Why Bill Knapp Opened His Heart – and His Checkbook – to Tackle Hunger

Oodles of it.

The West Des Moines real estate titan gives a lot of it away. A lot. So when he says that none of the charities he’s donated to touched his heart as deeply as packaging meals to feed the hungry, both here at home and overseas, you can figure there’s something special going on.

So special that Knapp quietly donated a 2.9-acre tract of land at 357 Lincoln St. in West Des Moines to the hunger relief charity, Meals from the Heartland, last fall and went about raising most of the $1.9 million necessary to build a packaging center where other volunteers can experience what Knapp said he did: the sensation of handing food directly to a hungry person, “of feeling like you have a hand in it.”

Knapp liked how the grains felt rolling around in his gloved hand. It was if he was handing the food directly to a starving man who needed it to stop the hunger gnawing at his belly, or to a young child whose brain nor anything else would develop as they should without proper nutrition.

“I enjoyed working on this and being part of it, more than any other thing I’ve done,” he said.

That’s a strong endorsement from a man with a reputation for long arms and deep pockets. The list of charities receiving his millions of dollars in contributions is exhaustive – “and I don’t need the publicity,” the self-deprecating Knapp said with a wink – but to get an idea of just how deeply affected he was by the experience of packaging meals, consider this:

He also organized Honor Guard flights for veterans to see the World War II monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., donated land with a spectacular view of the Raccoon River Valley for a national veterans cemetery near Van Meter, and that he could never say “no” to the late Sister Stella Neill, a longtime pillar in the metro area’s fight to provide affordable housing and other services to poor families.

Fighting Hunger, One Meal at a Time

Knapp didn’t expect a transformative experience the day a couple of years ago when his friend Mark Oman, then Wells Fargo & Co.’s home loan chief, drug him to a Meals from the Heartland packaging event. He went as a professional courtesy.

Knapp came back invigorated by the comradery, and the emotional intimacy that comes in working shoulder to shoulder with both friends and strangers toward a common goal.

Soft heart aside, Knapp is a hard-headed businessman who parlayed shrewd acumen into a fortune. One of the aspects of volunteering at Meals from the Heartland that appeals to him most is that the contribution is quantifiable.

“You can put a number on it,” he said.

For example, as the result of events like the annual Hunger Fight packaging event, when area businesses and organizations put together teams in an all-out effort to tackle hunger, more than 5 million people will receive a package of rice, textured soy protein, dried vegetables and vitamins, enough to feed a family of six.

As Knapp talked about his motivation for giving away the land and seeding the fund drive for the building, he kept going back to the analogy of handing food to a hungry person.

“It’s assembly line,” he said of the packaging process. “They could automate it, but why? You want people to feel like they are doing something. If there’s no labor, they lose that.”

READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT: Knapp Donates Land for Permanent Home for Meals from the Heartland

MORE ABOUT MEALS FROM THE HEARTLAND: Meals from the Heartland is a charitable organization “empowering people to save the starving.” In five years, the global hunger relief effort has grown to an organization that feeds 15,000 hungry people a day, both in Iowa and abroad.

COMING NEXT WEEK: 15 Minutes with Bill Knapp on philanthropy.