The Mississippi Business Journal published a nice feel-good story about how Sanderson Farms saved the Mississippi PGA tour event and helped Blair Batson Children's Hospital:
Years from now Mississippi golf fans will tell of how chicken — or, more specifically, a chicken empire — saved the state’s spot on the Professional Golf Association tour.
The rescue required convincing Joe Sanderson Jr. and the board of his publicly traded company that chicken and the sponsor-less True South Classic belonged together under the new tournament name of the Sanderson Golf Championship....
The philanthropy includes matching employee donations to the United Way and making contributions to colleges and universities in the states in which Sanderson Farms operates.
As Sanderson thought over the tournament sponsorship, he kept thinking of the financial benefits Blair E. Batson Children’s Hospital in Jackson receives through money Century Club Charities raises from the PGA tour stop. “My granddaughter had been a patient at the hospital on more than one occasion. I certainly did not want the hospital to lose the proceeds from that tournament,” Sanderson says of the pediatric medical facility on the University of Mississippi Medical Center campus.
He also dwelled on the potential loss of the $25 million economic boost the tournament gives the state annually. He worried about Mississippi’s image as well, Sanderson recalls. “I thought it would have been an embarrassment for the state to lose that PGA event,” he says.
Between the January and February board meetings, Sanderson met with tournament organizers and his own executive staff. “We discussed this as a way for public relations instead of advertising.”
Like Joe Sanderson, company CFO Mike Cockrell struggled to see the value to shareholders. However, the value soon came into focus, he says. “At the end of the day, we thought it would fit our brand and benefit our shareholders to help those children. Once we began to think of it that way, it was an easy decision.”
So was the September 2013 decision to take on a three-year sponsorship extension, Cockrell says.....
With the move of the tournament from Annandale Golf Club in Madison to the Country Club of Jackson this year, tournament organizers could add new events and amenities. That all added to revenue that brought the winner’s prize from $540,000 in 2013 to 2014’s $700,000-plus. The enhancement also allowed for the increased contribution by Century Charities.
Further, the Sanderson Farms Championship’s total purse rose by $1 million from 2013’s level to $4 million for last November’s tournament.
The move from the thunderstorms and heat of July to crisp fall weather in November proved a winning idea, says Steve Jent, who took over as the tournament’s first full-time executive director slightly more than a year ago..... Rest of article
19 comments:
[AND] in return ol' Uncle Joe was promised all the illegals alien workers his Mississippi chickens plants could employ!
4:59 don't you know that there are no longer illegal aliens in the US? Not sure what Obama calls em. Guest workers?
What was not mentioned was the insight, vision and hard work that John Lang, as President of Century Club Charities, had to partner Sanderson and Batson to make this a great partnership and basis for a great tournament sponsorship for all Mississippians to be proud of !!!Thanks Johnny for all your hard work and belief in keeping this tournament alive for the right reasons !!!!
Century Club Charities uses a whopping 19% for program services. (Should be at least over 50%) Just an entity for raising money to put on the tournament.
http://www.sos.ms.gov/Applications/Pages/Charities-Search.aspx
Dear Naysayers:
How much did you donate to any charity last year?
Please send your resume and I'll be sure and see that you get a job on the production line.
>>>How much did you donate to any charity last year?<<<
Directly? Or indirectly through the sham tax write-offs that some so called charities pass along to their partners in crime?
There are probably some local "charities" that are under 10% of expenses for program services.
"Charity-What's in it for me? 2015." JJ is accepting nominations now. Extra points for links to the pictures in the media of the special people dressed in full pimp at the so-called fundraiser.
Jackson is riddled with charities, non-profits and "associations" that are nothing more than employment agencies set up to provide elitists with annual six-figure incomes. Pull their 990s to see the truth.
a true charity spends 100 percent of proceeds on their intended customers; anybody else who takes a dime from the fund for themselves is self-serving;
Go look at Amanda Fontaine with the "Mississippi Burn Foundation". Her donors must love to keep her lifestyle going.
How typical of the naysayers to suggest to paint this charity with the broad brush of charities which are suspect as if all charities are the same...bad.
I'd be more inclined to be positive and think that a charity that raised a $1 million during ONE event is doing something right!
But, in any case, put up or shut up!
YAWN ... SSSnnnoorrrreeee ... ZZZZZzzzzzzz
9:28 am One can tell that you're either Snoozy or Grumpy and a mentally dwarf!
Some people can't stand to see others succeed. Let St. Andrews make a national list of top private schools and here come the green-eyed ones who can't wait to tear it down instead of saying "good job". Two 13 year old students write something that gets published in the New York Times? Can't have that so we have to trash them. Sanderson does something good and Blair Batson gets more money? Destroy them. Kill them. Annihilate them.
People wonder why Mississippi is last. Some can't wait to blow up every success story that happens here.
AMEN, KF!
Ok, let's congratulate folks like Mr. Sanderson who do good things for our state. It's people like Morgan Shands who give charities a bad name. Whatever became of his case?
"....dressed in full pimp." That right there is hillarious. Does the name Alan Lange come to mind?
When I'm in a medical office waiting room and pick up one of those magazines and thumb through thirty pages of my non-peers dressed flamboyantly, all appearing with at least one vessel of hooch, I'm frightened, actually. I just wanta go back home where I'm normal.
And those people vote and probably control the puppetry ropes of our society.
1:19 am You aren't " normal" and you don't see Mr. Sanderson on those pages.
You do see people having fun who also donated to a charity they support.
So, you stay home and count your pennies by yourself or make sure your church building gets larger in hopes that will make God ignore your sorry attitude towards his other creatures!
Interesting that Mr. Sanderson did not give credit to Tom Sanderson who started the first Production Plant in Hazlehurst and his wife Ruth Sanderson who coined the phrase "MISS GOLDY" which Sanderson used for years.
The business of killing and processing chickens is so tough, horrible and poorly-paid that not even criminals will participate for more than a few days, said Haley Barbour, a former governor, a close ally of Sanderson and an insistent advocate for more [illegal] immigration.
Working at a slaughterhouse is “nasty, dirty work where every day the [workers] come home covered in blood and guts, veins and feet and feathers,” Barbour said at an immigration-boosting event held by the Bipartisan Policy Center, an D.C-based business advocacy group.
Not even convicts in the state’s work-release program will do the job, Barbour added. “The inmates, they won’t stay two days, they’d rather be in a penitentiary than work in a chicken plant,” he said.
The conditions are so terrible that Americans won’t work in the slaughterhouses, and the companies have to hire illegals, Barbour suggested.
“You go into a chicken-processing plant anywhere in Mississippi, and if you can find somebody on the floor who speaks English, I’ll give you $100,” he said, before making a pitch for a new immigration reform that would allow companies to hire more foreign workers in place of Americans.
Barbour has a long history with Sanderson. As governor, he appointed Sanderson as one of six chairman or vice chairmen of the Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
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