Matt Mackowiak's Mack On Politics

Thanksgiving and giving thanks is the subject of this week’s episode. Operation Turkey began with one person, Richard Bagdonas, delivering one warm meal to a homeless person on Thanksgiving Day in Austin, Texas in the year 2000. Now they operate in seven states and 30 cities and will deliver 75,000 meals this year – accounting for 15 percent of the national homeless population. In this conversation, where this idea came from how this all-volunteer effort scaled over time, how corporate partners and individual donors make it possible, what they’ve learned along the way, how they manage tens of thousands of volunteers and what they need this week to be successful.