Here for our Service and Hospitality Workers

When the pandemic took the jobs of bartenders, cooks, and hotel workers nearly overnight, the Greater New Orleans Foundation stepped in.

Southeast Louisiana is known worldwide for our food, our music, our hospitality, and our culture. When COVID-19 left Louisiana under stay-at-home orders in March 2020, those industries were shut down overnight. Restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and music venues closed. Hotels emptied. Suddenly, thousands of service and hospitality workers were out of a job.

This meant that thousands of people weren’t just trying to keep themselves and their families safe from the virus, but they were also struggling to pay their bills, purchase their groceries, and care for their families.

Mrs. Gayle Benson, a trustee at the Greater New Orleans Foundation, knew these families would desperately need help. She reached out to the Foundation and offered a $500,000 donation to directly support the service industry workers who were out of a job. Knowing that the Foundation could leverage her grant, she challenged us to use it as a launching pad to raise even more.

The leadership at The McIlhenny Company, maker of Tabasco® brand pepper sauce, knew the chefs and restaurant workers that served their product every day would need a helping hand. With encouragement from Christy Brown, the Foundation’s immediate past chair, The McIlhenny Company quickly signed up as an additional lead sponsor and the Foundation’s Louisiana Service and Hospitality Family Assistance Program was launched.

“The chef and hospitality community in New Orleans is as vibrant as it is anywhere in the world. There’s no place quite like New Orleans—where food is almost worshiped,” explained Harold Osborne, CEO of the McIlhenny Company.

“So we thought, ‘How are we going to do this? How are we going to get involved? How are we going to give back?’ There’s no one better than the Greater New Orleans Foundation,” Osborne said.

Blue Cross Blue Shield Louisiana (BCBSLA) joined shortly thereafter with their own generous gift.

“We traditionally don’t make grants of both this size and of this rapidity. But given just the nature of the need that was so apparent, we felt like we needed to be able to give grants of substance quickly, and do so in partnership with folks who could get resources in the hands of people who really needed it,” said Michael Tipton, President of the BCBSLA Foundation Board of Directors. “So that’s why we were glad to partner with the Greater New Orleans Foundation.” the Greater

We swiftly set up a program to deliver grants of $1,000 to service and hospitality workers. To ensure our funds reached those who needed them the most, we limited grants to those who were responsible for the care of others and who had been making below 80% of the annual median income before the pandemic. We created a simple online application to quickly allocate funds—the form was designed to take less than fifteen minutes to complete and was easy to submit from a cell phone, so the process didn’t add more stress to our service and hospitality industry workers’ lives.

As the program got underway, we kept raising funds. On April 6, 2020, ESPN rebroadcast the 2006 Saints vs. Falcons game—the first game back in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina and the one Saints fans all remember for Steve Gleason’s blocked punt. Partnering with the Saints, ESPN encouraged viewers to help out by making donations to honor their favorite Saints players—$9 for Drew Brees, $37 to recognize Steve Gleason, $41 for Alvin Kamara. Hundreds of Saints fans from our region rallied in support and sent donations.

Between the major gifts from Mrs. Benson, The McIlhenny Company, BCBSLA, Sugar Bowl Foundation, New Orleans Convention Center, Greater New Orleans Foundation Fundholders, and many other individuals, the Foundation’s fundraising for the Family Assistance Program ultimately reached nearly $1.9 million, leveraging Mrs. Benson’s original grant more than two-and-a-half times.

As we used those donated resources to provide grants, letters of thanks came pouring in. By the program’s conclusion, we had awarded $1,000 grants to 1,878 families. The average family receiving aid had three members and pre-pandemic earnings less than $27,000 per year.

Hotel workers, restaurant teams, and bar staff reached out with their appreciation.

“Thank you so much,” wrote Larae Barad, who works in a local hotel. “This helps my family a lot. Appreciate everything that you’ve done for our hospitality workers.”

“Thank you all for your generosity. Your contribution is much appreciated, and it helped me and my son so much in this rough patch,” wrote Chrystal Flood, a local restaurant worker. “You are truly miracle workers, and I can’t thank you enough.”

Barad, Flood, and their colleagues make so many people feel welcome in the Greater New Orleans region each day. They make neighborhood bars, storied restaurants, and world-class hotels feel like homes. They make regulars and visitors feel like family. We were glad to be able to help them care for their own families and homes in a time of great need.

- Michael Tipton President of the BCBSLA