Community Leader Spotlight
Julie McGill, Annual Giving Officer, Cultivate Food Rescue
Tell us about your journey to Cultivate Food Rescue—what brought you there?
I kept running into Jim Conklin (co-founder & executive director) out and about different places, when I was with my husband (Mark McGill). He and Mark have been friends for a long time, and he was expanding the Cultivate operation into Elkhart. He reached out to Mark at one point and said, “Hey, I’m looking for somebody to fill a development position. If you know of anybody, let me know.” Mark came home that day from work and said, “Hey, I think I might have a job that you might like.” At the time, I was working in marketing in corporate America, and it was a very fast-paced, busy job, we had just gone through a leadership turnover, I had been there for 10 years and wasn’t real happy. I knew that I wanted to do something that was more meaningful for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to have this fast-paced corporate life when I could be giving back in a way that meant something to the community. So I had coffee with Jim. We sat and talked, and it all just kind of fell into place. I’ve been there just over a year now, and I’m loving every second of it!
What role has marketing played in the success of Cultivate, and how do you see that evolving?
I think that social media has really helped us. We can use it to story tell and connect with potential donors, as well as with the community itself. Being able to tell the story about rescuing food and fighting hunger in the community…unfortunately, it’s a bittersweet thing. But being able to make those connections and tell that story is a really big deal. And we try to stay consistent with our messaging, our mission and our vision to the community, and social is a very helpful tool. And now we have data to back up some of these stories, so we’ll be able to layer that in to our stories. It’s nice to have some of those personal stories and the heartfelt pieces, but the data says, “Look at what we’ve done and look at where we’re going.” We started with this small footprint in the community, rescuing 80,000 pounds of food in a year, and we thought that was amazing. And now, we’ve rescued 10 million pounds of food, and we have the ability moving forward to get to 20 million pounds of food, with our cold storage facility, new pantries and new schools, and sharing that out to the community. Marketing will help raise awareness overall, and ultimately help Cultivate make a bigger impact across all of our stakeholders.
What new things are on the horizon for Cultivate?
My biggest surprise was that the work pace was completely opposite of what I was used to. And so I had to go from, “I need to get everything done immediately because I need to move on to the next project” to being able to relax, finish an email and reread it before I hit “send,” and work on relationships. This is a relationship-based job—it’s more about people than it is about transactions. I never had that luxury in my previous job. It was just very high level and moving on to the next thing. Here, I just get to be “me” and to get to know people. And that I think is the best thing because it’s everything that I do. I get to meet somebody new every single day. And the outcome is that I get to see my impact on the community. It does not seem like a job. It’s the idea that I get to go to work every day rather than I have to go to work today.
What was your very first job?
My very first job was detasseling corn! I grew up just over the line into Michigan, and there was a detasseling company out of Constantine, Michigan. I would get up at six o’clock in the morning and ride my bike to get on the bus to go to work. It wasn’t really a fun job, but I made enough money to buy all my school clothes for the year!
What else would you like us to know?
I guess my closing thing would be this: if you have it in your heart to do something that’s going to make lives better, don’t wait for an opportunity to fall into your lap. Go out there and look for it and make it happen!