The Triad Holiday Challenge is a corporate-based initiative that encourages businesses to do their part to feed the hungry in the Triad by hosting internal food drives and fundraisers. Organized by Sealy, FOX8 and Old Dominion Freight Lines, the Challenge benefits eight local Salvation Army food pantries. Held in the fall prior to the Sealy FOX8 Holiday Concerts in December, the annual Triad Holiday Challenge is featured on FOX8 News to raise awareness.

The Cause: Supplying Food to Local Salvation Army Food Pantries

The food that is collected at the Triad Holiday Challenge goes to stock The Salvation Army’s food pantries across the Piedmont.  That food is used to help feed the community throughout the year in a number of ways, including distributing bags of groceries to needy families and individuals at The Salvation Army’s Center of Hope shelters across the Piedmont. 

How much is that food needed?  Winston-Salem was ranked third worst among metropolitan areas in the U.S. for food hardship, followed by Greensboro/High Point, which ranked fourth,  according to the Food Research and Action Center’s most recent study Food Hardship in America 2010. 

Last year with the support of the community, The Salvation Army in Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point was able to provide 33,306 bags of food to hungry families and individuals. The food from the 2011  Triad Holiday Challenge and Sealy Holiday Concerts helped keep The Salvation Army’s food pantries stocked until July. Our goal this year is to help fill those pantries with enough food so they are stocked year-round. We cannot accomplish this without the participation of more companies and schools!

Open Invitation to Triad Companies and Schools

New to the Triad Holiday Challenge? We welcome your organization’s participation. Every little bit helps local families who might otherwise go hungry. We make it easy for companies−large and small−to get started by providing online registration, campaign materials and lots of great campaign ideas on our TriadHolidayChallenge.com website. In addition, Old Dominion will deliver the donation boxes to your company and transport your donated food items to the Salvation Army at the end of the Challenge. 

The Salvation Army would like to thank the division winners of last year’s Triad Holiday Challenge—Piedmont Natural Gas (Greensboro), Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP and Banner Pharmacaps—and the 20 other participating companies and schools that helped stock our food pantries for several months.

While the friendly competition is fun, all of the participating companies, along with our community, are ultimately winners when we pull together to collect food and funds for The Salvation Army food pantries to feed hungry families. 

Get started now by registering your company at SurveyMonkey.com/s/thc_register and then checking out the Coordinator Game Plan  and other campaign materials on this site.

The “Think Outside the Can” theme is a great reminder that you can stretch employee donations further by submitting financial donations to the Salvation Army. Every dollar contribution is converted into three cans of food!  In addition, please check out the list of most needed food on TriadHolidayChallenge.com. To encourage collection of these items, we are once again promoting Foodx2, in which most needed items count for double points in the Challenge (for example, a can of tuna would count for two points). Also remember, not all nonperishable food that The Salvation Army needs is canned food.