Featured in Riviera Magazine

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“FOOD FOR THOUGHT Seventeen-year-old-Gabrielle Posard is the founder of Donate Don’t Dump, enlisting impressive clients like Whole Foods and Mamma Chia to help reduce food waste and combat hunger. – See more at: http://www.modernluxury.com/riviera-san-diego/story/the-givers#sthash.DLQfIIGp.dpuf

THE GIRL WONDER
Gabrielle Posard’s bedroom has the typical teenage trappings: posters of her favorite band (The Smiths) and scattered pics of friends and family. Well, except that client checklist on the desk for her charity, Donate Don’t Dump, started when she was 12 (?!). The organization has since been featured in People and recently won her a President’s Environment Youth Award, complete with a trip to the White House. “I just have a problem with inefficiencies,” says Posard, who signs her work emails “Founder & Big Cheese.” “I saw that there was a huge amount of food waste and people who needed that food, so, to me, that’s a solvable problem.” Whole Foods? Check. Albertsons? Check. Mamma Chia and the North County Food Bank? They’re all jumping on board with the Donate Don’t Dump program, which takes food that would have otherwise ended up in a dumpster and donates it to food banks. “It’s such an easy concept that I was surprised no one else was really doing it,” says Posard, who was inspired to start DDD after her big sister made a documentary about hunger. “At the end of the day, it’s good PR for the people who are donating and they get a tax write-off.” Posard has left her mark on every aspect of her charity, even designing DDD’s logo, a clever take on the cyclical recycling emblem. But nonetheless, when she first started DDD, CEOs and execs were understandably skeptical when she would arrive for meetings. “It wasn’t easy at first. I’m taking meetings with people who are working in the business world, and here I come, this short little kid, asking them to redo their business policies. I’m pretty sure at one of the meetings one of the guys in charge patted me on the head, so there was a struggle to get people to take me seriously.” Now those same execs are desperately trying to get a meeting with her when she’s not speaking with senators in Sacramento, where she’s trying to get the DDD program into all the Cal State schools. Even with college on the horizon, she has other philanthropic ventures in mind. “I’ve had my life planned out since I was 9. I want to get into clean energy next. I don’t think I could do anything in the future that wasn’t helping others.” Still, she has to finish high school first. “It used to be my secret charity life, but now everybody knows,” she says through laughter. “It’s so big that my classmates’ parents ask them if they know me.”

– See more at: http://www.modernluxury.com/riviera-san-diego/story/the-givers#sthash.DLQfIIGp.dpuf