MrBeast is bringing the protein.
For his latest philanthropic caper, the famously generous YouTuber partnered with meatpacker Smithfield (one of the companies that supported his $20 million #TeamTrees initiative last year) to donate one million servings of protein to food banks in his home state of North Carolina. He chronicled the mass donation, which he says took months of planning and $1 million worth of products to pull off, in a 12-minute video uploaded this afternoon.
“Due to recent events, lots of people have started to hoard food, and when you hoard food, you donate less,” MrBeast–real name Jimmy Donaldson–says in the upload.
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To distribute the massive donation, Donaldson and a team of friends filled six of Smithfield’s semi trucks with pallet upon pallet of protein products like hot dogs, sausages, plant-based burgers, and bacon. Then they drove from food bank to food bank, unloading and storing the pallets themselves.
At the Food Bank of the Albemarle, an organization that provides food to thousands of across 15 counties, a staffer (who wasn’t identified) told Donaldson that protein was especially needed. “Two weeks ago, meat was very scarce,” he said. “It was hard to find.”
At the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, another staffer told Donaldson that in normal times, there are around 600,000 food-insecure people in North Carolina, and around one-third of those are children.
“Right now, during the COVID outbreak and the pandemic, we worry about everybody, really,” she said.
Donaldson may have delivered all one million servings of protein, but he isn’t done donating. In his video, he and Smithfield program manager Jonathan reveal they’ve teamed up to fundraise for Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund. For every $1 donated to the fund, Smithfield will provide one more serving of protein to food banks in need. If Donaldson’s 33.2 million subscribers can help raise $1 million total for the fund, Smithfield will double its donation, providing two servings for every $1 contributed.
You can watch Donaldson’s video below, and see more information about Feeding America’s fund here.
