But I certainly didn’t expect to run into one on this particular errand.

Two

According to the sign, Feed the Need was on the sixth floor. I pressed the button and then waited, checking my reflection in the silver elevator door.

I adjusted the stiff, tweedy fabric of my skirt, thinking that this was not one of my favorite suits but that it would do for this quick errand. I had hopes of getting in and out within an hour, something that probably wasn’t possible. Once I had handed over the donation and the initial excitement had passed, the recipients almost always insisted on giving me a tour of their facilities, introducing me to some of their workers and taking me out to lunch or dinner. Usually, I didn’t mind. Today, however, I just wanted to get out of there and go home. I wondered if they would think me rude if I begged off with a “prior commitment.” Closing my eyes, I could just picture that prior commitment—all seven excitable, furry pounds of her, waiting for her long-absent mother to hurry home and give her a treat of beef jerky.

I got off of the elevator on the sixth floor and found myself facing an elaborate silk flower arrangement on an antique table. Subtly lighted on the wall above the flowers was a large brass plaque, directing me to turn left for Smythe Incorporated or right for Feed the Need. I turned right and walked through a glass door into a small but elegant reception area. The petite young woman at the desk was on the phone, but she caught my eye, gesturing to let me know she would be with me in a moment. As I waited, I looked around the small room and finally sat on a beautifully upholstered couch, picking up a brochure from the coffee table.

Smythe Incorporated and Feed the Need, the brochure said on the cover. Two businesses, one leader, one heart.

I was glad to read the brochure, relieved to find even a little bit of information about the place to which I was about to hand over a quarter of a million dollars. I hated this, showing up somewhere knowing nothing about a company. But it was, after all, Tom’s money. If he said Feed the Need was legit, who was I to question that?

The woman was on the phone long enough for me to read the entire brochure. It was well written and professionally presented, and from it I learned that Tom’s friend, Wendell Smythe, headed a clothing manufacturing business called Smythe Incorporated. Headquartered here in Philadelphia, Smythe’s holdings included one domestic plant and sixteen foreign ones, and their clothes were distributed nationwide under several labels, a few that I recognized. The brochure went on to talk about the nonprofit part of the business: It was on a visit to one of his clothing plants in Southeast Asia that Wendell Smythe first began to recognize the problem of world hunger, the brochure said. Apparently, that led him to start a sister company called Feed the Need, whose sole purpose was to supply food, farming equipment, education, health care, and clean water to hungry children and their families throughout the world.