What is Souper Bowl of Caring?
Souper Bowl of Caring is a project that calls for organizations to collect canned food and money to donate to people in need, whether it be homeless shelters, soup kitchens, food banks, or hurricane relief. Souper Bowl of Caring is a great way to help others in need. In 2009, $10,252,666 and 4,715,195 pounds of food were collected.
Why is it called Souper Bowl of Caring?
Two plays on word are done here. One play on words is ‘Soup’, as in canned food soup, which makes sense because the project calls for food to be collected. The other is Super Bowl. The project is called Souper Bowl of Caring, which sounds similar to Super Bowl.
The official Souper Bowl website's mission statement is "Utilizing Super Bowl weekend to mobilize youth to fight hunger and poverty in their local communities."
A great way to look at the name is to remember that the winter holiday season (Hanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, New Years, etc.) all occur in mid to late December, which depletes the food banks of much of their food. The time after the winter holidays is very hard for the food banks. Your organization can use the Super Bowl to kick off your Souper Bowl of Caring to collect food for the homeless in your community.
Why do Souper Bowl?
Souper Bowl of Caring is a great way for anyone with little to no leadership experience to learn the tools of the trade. I started this project when I was a freshman in high school. That year, my school collected 1,500 cans of food for the local food bank in our community. Besides that, Souper Bowl of Caring also helps getting your school motivated to do such projects as a canned food collection drive.
How can I run Souper Bowl?
I’ve been doing this project for four years now. The way the project works is that my committee members and I will approach the faculty advisors of all the clubs and a coach for each of the sports teams in season and invite them to compete in the Souper Bowl canned food competition. Each club will get paired with another club of equal member size or with a club that challenges them. For instance, the boys basketball team in my school always competes against the girls basketball team. The clubs will collect the cans on their own and will try to beat the team they are up against. When the collection dates are passed, my committee members and I will go to each of the clubs/sports teams and count up their canned food total that we can send to the homeless shelters. All the counts are tallied and the winners are decided while all the cans are sent off to the food banks. The clubs that win each individual match up get certificates of their success, and the group collecting the most cans gets a pizza party.
That’s how I’ve been running the project at my school. Over the last three years, my school has collected and donated over 8,600 canned food items to local homeless shelters.
Why is this Nate’s #1 favorite project?
This project taught me what true leadership is. Through my work putting together Souper Bowl of Caring in my school, I’ve learned most of what I know as a leader and how to operate with other people. In face, I love this project so much, I’m promoting it to the world. The project is now recognized in my state (Florida) and my next goal is to get all of KEY Club International to recognize it.
How will you achieve your goal?
I run the project through KEY Club, so I am getting all the KEY Clubs in the Florida district to participate in a statewide competition with each other! The more the better. I will be using my site as a hub for clubs to learn about and check out how other organizations are doing in their canned food collection drives. If you are interested in competing in Souper Bowl of Caring, you can either visit the official website, or inform me on the contact us page. I suggest doing both. Since the first year of Souper Bowl as a Florida project is nearly complete, I will invite the other KEY Club Districts to participate in Souper Bowl and make the project even bigger.
What will I gain from participating?
In the long run you will get a satisfying feeling from the fact you helped others who are in need. There is no greater feeling! In the short run, those schools with KEY Clubs who are participating will get a chance to be a part of two awards that have been approved by the Florida KEY Club Board. The first, a Patch for your KEY Club banner, which looks good for your school, will be awarded to any KEY Club donating more than 200 cans of food to those in need and provided proof of the donation. The second, the one school who donates the most canned foods per active member in their club will receive a plaque award at our next District Convention. When Souper Bowl is approved by each KEY Club “District” - 33 in total encompassing the US and 27 other countries - will have its own set of rules for rewarding its clubs for participating.
How do I prove that I donated the food?
The shelter or cause you donated the cans to should provide you with a receipt or a signed letter declaring the number of cans you donated. Scan the document and submit it in the contact us page. In the comments section, type the name of your school, the number of active members your KEY Club has, the state, how many cans of food were donated, and where you donated the cans to. This way, all the information can be posted on the collections page, coming soon. Please be aware that this is a KEY Club approved project, but is not limited to KEY Club. I ask every club in my school to participate and don't always get the highest can counts from the largest clubs. You never know who has the motivation to bring in the most canned foods.
Do you have anything I can use?
Besides reading the page for what you need, I am working on some downloadable certificates for the clubs that lose the individual match ups and those who win them. Maybe some other materials that may prove helpful. They will be up for download soon. Feel free to contact me if you feel you need certain materials to run the project.
If I need help, who do I contact?
You can always contact me, through the contact us page, or you can go to the Souper Bowl website and find out more right there! Promotional materials from your state's well-known football teams are great incentive and are appropriate, considering this is a Souper Bowl competition.
What can I do at the Souper Bowl Website?
Plenty. First things first though, register. Without registering, you can’t report your totals and you can’t be a part of their statistics of how each state did in the year’s collection. After registering, feel free to search the site for promotional materials, help on how to run the project, materials for getting members excited to participate, etc. The Souper Bowl site is vast and has plenty of material for you to run your project effectively.
About your statewide competition, what if another club is already doing a school canned food project?
Participate, then report to me the totals on our contact us page. The Souper Bowl website allows everyone to register, so make sure that club registers and reports their totals to the site. There’s nothing wrong with another club doing the project, all I care about is that it gets done and that it gets reported.
What if my KEY Club does a canned food collection drive, but its in November, or a month other than February?
No problem, report to me your totals and you will be set. The award and patch have been approved. Therefore, any canned food drives run between November 1st and February 28/29 (depending on leap year) will count towards the official count for participating. Don't forget to report your totals to the Souper Bowl site as well.
What if my school isn’t motivated enough or simply can’t run such a project?
No worries, an easy way to get canned foods collected and donated is to go to your local Winn Dixie, Sam’s Club, BJ’s, etc. and ask for the canned foods that were damaged, but not open or expired. Then you can donate these cans to avoid wasting food. Of course, don’t donate open cans, or expired cans, that would be a health risk. Yet, just because there is a dent in the can, doesn’t mean that it is trash. I recently discovered that Publix has a program to donate dented cans to the needy so getting dented cans may be difficult but try to see if they’ll help in any other way.
What if I have further questions about Souper Bowl?
Please contact me on the contact us page, or feel free to discuss your questions in the forums.
