Annual food drive helps families across Ohio
Scott Moyer, a principal in the firm’s Zanesville office, attempts to take the traveling Help Can Hunger trophy from Maribeth Wright, a principal in the firm’s Cambridge office.
Over the last 16 years, team members of regional accounting and business-consulting firm, Rea & Associates, have come together in a friendly competition to collect food for local nonprofit organizations and food banks.
The rules of the competition are collect more pounds of food per employee than the other offices and every dollar collected is counted as 2 pounds of food. As an incentive the winning office will not only secure an additional $500 donation from The Rea Foundation, which will be donated to the office's charity of choice, but also the office will be able to display the Help Can Hunger traveling trophy in its office for the next year.
After tight competition between the firm’s 12 offices, it was Rea & Associates’ Zanesville office that pulled away from the pack and was declared the winner after collecting 8,874 pounds of food (493 pounds of food per employee).
Their donation, as well as the additional $500 prize, was given to Christ’s Table, a nonprofit soup kitchen in Zanesville.
The Rea Foundation also awards second place with a $300 donation and third place with a $200 donation, which was given to The Salvation Army of Painesville (Mentor office) and the Backpack Food Program (Millersburg office), respectively.
This year, as a firm, the Help Can Hunger food drive, which is organized and managed by Rea employees, was successful in collecting 34,496 pounds of food. This total brought the overall total since starting the firm-wide competition in 2003 to more than 370,000 pounds.
“When you come together as a team, you can accomplish so much. The Help Can Hunger food drive is a testament to the great things that can happen when people pull together for the common good,” said Scott Moyer, CPA, a principal in the firm’s winning office. “The Zanesville office may have taken the trophy this year, but the real winners of this competition are our neighbors in need who now have access to the food and resources that were donated to our chosen nonprofits throughout Ohio.”
This year the following organizations benefited from the firm’s effort: Christ’s Table, Zanesville; The Salvation Army of Painesville; Backpack Food Program, Millersburg; Quaker Packs/Dover Philadelphia Food Pantry, New Philadelphia; Harvest for Hunger, Akron; Battered Women’s Shelter, Medina; Gospel Mission Food Pantry, Marietta; People to People Ministries, Wooster; West Ohio Food Bank, Lima; Guernsey County Senior Citizens Center and Christ’s Table, Cambridge; St. Joseph’s Vincentian’s Food Pantry, Amherst; Share-A-Christmas, New Philadelphia; and Dublin Food Pantry, Dublin.