Turning a Penny into $1,000,000 Worth of Food

If you saw a penny on the sidewalk, would you pick it up? My guess is that most of us probably wouldn't bother.

Fortunately for food banks across America, when website manager Jeffrey Strain spotted a stray penny in California in November 2009, he decided to pick it up and see if he could turn into a million dollars worth of food for hungry Americans. It was around Thanksgiving and local groceries were collecting food donations. Strain thought he could do something more than put a few canned goods in the donation box.

Without a clear sense of how exactly to do this, Strain began brainstorming reasons why one penny is really worth more than its face value. This activity started a chain reaction, and a short time later, the Penny Experiment was born.

The list Strain put together convinced foster care activist Conna Craig to buy the original penny for $10, which was then cashed in for 1000 more pennies.

After considering how to expand the value of his copper coins, Strain came up with the idea of making individual pennies into art. With no artistic skill himself, Strain decided to use his knowledge of social media to enlist the help of experienced artists to produce penny postcard art. To date, 100 artists (who have each received a penny with a corresponding number) have agreed to participate in the experiment. This idea peaked the interest of investor Dana Cook, who put up $1,000 to help the penny art project/food drive get off the ground.

With $1,000 in hand, Strain set out to begin purchasing food for local food banks. However, instead of just buying food for its purchase price, Strain used his Internet experience to gather a team of "couponer" bloggers to make the purchases and donations for him. For those who don't know, couponers use their unbelievable deal-seeking power to purchase large amounts of food for as little cash as possible. This model has already achieved some significant success.

"I've seen about a 90 percent return on investment so far," Strain explained to me recently. "Basically, we've been able to turn $115 in cash into over $1,000 worth of food donated to local food banks."

But this is only the beginning of the experiment. When Strain receives all of the artwork, which he anticipates will be by the end of February, he will begin contacting galleries around the country to see if any are interested in showing his collection of penny postcard art. All money will go to buying food.

This has turned into quite an effort for someone who has no background in either food or poverty work. "To be honest with you, I'd never even been into a food bank before I started this project," conceded Strain. But now, with nothing more than an idea and a penny, he's working to come up with $1 million worth of food for the needy.

If you'd like to help move the project forward, check out ways you can spread the word about the Penny Experiment. If you've got some artistic ability and want to participate in the second phase of the project, here's how.

Photo credit: R-Z