Subject: Quarterly Board Report
From: "Rick Leach" <[email-masked]>
To: "Allison Sapp " <[email-masked]>,Allyson Alvaré <[email-masked]>, "Bonnie Raquet" <[email-masked]>, "Carl W. Stern" <[email-masked]>, "Carrie P. Morgan" <[email-masked]>, "Dan Glickman" <[email-masked]>, "Darcell Savage" <[email-masked]>, "Gina Gallardo" <[email-masked]>, "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Joe Stone" <[email-masked]>, "Larry Darrow" <[email-masked]>, "Lauren Smith" <[email-masked]>, "Marshall Matz" <[email-masked]>, "Pat Walton Butcher" <[email-masked]>, "Randy Russell" <
Cc: "Jessamyn Sarmiento" <[email-masked]>, "Shannon Hiskey" <[email-masked]>, "Marianne Berner" <[email-masked]>, "Debbie Saidy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2018 19:06:14 +0000

Dear Members of the Board,

Following is our quarterly update on key activities at WFP USA.  Please contact me if you have any questions or want additional information.  Thank you.

REVENUE

We generated $2.67M million in revenue through March, slightly surpassing our quarterly revenue target.

EXPENSES

Expenses through March were under budget ($1.7M actual vs. $2.1M projected). However, we expect the final annual budget to be consistent with initial projections, as costs projected in Q1 will be incurred in subsequent months.

The 2017 audit was completed in March, earning a clean audit in a record four days.

FY 2018 APPROPRIATIONS

In late March, Congress passed and the President signed the FY2018 Omnibus Appropriations bill, including increases for the main accounts that directly benefit WFP (Title II, McGovern-Dole and IDA).

Notes:

  *   Title II funding (for purchase and distribution of U.S. commodities) increased by $116 million in FY18.  Historically, WFP receives 90% of Title II emergency assistance funding.
  *   Overall funding to McGovern-Dole increased by $6 million in FY18, which included a set-aside of $10 million for Local and Regional Purchase (LRP), an increase of $5 million from FY17. WFP received 53.8% of program funding in FY17.
  *   Even without supplemental funding in FY18, the International Disaster Assistance Account (IDA) was nearly level funded from FY17, totaling $4.3 billion. Historically, 30 percent of this amount will be used for cash-based food assistance.  Typically, WFP receives 69% of this cash-based assistance.
  *   Also, for the first time, the International Disaster Assistance Account (IDA) base funding outpaced the IDA Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding. This is good news since IDA base funding is more sustainable as State, Foreign Ops appropriations begin to rely less and less on OCO.

FARM BILL

WFP USA continues to work to ensure that key provisions in the 2018 Farm Bill advanced by our policy team over the past 18 months are included in the final legislation. The recently released House Farm Bill, as well as other indications from committee staff, suggest that between the House and Senate version of the bill (yet to be released) our provisions related to the timing of McGovern Dole commodity deliveries, the provision of USDA technical assistance for social safety net development and USDA/USAID annual reporting on food assistance are being adopted, along with key provisions like the elimination of the 'monetization' requirement and other efficiency improvements supported by the broader humanitarian community.

"WINNING THE PEACE" REPORT ROLLOUT

In the first quarter we continued to expand the dialogue on the link between U.S. national security and food security. This effort was headlined by WFP USA's participation in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on "Why Food Security Matters." Experts from the humanitarian sector shared on-the-ground experience and academic research on this connection, including Retired Lieutenant General John Castellaw of the U.S. Marine Corps, WFP Executive Director David Beasley, Acting Director for USAID's Office of Food for Peace Matthew Nims and WFP USA's Dr. Chase Sova. Senator Todd Young of Indiana tweeted a video clip<https://twitter.com/SenToddYoung/status/975061954619478021> of the hearing to his 35,000 followers praising the academic merits of WFP USA's "Winning The Peace" report, saying: "Great testimony from key food security leaders, experts, and scholars. Evidence is clear that addressing food insecurity promotes U.S. national security."

Beyond the Senate hearing, our policy team has provided Congressional staff briefings on the report, written op-eds<https://www.newsdeeply.com/malnutrition/community/2018/04/10/hunger-is-making-the-world-less-stable> (including for Senator Todd Young and Senator Jerry Moran) and produced and delivered a TEDx talk<http://tedxoaklawn.com/> related to hunger and instabilty that was recorded in Dallas, Texas on March 17th. That TEDx video will be available to share by May 1st on the TED website and we will circulate on our social channels as an element of the Winning the Peace rollout.

Finally, on March 14, DEVEX and UPS hosted a livestreamed conversation<https://pages.devex.com/a-devex-conversation-with-david-beasley.html> with WFP's Executive Director David Beasley on the connection between global hunger and conflict, where Beasley discussed issues such as, how food insecurity is driving terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Shabab.

PRIVATE SECTOR SUPPORT

Cargill
In March, WFP, USAID and Cargill launched a partnership in Honduras for a "home-grown" school meals program that will give hungry children meals using high-quality produce from local farmers. The initiative, in coordination with the national government, is designed to stimulate the local economy while providing a strong incentive for parents to send their children to school for a nutritious school meal. The Cargill grant of $450K, which was received in the last quarter of 2017, along with $50K in unrestricted funds from WFP USA, allowed us to double Cargill's investment by meeting the $500K funding level required for a USAID match - for a total of $1 million to fund the program. To raise the visibility of the launch, we produced a story for wfpusa.org<https://wfpusa.org/articles/cargill-usaid-and-wfp-join-forces-to-support-farmers-and-schoolchildren-in-honduras/> describing the program's potential to reduce malnutrition rates in the country and shared it via WFP USA's Twitter and LinkedIn channels, as well as our Hill newsletter, to highlight the power of the private sector to provide long-term sustainable development solutions. Cargill shared our story on the company's official Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn channels, as well as its Intranet, resulting in a significant boost in website traffic to wfpusa.org. In fact, this article became the most-visited webpage on our site, with quadruple the number of visitors compared to our homepage.

UPS
UPS has continued to be a tremendous supporter to WFP's work. This year they provided $275,000 for Fortified Blended Food Blockchain project supporting Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Philippines, along with an estimated $500,000 in in-kind support. As Rick mentioned at the DEVEX event described above, "UPS represents the model corporate partner in the comprehensive support they've provided... has helped improve WFP's operations and has had a significant impact on millions of people that WFP serves around the world." A video clip containing Rick's full comments, as well as comments from UPS Foundation President Ed Martinez and WFP's David Beasley, was shared with UPS for internal distribution to its employees.

ISAT
We secured a new corporate partner, the aviation trade association, ISAT Foundation. They provided a grant of $33,000 to fund a SuperCereal+ air drop in South Sudan.

MAXIMIZING CONTENT TO DRIVE DONOR GIVING

As part of an ongoing effort to share the voices of WFP's first responders with donors in the U.S. (and elsewhere), we interviewed WFP's Syria Country Director Jakob Kern for the 7th anniversary of the Syria conflict. The interview yielded a wide variety of content, including a series of personal emails<http://support.wfpusa.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=9319.0&dlv_id=0&printer_friendly=1&dlv_id=0&dlv_id=0> signed by Jakob that were shared by the digital fundraising team, as well as online ads and social media stories<https://twitter.com/WFPUSA/status/974401932537233409>. Facebook ads and boosted posts using visuals and copy from Jakob's content brought in more than $130K, including both one time and sustaining (monthly donors) gifts. On the website, the article My Glimpse into Syrian Suffering featuring Jakob's content is currently the third-highest ranked article out of thirty posts focused on Syria. In addition, the team produced a 13-minute podcast<https://wfpusa.org/articles/hacking-hunger-episode-26-lifesaving-logistics-in-syria/> that was made available across the WFP and the U.N. Foundation Twitter feeds to tens of thousands of people and was the main driver for higher than average social media engagement with nearly 200K impressions across social media. Audio from the podcast overlaid with compelling visuals led to our highest-performing Facebook post of March with more than 36k impressions. The podcast was also featured in the Hill newsletter <https://mailchi.mp/fb43e986b961/wfp-usa-bi-weekly-bulletin-206669> on the day of the conflict anniversary to give U.S. lawmakers a timely, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the complexity of WFP's operations in Syria.

WFP-WFP USA BRAND-BUILDING IN THE U.S.

In support of WFP HQ's communications and brand-building efforts, we secured the participation of well-known chef José Andrés for the launch of WFP's "Recipe For Disaster" cause-awareness campaign, a fun and engaging way to highlight the issue of food waste and global hunger. Andrés shared his #RecipeForDisaster<https://twitter.com/chefjoseandres/status/979010955895037958> video with 600,000 followers on Twitter, in addition to chef Aaron Silverman of Rose's Luxury and Olympic athlete and WFP USA ambassador Natalie Coughlin, both of whom shared posts about the campaign with a collective 200,000 followers on Instagram. The campaign resulted in an impressive 11.5M earned impressions (for comparison, if that impression reach was paid for using Facebook ad rates, it would be the ad value equivalency of approximately $400K), and talks are now underway to host a cook-off with Andrew Zimmern<https://twitter.com/andrewzimmern/status/979127515431174144> before the campaign's culmination in May. We also engaged corporate partners Cargill and General Mills, which used the "Recipe For Disaster" campaign to engage their tens of thousands of employees worldwide, introducing and reinforcing the WFP brand.

WFP UPDATES

Very high levels of food insecurity around the world continue to place extraordinary demands on WFP. Protracted conflict remains the main driver of emergency needs and displacement although political and economic instability and climate shocks are also factors in food crises in many parts of the world. Among the most challenging humanitarian crisis being addressed by WFP:

  *   In Africa: Democratic Republic of the Congo; Mali, Libya, Nigeria and South Sudan
  *   In Asia: the Myanmar/Bangladesh refugee situation
  *   In Latin America: the influx of Venezuelans into Colombia (Note: additional staff have been deployed to support the scaling up of the response to the increased flow of migrants from Venezuela.)
  *   In the Middle East: Iraq, Syria and Yemen

REPORTS & ARTICLES

  *   In 2017, there were alarming new levels of severe hunger around the world. The Global Report on Food Crises<https://mobile.wfp.org/+CSCO+0h756767633A2F2F6A6A6A2E6A73632E626574++/content/global-report-food-crises-2018>, shows that nearly 124 million people in 51 countries currently face crisis levels of food insecurity or worse, and require urgent humanitarian action.
  *   WFP Storyteller project<https://mobile.wfp.org/+CSCO+1075676763663A2F2F766166767475672E6A73632E626574++/i-discovered-a-new-world-290ee69589e7>: Three women, three very different stories, one WFP training program helping vulnerable young people find their voice.

We are developing an Intranet portal for the board where we will house all board documents and updates. We plan to preview the portal at the June board meeting to get your feedback before it is launched.

ADDENDUM

Q1 Donor Highlights

Q2 Key Donor Prospects

Corporate

·         Astellas US Foundation - $150,000 ask has been made and is pending review of their board. We have asked Astellas to support WFP's nutrition efforts in Colombia.

·         ADM - $250,000 proposal has been submitted to support WFP's efforts around Post Harvest loss and school feeding. A decision is likely in May/June. ADM was introduced to us through our partnership with UPS.

·         Mastercard US Launch - Mastercard has activated two campaigns in the US market, one to target employee giving and one as a "roll up" campaign for consumer giving. We are excited to begin this partnership with Mastercard US and to help further the global partnership WFP has with Mastercard Global.
Individual

·         We will be seeking a $125,000 renewal gift from long-time donor, Richard Hirayama. Mr. Hirayama has been giving since 2010 and has given over $3.6M dollars to WFPUSA.

·         We will be seeking $125,000 from Charles Almond, also a long-time donor, to support WFP USA's marketing efforts. Mr. Almond is committed to increasing awareness of WFP USA among U.S. audiences.

·         Will Goodykoontz has given to us since 2004, and last year he provided his largest gift of $150,000. We will be reaching out for stewardship purposes and a renewal ask.
Foundation

  *   We be seeking a $3M renewal from the Lift-a-Life foundation. Previously Lift-a-Life provided a three-year grant of $3M. Under former board member David Novak's guidance, Lift-a-Life has been a fantastic partner of WFP USA and is committed to school feeding in Uganda.

Q1 Snapshot by Channel

Quarterly Projections by Channel

Richard Leach
President & CEO

World Food Program USA
1725 Eye Street NW, Suite 510
Washington, DC 20006
T 202.627.3737
F 202.530.1698
[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>