Speaker announcement: Thinking outside of the food box

Rick Gaupo walked onto the cam­pus of Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty with a leather brief­case in hand. He walked out with a back­pack.

Because his first gig was­n’t at a law or cor­po­rate office, where he may have end­ed up if he had fol­lowed his ini­tial inten­tions to study man­age­ment and law. His first posi­tion was actu­al­ly a vol­un­teer build­ing homes in rur­al Geor­gia, with Habi­tat for Human­i­ty.

Ever since, he has com­mit­ted his life to non­prof­its and meet­ing peo­ple’s phys­i­cal needs. And at TEDxSalem, Rick will share some of his per­spec­tives gained from two decades of non­prof­it lead­er­ship.

As a 26-year-old, Rick became the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Habi­tat for Human­i­ty of the Mid-Willamette Val­ley, when the orga­ni­za­tion could only afford one quar­ter-time staffer. He was it.

Fif­teen years lat­er, he left the orga­ni­za­tion with $4 mil­lion in assets — 100 times more than when he start­ed.

Today, he is the pres­i­dent of Mar­i­on-Polk Food Share, the region­al food bank that dis­trib­utes food to hun­gry peo­ple through near­ly 100 com­mu­ni­ty pantries and meal sites.

That’s the tra­di­tion­al def­i­n­i­tion of what the Food Share does as well as what food banks every­where have been doing for­ev­er. But in Salem, Rick and his team are think­ing out­side of the emer­gency food box.

The Food Share has mul­ti­ple ini­tia­tives occur­ring that you like­ly will not find at oth­er food banks. It is farm­ing hun­dreds of acres of land and test­ing three crops of quinoa. It’s mak­ing pro­tein pat­ties and part­ner­ing with incar­cer­at­ed youths to do so. It’s run­ning voca­tion­al train­ing and com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens.

The Food Share is show­ing the Salem com­mu­ni­ty how dream­ing big can lead to greater impact.

If your main engage­ment with the Food Share is donat­ing canned food every once in a while, no wor­ries. That will not go away, Rick says. But that isn’t close to cov­er­ing all of its efforts that boil down to feed­ing the hun­gry and pre­vent­ing future hunger.

As the work of the food bank changes, the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty could also change the way it thinks of hunger and what it can do to help. Food dri­ves may become less of a focus.

“Maybe some­day the donat­ed food would be the small­er part,” he said. “The larg­er part would be the farm, a pro­duce stand or a restau­rant.”

Bio

Name: Rick Gaupo

Born in: Port­land

Occu­pa­tion: Pres­i­dent at Mar­i­on-Polk Food Share

Spot him: On a drag­on boat this week­end at the World Beat Fes­ti­val!

Fam­i­ly: Wife, Eliz­a­beth, and two chil­dren, Hold­en, 15; and Isabela, 10

Ask him about: The uber roman­tic, 17-day motor­cy­cle trip Rick and Eliz­a­beth took with sleep­ing bags and lit­tle mon­ey post-col­lege. The route took them south on Cal­i­for­nia High­way 1 all the way to Tijua­na, Mex­i­co, then back up via High­way 395.

– Saerom Yoo, TEDxSalem sto­ry­teller