed a classic win-win situation, and introduced the two parties.

At the time, Schulz, which supplies catering and cafeteria services to more than 500 companies, mostly in Israel’s high-tech industry, was searching for a much larger kitchen to accommodate its growing client base.

Meir Panim, meanwhile, needed an experienced food service vendor to manage the enormous institutional kitchen it was building.

The facility is expected to create at least 200 new jobs for area residents, but the most significant benefit of the venture is that the annual lease payments make the Israel Nutrition Center entirely self-sustaining.