Over 750 Students Receive Financial Assistance
from Frozen Food Industry

Harrisburg, PA — Coping with the challenges of a prospect list increasingly thinned by mergers and acquisitions, the Frozen Food Industry Memorial Scholarship Foundation has wound up 2005 reporting contributions for the year at $55,925.

This increases to $1,061,760 the total financial aid which the program has provided to more than 750 students seeking careers in the food industry. Twenty-four colleges and universities benefit from the program which was launched 15 years ago by the Distinguished Order of Zerocrats with the support of the National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association, the American Frozen Food Institute and related industry groups.These industry leaders are joined in the conviction that the frozen food business like any other is only as strong as the promising young people it attracts and develops, an increasingly important consideration in light of aggressive recruiting for their services by technological and related industries. As in the past, two major factors have propelled the program’s 2005 growth; strong across-the-board support by all segments of the industry plus a high renewal rate of 81.9%, according to Robert E. Rich, Jr., chairman of the Zerocrat Scholarship Program.The Distinguished Order of Zerocrats was formed in 1954 to honor top officials of the industry and allied industry associations, as well as other individuals who have contributed significantly to the advancement of the frozen food industry. In 1965, a Scholarship Committee was formed to support the education of future industry leaders.

At its inception, the Scholarship Committee solicited funds solely from Zerocrat members. Upon the 1990 appointment of Bob Rich, Sr. as committee chairman, a fundamental change was made in the way funds were solicited. Bob’s first recommendation was to solicit contributions from the entire industry, dramatically increasing funding.

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