If you had $50,000, how would you invest it in your community?

That was the question I asked a couple dozen students and their parents when they came to ConAgra Foods for Take Our Kids to Work Day last week. I told them 10 non-profit organizations were requesting a total of $100,000 in grants and asked each parent-child pair to decide how they wanted to invest their $50,000, knowing they would have to tell some organizations yes and others no.

This situation is similar to what I encounter in my job; there are unlimited requests for very worthy causes, but not unlimited dollars to support them all. As a company and a foundation, we choose to give our limited resources to hunger and nutrition education related organizations, so that we can make the most impact with our budget.

These kids are smart! Even before I explained ConAgra Foods’ charitable giving philosophy and how we make decisions about where to invest, they had figured it out. In almost every situation, the kids gave the bulk of their fictitious funding to a child hunger cause and then allocated the rest to others on the list.

While these kids have passion for other worthy causes, they said it was made the most sense to feed kids. We agree.

The above post was originally published on April 30, 2010.