For more than a decade, Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC) has turned its company values into real, meaningful impact that helps nourish the communities where its employees live and work.
KCNSC, managed by Honeywell FM&T, is an engineering and manufacturing facility that creates 80 percent of the non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons in the United States. Each employee receives 40 hours of volunteer time a year to devote to local nonprofits that fall under the company’s three community pillars: society, education and environment.
KCNSC Senior Community Relations Specialist Amanda Hill says Harvesters is always a top choice, with over half of their annual volunteer hours spent fighting food insecurity. She goes on to explain that none of those pillars are possible without meeting people’s most basic need first: food.
“When we think about education, and we say we want kids to get these degrees in STEM or [develop] manufacturing skills like welding and lathing, we can’t even begin to have those conversations until we have a baseline of, those kids are actually eating, feel secure and are able to focus in class because they have proper nutrition,” says Amanda.
KCNSC has poured into Harvesters’ mission in several ways over the years, including volunteering at the warehouse, making handwritten cards for senior food boxes, crafting reusable t-shirt bags for our bus stop pantries and sponsoring fundraising events. However, the past two years, their employees haven’t stopped raving about the switch to volunteer takeovers, where more than 130 employees filter through our food bank all day, simply because of how much they love being able to “put their hands on the meals and the food that people in our community are going to be eating.”
“My favorite thing is that it brings your hearts and hands together for something bigger than just your day-to-day mission,” Amanda expresses. “And not that our day-to-day mission at KCNSC isn’t one that is crucial to the foundation of defense and security of our nation, but also coming together to defend the dignity and honor of the food and the security right here in the backyard of where we live, work and play is one of the coolest things to be able to do.”
Amanda adds that there is no better way to boost employee morale, improve retention and lower turnover rates than giving teams opportunities to invest in community work together.
We are grateful to KCNSC for its lifetime giving of over 500,000 meals through financial support and countless volunteer hours. To learn how to get your company involved, visit www.harvesters.org/corporategiving.
