Walmart Partnership

As we quickly approach leading another Community Big Give it comes with some significant last minute changes this year. For the past 14+ years The Community Big Give has had a partnership with the Bonney Lake Walmart. From having General Managers that go to bat to find donations above and beyond what we are seeking to finding vendors who would cut price deals in order to facilitate such a large act of generosity within the region. It has made our life a bit easier as the logistics of product acquisition have largely been covered by managers within Walmart unless there were unforeseen challenges with certain items as the event approached.

This partnership has not always been easy, as the event has grown the challenge of finding 1750 items to facilitate a distribution has been a challenge and over the past few years more and more items have needed to be tracked down through other community food sources like Winco and Grocery Outlet.

But Walmart has done much more than just allowing us the oportunity to bulk order food. They have sponsored this event anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000, they have provided dozens of pallets to place food up off the ground; allowed the use of their forklift and an employee to run all the product out to the distribution locations; stored all of the items they have ordered until the event date, and much more.  

Historically, it has been a significant source of regional pride for Walmart; so much so that way back in the day a documentary team came and did a short video for Walmart about The Community Big Give. We have valued the partnership for sure.

But, after a number of months attempting to confirm the status of our ordering power through Walmart we were informed that Walmart would not be participating in this year's Community Big Give and that we would need to pursue other purchasing options. While we are not confident of the reasoning behind their shift in community engagement, we do recognize that last year’s event presented challenges for everyone involved and placed significant stress and time investment on their part and an unforeseen financial burden on ours.

We have heard Craig Groeschel say, “Limitation breeds innovation”. Speaking to the moments we face in life where it seems our plans have fallen apart, but in those moments something beautiful comes of it. And we believe this will be our experience this year.

Not only have we quickly found all of the items for this year’s meals, we found them at a record low price thanks to Winco, Grocery Outlet, Cascadia Produce and, oddly enough, Auburn Walmart. But food was just one piece of the puzzle; we now had to find a way to acquire the food, store the food, and distribute the food without the resources that Walmart had allowed us over the past 14+ years. We put out the word to the powers that be within the community and the owner of the Peak410 Development offered their site. Within this site are a number of our partners already in East Pierce Fire and Rescue, Peak Paddle & Racket Club, and GoodRoots.

And that is where the next piece of the puzzle comes in. GoodRoots has offered to host the event, which will afford us storage and acquisition of products from around the region into their warehouse to ensure the distribution location is a great experience. And the assembly of the bags will for the first time in many years be weather resistant.

While there are a number of logistics still to be coordinated and we are figuring out how to get dozens and dozens of pallets of food moving all in a few days to this new location, we are blessed to have such an open welcome to utilize a property of this magnitude.

We are innovating and saving the community money and resources as we reenvision this community event. And the money we are putting into some new organizations is a huge blessing to them as they begin to partner with The Community Big Give this year and hopefully many years to come.

We are grateful for the years of partnership Walmart offered and wish them the best Thanksgiving season this year.