Throughout November—in preparation for the holiday season—Lithia & Driveway (LAD) focuses on supporting neighborhood food banks across the United States as part of its social sustainability goals. To assist the millions of Americans living with food insecurity, we encourage our team members from coast-to-coast to get involved with local food drives.
We’re truly humbled by how many employees answered the call to action. To honor everyone’s generosity and hard work, we’d like to spotlight a few community partnerships in New Jersey and Oregon that provided food, assistance, and hope to others for Thanksgiving.
New Jersey Stores Come Together to Fight Hunger
In New Jersey, nearly 100 accounting employees—along with their managers and coworkers from 20 dealerships—collected over 9,000 pounds of donated food items to help drive out hunger in their region.
Kendra Ruff, Director of Accounting Operations at LAD, brought the idea of a statewide food drive to her employees as a way to foster teamwork and inspire community engagement. “They took the idea and ran with it,” she said. “Their enthusiasm spread to others, and soon, general managers and coworkers, were getting involved in creative ways.” By the end of the food drives, the stores had gathered huge amounts of food items to deliver to local nonprofits.
Volunteers Have Fun with Team-Building Exercise: Before heading over to the food banks, Kendra had employees at each collection site divide into nine teams and create their own miniature golf course hole using a few basic supplies and various food items. Everyone then played nine holes, and the team with the lowest score won a prize! Then it was off to the food banks.
Freehold Toyota in South NJ: Over 40 volunteers from the dealerships listed below delivered donations in two Toyota Tundra pickups to MTN Food Bank, a nearby mom-and-pop food pantry. Every Thanksgiving, this nonprofit distributes 1,000 Thanksgiving meals to area residents. After meeting the operators, some employees were inspired to volunteer for meal distribution.
Planet Honda in Central NJ: Over 30 volunteers delivered a hefty food donation from five stores to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey—a nonprofit organization that provides 90 million meals each year and supports over 800 local pantries across the region.
Ramsey Toyota in North NJ: Nearly 50 employees from several nearby stores delivered a very large donation to the Center for Food Action in Mahwah. Employees were inspired by an in-person overview of what the nonprofit does, and to increase participation, they built special donation boxes and created colorful signage.
Oregonians Take Care of Each Other
In Oregon, employees contributed funds and non-perishable food items to support donation drives in Medford and Portland. Volunteers in both cities inspired participation by decorating offices with festive collection areas, and volunteer coordinators ramped up momentum with heartfelt messaging and signage.
Portland Partners with Oregon Food Bank: In Portland, our Driveway and DFC employees jumpstarted their food drive by purchasing enough food—along with other supplies—to fill five grocery carts!
Maddy Pearson, DFC Office Coordinator, said, “When employees at the grocery store asked where all the food and supplies were going, we shared that the company was donating all the items to the Oregon Food Bank, and everyone thought it was so great.” Back at the Driveway offices, all the groceries were set up in the building lobby to inspire others to contribute more items—which they did!
At the end of their food drive, we delivered over 700 pounds of food donations to the Oregon Food Bank, which is dedicated to keeping food on tables across the region.
Medford Donates to ACCESS: In Medford, stores and corporate departments at the Home Office teamed up with ACCESS, a local nonprofit that provides, food, warmth, and shelter to low-income families, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities.
To make it easier to collect more donations, we had six drop-off locations at the Home Office, Lithia Honda, Crater Lake Ford, Driveway Finance Corp (DFC), Lithia CDJR, and Lithia Toyota.
On delivery day, LAD volunteers hauled more than 2,200 pounds of food items over to ACCESS. Jason Patton of ACCESS told the group that with this donation, the LAD food drives over the years have now totaled over 135,000 meals to the organization.
Thank you to everyone who volunteered—Each of you embodied how to Take Personal Ownership by giving back to your communities.
