Paige Bueckers teams up with Chegg to make $50K donation to Husky Harvest campus food pantry

STORRS – UConn women’s basketball star Paige Bueckers is a “huge believer” in giving back what she’s been given.

In the world of NIL, the guard entering her fourth season with the Huskies has made it her focus to sign long-term, meaningful partnerships – like becoming a Brand Ambassador for Chegg, Inc. The partnership has allowed Bueckers to help combat the issue of food insecurity, including the creation of a free, pop-up grocery market in her home state of Minnesota that was made possible with an additional partnership with the hunger relief company, Goodr.

On Monday, Bueckers and Chegg announced a $50,000 donation to the “Husky Harvest” food pantry, where Bueckers will be able to help out thousands of her fellow students and staff at all of UConn’s campuses.

“We want to do big things and contribute to a lot of things and giving back to communities in addressing food insecurity, it’s a huge issue not just here but everywhere,” Bueckers said Monday in a press conference to announce the support. “So to be able to help with that, I know college is very expensive and students have to worry about paying for a lot of different things, so to take one more thing off their plate, literally, is amazing.”

The university began studying the issue of food insecurity among its students several years ago and a task force developed a number of recommendations to combat it , one of which was to create food pantries at each of the seven campuses. A 2019 survey determined 35% of the student population in Storrs was going hungry prior to the start of the pandemic, with an even higher rate at UConn’s branch campuses, according to a release from the school.

The food pantries began opening last spring with items provided by Connecticut Foodshare and have served hundreds of households.

“This is just a wonderful day where we see this coming to fruition. I couldn’t be more grateful to Chegg and to Paige for their leadership on this issue,” said Anne D’Alleva, UConn Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs. “The world knows Paige as an incredible basketball player and as a leader of our extraordinary team. Here at UConn, we also know her as a dedicated student and moreover as a student who’s dedicated to her fellow students, who wants to make sure every Husky has a chance to succeed.”

The “Husky Harvest” location in Storrs, which is based in the Charter Oak Apartments Community Center, served 195 households (551 people) in March, its first month of existence, and 307 households (340 people) were helped in April.

The pantry remained open after the spring semester concluded, serving 60 households (147 people) in May, 40 households (166 people) in June and 34 households (138 people) in July.

“Generally, in the world of food banking, for every $1 donated, we could turn it into about two meals,” Jason Jakubowski, President and CEO of Connecticut Foodshare, told The Courant. “So $50,000 is usually the equivalent of about 100,000 meals. That’s a significant number for a university like Connecticut, especially seeing that this particular pantry had only opened about six months ago.

“This is still a relatively new venture for the University of Connecticut, we’re all still trying to figure out the ins and outs of this, but the fact that we have somebody with the name, likeness and celebrity of Paige Bueckers here, talking to her fellow students and telling them, ‘please come to this pantry, please utilize this pantry,’ that’s just wonderful. It’s absolutely wonderful and it warms my heart as a UConn alum and a UConn dad myself.”

The donation will help stock pantry locations at the main campus in Storrs and at branch campuses in Hartford, Avery Point, Stamford and Waterbury as well as at the School of Medicine in Farmington and the School of Law in Hartford.

“I appreciate that spirit of giving back so much among our UConn athletes. That they are great athletes, they’re great students, but they want to give back and support their fellow students, means the world,” D’Alleva told The Courant. “I think especially around an issue like food insecurity, where there can be a sense of stigma or a sense of shame, Paige actually being here in person and making this donation tells every student that this is simply a resource for everyone. Everyone is welcome here and no one needs to feel any sense of shame or stigma or hesitation about coming and just getting food and getting the help they need.”

Bueckers, the consensus national player of the year in 2021, became the first student-athlete brand ambassador for Chegg, a homework solutions and exam prep company, in 2022.

“Them partnering here at the Husky Harvest pantry and being able to contribute a lot of items and just help students out here at UConn, where it’s my family now, it’s just surreal just to be able to do this stuff and have people around me that helped me do this,” Bueckers said. “I’ve been blessed a lot in life, I know not everybody has been as fortunate as I was growing up, so just sort of reaching those inequalities and people who don’t have the same opportunities I have, it’s always been big for me and sort of like my life motto, I would say.”

“I think that Paige Bueckers today gave us a national template for how college celebrity and their NIL deals can be used for good, not just at their colleges, but in the community at-large,” Jakubowski said. “I hope that others look at Paige’s example and take that and run with it. I really think what she did here today was tremendous.”