Why Rally at the Registers?

By Pat Burns, General Manager

Local means many different things at City Market. Our Global Ends (aka Mission Statement in other organizations), specify that the Co-op will support the local food system. One section of our business plan this year was devoted entirely to “live local”. We spend significant time and energy working to increase availability of local products to our Members. And we’ve had much success - last fiscal year local products represented about 36% of our sales (that’s almost $13,750,000 in local product sales)!

But the “local” I want to talk about today involves our support of and collaboration with various non-profits through our new Rally for Change program. We spent some time over the summer reviewing the different programs we had in place to support local non-profits, including our Change for Local Non-Profits (aka bag refunds), tear off tags at the registers for the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, twice annual asks at the register for Hunger Free Vermont and the Intervale Center, etc. We also reviewed initiatives and ideas from other Co-ops around the country. We wanted to try a different, perhaps easier, way to allow Members and customers to support non-profits that are vital to our community and align closely with our Global Ends. And we’d been noticing that for some time, donations to the Food Shelf had been dramatically decreasing (through the use of the tear-off tags at the register) at precisely the time that the Food Shelf is in the midst of offering some very innovative programs and is working with so many of our neighbors. Through this work, the Rally for Change program was created and as of October 1, you may have noticed that cashiers began asking if you’d like to round up your order to the nearest dollar to support our local community partners.

Each month, 40% of the Rally for Change donations support the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf. Then we have two rotating partnerships, one at 10% for local non-profits that don’t align as closely with our Global Ends, but are still doing important work in our community, and another 50% partnership for local non-profits that align closely with our Global Ends and goals. In October, our 10% partner was Puppets in Education and our 50% partner was the Intervale Center. In 31 days and over almost 32,000 transactions with Rally for Change contributions, Members and customers donated just over $12,567. What an exciting way to leverage pocket change to effect larger community change! We mailed a check for over $5,000 to the Food Shelf - this is the largest monthly donation to the Food Shelf in all the years since we’ve been tracking donations at the registers. Our hope is to continue this trend in a way that feels comfortable for customers (whether you round up or not), supports our local non-profits and doesn’t detract from larger donations that you might make to these non-profit partners.

When we rolled out Rally for Change in October, we knew it was a big difference for staff and Members. For that reason we’ll be testing it for the first 3 to 6 months to gather feedback and see if we are meeting initial expectations. So far, we’re on track and we’re doing some fine tuning on staff training and the consistency of how we talk about the program in the Co-op. We also have heard from a few Members that they don’t like being asked about donations on a regular basis. We want to make sure that no one ever feels pressured to give or that there’s any sense of expectation coming from us. We know we have many Members who are already giving to our non-profit partners, and we also have many Members who are not able or not interested in donating. We think that there is enough to be gained in the community by working through any kinks in the program as we roll it out and continuing to find ways to talk about it with customers that don’t feel judgmental or lead with expectations.

You, our Members, have a long history of being a vehicle for positive change in our community. I appreciate your support of community-minded Co-op programs, including Rally for Change, and look forward to your continued feedback so that we may improve how we represent you and how we support our community.

Happy Holidays!
Pat