"The more you are blessed, the more you should give back," says Bradford Thompson of The Phoenician." It’s important to not forget that you’re part of something bigger."

When 40,000 pounds of pumpkin arrived on her doorstep, Jennifer McLean knew exactly who to call. McLean is Vice President of Operations at City Harvest, a nonprofit dedicated to ending hunger in communities throughout New York City. Given her organization’s mission, and its location in one of the world’s top dining destinations, McLean has more than a few friends in the restaurant biz. She tapped long-time City Harvest supporter, John Doherty, executive chef at The Waldorf-Astoria.

Doherty and his kitchen staff, who volunteered to do the work on their own time, transformed the pumpkins into soup for thousands. City Harvest then distributed fresh pumpkin soup to shelters and soup kitchens across New York. “It’s a great feeling to know you can help people who need it,” says Doherty. “I think it’s human nature—if people are given opportunities to help, they step forward. We in the restaurant and hospitality industry are given lots of opportunities.”

McLean and Doherty’s pumpkin saga is just one example of how chefs and restaurants give back to their communities. Generous acts run the gamut from donating gift certificates to charity auctions, hosting fundraisers, advising anti-hunger organizations and donating unused ingredients to food rescue programs like City Harvest. Restaurants like Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen in London, and River in Toronto, even run life-skills training programs to get kids off the street and often give jobs to at-risk youth. What’s surprising is how much restaurants are doing in this area. In fact, for some, nonprofit work can be a second business altogether. “When we total up the money and time spent on charitable activities at the end of the year, it’s huge,” says Eric Ripert, chef/owner of Le Bernardin in New York. “It’s just huge.”

The high level and variety of involvement is confirmed by the National Restaurant Association. Through its Cornerstone Initiative, the NRA tracks the philanthropic activity of restaurants around the country and provides advice on how to give back. “People are largely unaware of all that restaurants do,” says Alyssa Prince, Director of Community Relations at the NRA. “Part of our mission is to educate people about how involved and philanthropic restaurants really are.” Indeed, nine out of ten respondents to the NRA’s 2000 survey reported donating cash or in-kind services to charitable organizations.

Anti-hunger causes are a logical fit for people with a passion for food. Share Our Strength, based in Washington, DC, is one shining success story of harnessing the power of chefs. SOS coordinates a bevy of culinary events to benefit anti-hunger causes, resulting in more than $200 million raised since the organization began in 1984. Co-founder Debbie Shore has noticed some changes since she and her staff first began this work. “Chefs and restaurants have more of a celebrity element now,” says Shore. “Everybody wants something from them, and consequently there are more demands on their time.” The celebrity element, of course, is also a blessing. When well-known chefs cook for or lend their names to large events, hundreds of thousands—sometimes $1 million—can be raised in a single evening.

Share Our Strength is also the creator of Operation Frontline, an innovative program through which chefs volunteer their time to teach nutrition, cooking, budgeting and healthful shopping to low-income adults and children. The idea for the program was borne out of the realization that chefs want to have more direct contact with the people they help, and the fact that it “takes more than food to fight hunger,” Shore says. Share Our Strength has found willing chefs in 14 states to participate.

Bradford Thompson, Executive Chef of Mary Elaine’s at The Phoenician in Scottsdale and an active Share Our Strength volunteer, says a feeling of personal good fortune is one of his main motivations for helping out. “The more you are blessed, the more you should give back,” Thompson says. “I try to pass that on to people who work in my kitchen, too. It’s important to not forget that you’re part of something bigger.”

Like Thompson, Loretta Keller of Coco500 in San Francisco feels lucky to have achieved success. But the causes she supports are also heavily influenced by personal experience. She helps cancer-focused organizations in large part because of a valued employee’s battle with melanoma.

Given the generosity that seems intrinsic to the personalities of many chefs and owners, it’s unlikely that restaurants will scale back their efforts to improve communities. Debbie Shore notes that even after Hurricane Katrina, many local restaurants in Louisiana that had themselves sustained major damage called Share Our Strength to see what they could do.

In the future, Alyssa Prince of the NRA predicts, restaurants will become more strategic in their contributions of time and money. “We see them wanting to be more engaged and understand the impact they’re having,” she says. Prince also sees restaurants using their philanthropic work as an employee recruitment and retention tool, because “studies these days show that young people want to work for companies that do good.”

Prince says she hears stories every day of restaurants helping out. There’s the one about a sick child in small-town Washington and the restaurant that raised enough money for her family to rent an apartment closer to her treatment center. Then there’s the restaurant in Bedford, New Hampshire that donated ongoing meals for an injured elderly woman.

And then there’s the one about the pumpkins.