Taking a singular approach to CSR

Breakfasts for Better Days (BfBD) Kellogg’s hunger relief programme, started in 2013 with the clear intention of creating a single global focus for all of Kellogg’s CSR activities. Bruce Learner, Senior CSR and Partnerships Manager for Kellogg in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, says :“For many years we had been doing a variety of different community initiatives all of which had merit and were impactful, but they were unconnected. We wanted to change the way we supported our communities and we wanted to make a bigger impact.”

It perhaps should come as no surprise given the company’s founder, WK Kellogg’s deeply-held commitment to helping others - especially children: “One of the most beneficial services that could be bestowed upon civilization is to make the lives of little children happier, healthier and more promising for their adult years.”

“Creating our new CSR strategy took a lot of hard work and energy, as a global company we needed to find something that would work and potentially make a difference in every community, in every part of the world,” explains Learner. “As well as identifying this global need we also have to be confident that the tools to meet the need are in place.”

Kellogg has now been creating a variety of breakfast programmes for 17 years and donating food to food banks for more than 30 years, so they were confident that these two established activities could be reproduced globally.

“In the early days, breakfast clubs in the UK were about helping schools provide a healthy breakfast in a stimulating and safe environment,” says Learner. “A few years ago, we started to notice a change; teachers were telling us that more children were coming to school hungry. Also around this time the profile of food banks started to rise dramatically and hunger in Europe became a harsh reality. We saw an opportunity to do something on a bigger scale that would address these issues.”

It’s an old saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and there are a number of reasons for this, especially for children.

“Ask any teacher,” says Learner, “and they can tell you which kids in their class regularly miss breakfast and how it affects their ability to learn, stay awake and alert in class. We are one of the world’s leading cereal companies so we know about the power of breakfast. We knew we were uniquely qualified to help.”

But while Kellogg’s made this big decision to focus its global CSR resources on hunger relief, making the change to support one global goal was not without its challenges.

“It wasn’t difficult to get things off the ground, but it wasn’t always easy, and we had to have some difficult conversations,” says Learner. “We had to meet with organisations that we’ve worked with for decades and tell them that we’d changed our strategy and that we would no longer be able to support them.”

What was harder still, recalls Learner, was when we shared the new strategy internally, some of their people and places would no longer be able to support their local communities in the same way.

“I very clearly remember one or two moments when I could see people trying to work out how they could possibly cut the ties with a local organisation that they had grown very close to personally and professionally,” says Learner.

Another internal challenge the company faced was “selling in” the cause. Highlighting the problem of hunger in Europe was a struggle for some, admits Learner. “In some places, people did not see hunger as a problem – or at least they would not acknowledge it. I suppose there is an element of embarrassment attached to admitting that hunger is a problem in seemingly-affluent places like London and Milan. But the main positive was that we were able to massively increase the help we gave to lots of food banks and breakfast programmes across the region, so for those organisations the change in focus made a huge difference to them – and through them, to thousands of people.”

Kellogg has set itself the goal of providing 1billion servings of cereal and snacks to children and families in need by the end of 2016, half of which are breakfast foods.

To deliver such a huge number of food servings takes some doing, but it is achieved through two routes: donating to food banks and food redistribution charities and creating more community-based breakfast programmes.

Learner says: “All of our donations of cash, product donations, employee volunteering, and our cause-related marketing, is focused on this one global goal – providing food for children and families in need.”

The geographical focus for Breakfasts for Better Days is communities close to Kellogg’s operations “We’re helping to tackle hunger in our own backyard,” says Learner.

Two and a half years on – as the company closes in on its target of 1 billion servings target, Learner is pleased with the progress that Kellogg has made. “The simplicity of the cause and the clear connection to our core business has made explaining what we do so simple and the constant drum roll of internal communications reinforces that message. At all levels of the business our cause is clearly understood and people can see the progress we are making and the impact we are having.”

Employee involvement is also critical so Kellogg introduced a regional volunteering policy. The focus is food and hunger related which helps employees understand the problem, maintains Learner. Kellogg also engages through global days of action like World Food Day: “Everyone is encouraged to get involved.”

So how does one cause help Kellogg measure success? “It’s a lot easier than it used to be,” says Learner. “We have one template and a few key metrics that we use to collect outputs and outcomes all over the world, all leading to progress against the one billion target.”

Having an established global cause also makes it easier to deliver cause-related marketing campaigns; for example the Europe-wide “Buy a box = Give a Bowl” campaign of 2014 where Kellogg donated 56m servings of cereal for each of the 56m packs of cereal it sold.

“If you have long-term partnerships with charities and other not for profit organisations, and they know that you are seriously committed to a cause, it makes it a lot easier to add a commercial dimension to the relationship,” highlights Learner. “Not once was our sincerity questioned. This was a natural progression of the relationships we’d built over the years.”

With Kellogg just having the one CSR programme, they are working to evolve it, to deliver new activities in new locations, such as Egypt and Russia. It has also started to run school vacation programmes in the UK – which could be extended to other European locations.

“I wish BfBD wasn’t needed,” says Learner. “But it is, so while there are families and children that need feeding, we will keep giving and evolving as a key CSR player in the global fight against hunger.”