Addressing Child Hunger in the Show-Me State

“I sat in my chair and cried,” said Jimmy Carter, president and CEO of Missouri Farm and Home in Richmond, Mo.

What started the tears flowing, back in 2018, was a collection of statistics that popped up on his Facebook feed. They presented data on the scope of childhood hunger and unmet needs across his home state.

“Those figures really shocked me,” Carter said.

One graphic revealed that in Ray County, where his company is headquartered, nearly 1,100 children — about 20 percent of the child population — didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. Sixty-five percent of those children were eligible for federal nutrition assistance, while the 35 percent who did not meet the cutoff were still struggling every day to get their basic nutritional needs met.

Carter wasn’t satisfied with shedding a few righteous tears. He was determined to get up from his recliner and do something. That something was the Bluebird Project.

“As I envisioned it, [the Bluebird Project] would be an incentive program,” Carter said. “I knew that another mutual did a thing like profit sharing, where they would donate a certain amount to [an] agency’s charity of choice if [they] hit [their] quota. It seemed like such a neat idea, but we decided to narrow it down so it would focus just on helping children.”

Carter settled on the bluebird as the project’s symbol because it’s the state bird of Missouri and because bluebirds are a symbol of joy, prosperity, hope, and renewal, traditionally associated with happiness. Carter had more personal reasons for the choice as well: he also settled on the name to honor his late grandmother, with whom he shared a special bond.

However, good intentions and concrete action don’t always overlap, and while feeding hungry kids was a worthy goal, where was the money going to come from? When Carter pondered this question, it came to him that there was one expense of doing business whose return he’d never been satisfied with: marketing and advertising.

“It hit me that we spent all this money on advertising in newspapers and radio stations and so forth, but we couldn’t really quantify what we were getting for it. It seemed like the money we were paying out was just going to pay salaries at advertising agencies.”

Redirecting those funds, he thought, would have an immediate tangible benefit for Missouri children, and it would raise Missouri Farm and Home’s profile as well.

“I seemed to us that would be the best marketing and advertising thing we could do,” Carter said. “We’d be showing that we have a heart and that we care; that would help us, but above all it would help the children.”

Carter decided the Bluebird Project would focus on meeting children’s basic needs — food and clothing. Aid would be distributed through the schools, a good target because the agencies working with Missouri Farm and Home already had contacts in their local communities’ schools who knew what their students needed.

When agencies hit a set production target, Missouri Farm and Home allocates a given amount to the organization of their choice, provided those organizations serve Missouri children. Agencies that generate between five and 24 new policies qualify for a $500 donation; agencies signing 25 or more new policies qualify for a $1,000 donation, and so on, with all funds provided directly by Missouri Farm and Home.

“We focused on schools that knew which kids were lacking food at home,” Carter said. “The child’s school would fill a backpack with basic nutritional items they could then take home at the end of the day.”

In the end, Carter says, getting the Bluebird Project off the ground was “a simple thing,” though it took some time for it to gain momentum.

“In 2020 we had four agents participating in the project,” Carter said. “Now there are 15 agents. Not every agent that has met their target has participated, but the vast majority of those that qualify have joined in the effort.”

And the result?

“It’s worked out wonderfully,” Carter said. “We’ve distributed just under $50,000 over the past six years to different child-centered charities across Missouri.”

In the future, Carter hopes agents and agencies will join forces with other givers in their communities, distributing the credit along with the aid.

“I don’t know of anyone else that’s doing anything like this,” Carter said. “We would love to have it snowball and have multiple companies doing this. There’s a big need and it’s going to continue to be there. Honestly, mutual insurance is [by its nature] a community-minded industry. That’s how we’ve always operated, always will.”