Church marks 5th-year support of Peanut Butter Drive; receives award

Featured Photo: Plano Texas Stake Communication Director Ron Johnston, center, accepts Faith-based Donation Award from Plano Mayor Harry LaRosiliere, left, and North Texas Food Bank CEO Trisha Cunningham. Photo by Krikit Rast.

In 2020, the Plano Texas Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints marked its 5^th year of support for Plano Mayor Harry LaRosiliere’s Food-4-Kids Peanut Butter Drive.

One of the first initiatives of newly elected Plano Mayor Harry LaRosiliere in 2013 was to find a solution for children who struggled with food insecurity. He immediately partnered with the North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) to collect money and food donations to fill backpacks with nutritional essentials to send home each weekend to feed food insecure elementary children.

This program, known as Food-4-Kids, was both well adopted and well-received, but Mayor LaRosiliere wanted to do more and came up with the idea of collecting peanut butter donations. Why peanut butter?

“It remains fresh, it’s kid-friendly, and it’s high in protein,” said Mayor LaRosiliere in the 2020 promotional video for the Peanut Butter Drive.

In September of 2014, LaRosiliere challenged local high schools to collect 1,000 jars of peanut butter. The schools responded enthusiastically, collecting 1,566 jars of peanut butter of the 4,500 total donated for the first official Peanut Butter Drive.

With that successful start, Mayor LaRosiliere formed the Plano Food-4-Kids Peanut Butter Committee. He reached out to community members, including Ron Johnson, Plano Stake Communications Director of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to move the program forward.

In 2020, the McKinney, Richardson, Allen, and Frisco stakes of The Church of Jesus Christ joined the Plano Stake in the Peanut Butter Drive. Augmented with commodity donations from the local bishops’ storehouse and financial gifts from LDS Humanitarian Services, member contributions totaling nearly 6,000 pounds of peanut butter earned the Church 2^nd place in the Faith-Based donation’s category.

Plano Food-4-Kids Peanut Butter Committee, still active today, continues to expand community support. With a new NTFB operations center now in Plano, Mayor LaRosiliere and NTFB CEO Trisha Cunningham garnered other Collin County mayors’ support. The Mayors of Celina, Allen, Fairview, McKinney, Frisco, Richardson, Carrollton, Lavon, Parker, Prosper, and Murphy enthusiastically joined the Drive in 2019, increasing the 2019 Peanut Butter Drive totals by  115,000 lbs. over the previous year.

The 2020 Collin County Peanut Butter Drive ended with a crushing victory of 287,297 pounds collected vs. the 220,000-pound goal.

Trisha Cunningham, CEO of the NTFB, stated, “Since the Peanut Butter Drive began in 2014, we have seen the community come together to raise awareness of hunger and collect peanut butter. Each year churches, organizations, and the people of Collin County step up to support the food bank’s effort to help our neighbors in need, and I can’t wait to see what next year brings.”