Food Frenzy – Increased Competition That We Welcome

In today’s economy, we are all facing increased competition when it comes to winning new work and growing our business. It is rare that we look upon this competition as being favorable to our chances of success, but we are in the midst of a two-week competition where we welcome as many other competitors as possible.

The annual Food Frenzy program is a competition among our colleagues in the design and construction industry (there are other parallel competing sectors, such as law and accounting firms) established to raise money supporting Food Lifeline. Food Lifeline is a wonderful local organization that helps to provide healthy and nutritious food to individuals and families in need throughout Western Washington. Their efforts have been critically important in helping those who are less fortunate, and their work over the years has had a real positive impact on many individuals, families and communities in our region.

Food Frenzy is Food Lifeline’s biggest fundraising event of the year lasting two weeks each summer — this year it runs from July 8-22. This event specifically benefits children and their families who typically rely on subsidized school meal programs for breakfast and lunch during the academic year. When school is not in session during the summer, many kids often go without a couple of meals a day. Amazingly, for every $1 raised, Food Lifeline can provide approximately five meals to people in need. Each year, Food Lifeline is able to provide almost 1.5 million meals to children who might otherwise go without because of this program alone.

In 2008, Food Frenzy expanded to include the design and construction sector and we were invited to participate. Our office took the challenge to heart and raised enough money to earn us a first place finish in our sector. As the reigning champion, we served as a Challenging Firm and helped Food Lifeline to recruit over 30 design & construction firms for the 2009 Food Frenzy. Our efforts were a little too successful for our own good and we were unseated by the amazing team at Olson Kundig, who put on an impressive auction/dinner event that would rival any you’ve ever been to and earned them the coveted Champion’s Crown (see photo at right).

We understand that there a lot of worthy causes like this competing for your attention but we hope you will consider joining us in participating in Food Frenzy. We know this is a difficult request given the current state of the economy, but that is what makes it even more important this year as more and more people are impacted. Even small gifts can help to feed lots of hungry kids and families that really need help as inflation and job losses are forcing more and more people to make choices between paying the bills or feeding their families.

We’re going to give it our all this year, so to all our competitors: bring it on. Even if we don’t manage to “win,” we know that there are really no losers in this competition. Now that’s the kind of competition that we welcome.

Check out the rest of the Food Frenzy merchandise via our new Flickr account!