Driving a $167 Billion Impact: Why FMI and the Food Industry are Embracing Volunteering

The food industry is putting an emphasis on volunteering, highlighted by standout community impact through fundraising and local relief efforts by Store Manager Award and Community Uplift Award nominees.

By: Haley Pierce, Manager, FMI Foundation

Ever since I planted trees on the grounds of my middle school as a service event, I’ve been dedicated to volunteering my time to community groups.  Global Volunteer Month, held every year in April, shows this is a shared experience and a time of year to reflect on how you’re impacting your wider community, whether you give your time online or in person.

Whether it’s a volunteer event like serving food at a soup kitchen, fundraising for a notable cause, sitting on a Board or even helping your neighbors, volunteering is a true celebration of civic engagement.

Community engagement is important within FMI’s culture too, FMI’s Employee Volunteer Program (EVP) dedicates 12-14 hours of service per year to local food-related causes. This past year, FMI’s volunteers helped organize treat bags and walk dogs at the local lost dog and cat shelter, prepared meals for a local food relief organization, weeded and gleaned food at a local community garden, served meals for homeless and displaced residents of D.C. and raised money for the homeless through the Turkey Trot event—actions that made ripples of impact across our region. (Check out our photos from those events here!)

Volunteer hours are key to organizations throughout the food industry in assessing community impact. Even our Store Manager Awards and Community Uplift Award nominees have had exceptional experiences dedicating their time to organizations and causes.

From our 2025 Store Manager Awards Program:

• One candidate from a Southern store raised over $500,000 annually for Breakthrough T1D, formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and raised a separate $500,000 for local hunger relief and animal shelter organizations.
• Another candidate from another Southern region worked on Hurricane Helene food relief, coordinating with water suppliers and the health department to ensure there was potable water available for all customers.
• Yet another candidate from a Southern store provided weekly meals to families via local churches, as well as delivered flowers and food to local nursing homes.
• One last candidate from a Midwestern city consistently donated to local food pantries, middle and elementary schools through their store’s “One More Item” program and fed local volunteers helping with their community Rodeo event.

There are also so many exemplary case studies of the food industry making an impact through FMI’s Community Uplift Awards. (Get inspired here!)

According to Benevity’s 2026 State of Corporate Volunteering Report, each year, corporate volunteering engages about 1.87 million Americans, who contribute a total of 23.7 million hours. Among general volunteers, service work contributes a whopping $167.2 billion to the U.S. economy each year at a rate of $34.79 per hour according to Independent Sector’s 2025 Value of Volunteer Time Report. Even the number of unique volunteers and total volunteer hours logged has gone up precipitously since the pandemic, a trend that is sure to become the new normal for all of us.

To celebrate these trends and the global volunteering movement, the FMI Foundation has produced a new Table Talk placemat addressing conversation starters on civic engagement. One of 8 others that we’re releasing this year, this placemat is an awesome addition to your dinner table or breakfast nook.

Table Talk it Out at Your Next Family Meal!