Case Study - Todd Greene
Tech Founder Joins Grassroots Effort to Pack and Deliver Food for the Needy
In April 2020, a few weeks into the Covid lockdown, Todd Greene was working on a project in his garage when he heard some noise at his garage door. It sounded like people were congregating around his house. He opened his garage door and there were a few people there, packing groceries. “What are you guys doing?” he asked. That question started a conversation that would go on for 2 years and counting.
Todd is a long-time resident of San Francisco and Co-Founder of PubNub, a software company that provides the technology for real-time collaboration and communication. Its platform is used by companies like Adobe, DocuSign, Atlassian, Peloton, and TicketMaster to power their apps.
Amid Covid Fears
“There was this real feeling of fear and hopelessness during Covid,” says Todd, “The haves and have nots became very apparent. It was almost a lottery. Some people worked for companies that did better during Covid, and there were people whose companies literally shut down. The term doom-scrolling became popular then - people were scrolling through bad news.”
It was during that time that Todd met Daveea Whitmire, founder of Third Parent Family, outside his garage. Daveea and his team told Todd that they were packing groceries. There were a lot of people who had recently become unemployed because of the pandemic. They were a grassroots effort to help them. “We’ve got some stores like Trader Joe’s to donate food that they’re not using. We can move if we’re blocking your driveway,” they said.
A Growing Community, Growing Friendships
Todd didn’t make them move. Instead, he asked if they were looking for people to help. The next Saturday, he came downstairs with his wife and teenage son and daughter, and they all chipped in. The next week, his daughter invited a friend from school, who came and helped too. In the following weeks, their family, and his daughter's friend, kept showing up to help, and it grew from there.
Every week, more people came to help. Every week, they got more food donations. Daveea would show up with a big U-haul truck filled to the brim with groceries. Neighbors started congregating to pack grocery bags. Soon, there was a longer and longer line of people and families who were coming to pick up food.
At this time, Third Parent wasn’t even a 501(c)(3) yet. They were just a few people who saw their neighbors in need and asked a Trader Joe’s manager for food donations to help them.
“In that crisis, it was really nice to see people come together”, says Todd, “People didn’t always know what they could do. It gave a lot of us an outlet to actually do something material during that time. Not everyone had that opportunity.”
As neighbors came together to help, friendships were built. “I’ve been in this neighborhood for 22 years”, says Todd, “And I’ve got to know more neighbors better than ever because of this experience. I only knew a few of the neighbors before. Now we’re friendly with a much wider group of people.”
Seeing Results, Reaping Rewards
By serendipity, Todd’s daughter had just got her driver’s permit. The food deliveries gave her and Todd an excuse to take groceries all over San Francisco. “They had a really wide range of addresses that spanned all corners of the city, so it allowed my daughter to get 4 hours of driving in every Saturday. Otherwise, there was no reason to get in the car during Covid.”
Todd had volunteered before at the food bank, packing and sorting food. “But you don’t always get to know what happens. Being able to be that close to the recipients of the work is always more rewarding”, says Todd. “It’s more work than it looks. A huge amount of groceries needs to be sorted and distributed evenly into bags. But because we were able to deliver the groceries, you get to see the results of all that hard work. You actually meet the recipients.”
Looking Forward
As Daveea looks towards growing the organization and mentoring more teens, Todd muses that it will take a lot of organizational work. Todd brings his experience running a multi-national company to his new role as board member of Third Parent.
“I’d get a lot of satisfaction out of helping Daveea and Whitney to expand and realize more of their vision”, he says, “I’m looking to take orders. At the end of the day, it’s Daveea and Whitney’s organization. They are the ones who started this thing and it’s their vision. I see myself as a foot soldier. I’m here to see what I can do to be helpful to them.”