What began as a casual dinner and networking club among friends almost 10 years ago has transformed into a powerhouse nonprofit organization for addressing food insecurity and community needs in Northeast Ohio—The Steak Club Foundation

The Steak Club continues its monthly steak dinner networking and socializing events, but the group—made up of 10 board members and more than 227 volunteers who put in more than 1,052 hours of service this year—regularly works with local food pantries, daycare centers, and other area organizations to make sure people’s kitchens are stocked, and children are fed and entertained.

Additionally, the group hosts steak sandwich picnics and volunteers at Hope Farm in Akron each month to carry out “Operation Hope Farm,” providing the homeless with a warm meal and essential supplies like socks and underwear.

Many of the foundation’s members come out of Jesuit-rooted backgrounds, are passionate about helping others, or are simply looking for way to meet new people and give others a leg up on life.

All of the members have a shared passion for service and philanthropy that is guided by The Steak Club Foundation’s guiding principle, "No Service, No Steak," meaning that with privilege comes a responsibility to give back.

The origins

Nolan JamesBack around 2016, Cleveland attorney Nolan James and eight friends in their late 20s and early 30s, including founding members Sean Ward and Ryan Gorczyca, first started regularly getting together at an east side restaurant for steak dinners at a local restaurant to socialize, catch up, and do a little networking.

“It initially started as a way to bring people who I was connected with together,” recalls James, a graduate of St. Ignatius High School and Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. “A lot of my high school buddies went away for college and came back to Northeast Ohio, and I came back for law school [at University of Akron], and we were all starting to come of age professionally.”

James says he got the idea to start The Steak Club from his wife, Allison, who was in a cooking club with some of her friends.

“Initially, they would have dinners at each other's homes and just spend time and get to know one another,” James explains. “And as families started happening, we started having kids, and homes became messy. So they decided to have the cooking club at restaurants so us guys would be at home with our kids, which was great, while our wives were at Cooking Club. And we said, ‘You know what? We could totally do this.’”

Before long, Midtown Capital Advisors founder and CEO Sean Ward and his fellow John Carroll University (JCU) alum Ryan Gorczyca, a senior vice president at S&T Bank, were active members of the original group.

“We leverage our relationships to make an impact for other people,” says James, 38. “At our core, it's like a snowball. I started building this little snowball and set it down the hill. And this thing is massive now because of all the different pieces we have accumulated over the years.”

James says the reconnections were important, as was the professional development, but a few years ago, James says the group quickly saw community needs they felt compelled to fulfill. In 2018 The Steak Club became a 501(c)3 mission-driven organization focused on food insecurity, narrowing the focus from a list of causes

He says the group first committed to three service pillars:

1. Fighting Food Insecurity.
2. Helping those with cognitive and developmental disabilities.
3. Supporting the urban core (kind of our catch all to do good things for those in the inner city, children and families with limited means).

Steak Club Foundation serves meals at Middlebury Chapel in Akron

He says that given the organization’s name, it made sense to concentrate on food insecurity. “We connect our members over a great meal,” he says, “so if we were to focus our efforts on one thing, that one thing should be making sure that those without food are fed.”

Ward recalls one of the first projects he worked on, when called on Gorczyca, who chairs the Steak Club service committee and Ward deems “the star of the show,” and other club members to help feed the homeless in Akron.

“I was having surgeries on my hand at the time, and Steak Club had decided to start doing service,” Ward recalls. “I called Ryan on, like, a Tuesday and I said, ‘Hey, what are you doing this weekend? I need you to be my right hand at a service event,’”

Gorczyca says the request made perfect sense to him, so he stepped up.

“When you get a group of like-minded individuals together and you all start rowing in the same direction, it’s amazing what we can accomplish,” he says. “I know Sean said I'm the star, but all I do is quarterback. I just get everybody in the right spots, they do all the work.”

Gorczyca says he’s the one who benefits from the work they do at the Steak Club. “Sean and I have a million stories of how we've impacted people’s lives, how they've absolutely impacted mine,” he says. “This year we'll do 60,000 meals for those in need. We started this a few years ago, in a parking lot feeding a group of homeless people. And this year we're going to do 60,000 meals. That's monumental.”

Offering hope and sandwiches

Gorczyca is no stranger to grilling good food for a crowd. So, thanks to corporate donations that help fund The Steak Club’s mission, the group heads to Hope Farm on the first Wednesday of every month to cook full meals or Akron’s homeless population.

Ryan Gorczyca grills his steak club sandwiches at an event“We get about 10 or so volunteers together, however many can make it each month, and we prepare our signature steak club sandwich,” Gorczyca boasts. “It's a shaved ribeye sandwich on an Orlando roll with a giardiniera and banana pepper relish with seasonings and spices. And we soak the meat in an au jus drip and throw that onto the roll with some cheese.”

The group throws in a bag of chips and gets a ton of gratitude from the diners, who often want to reciprocate the gesture.

“It's amazing to me, I've had homeless people offer me half of their sandwich because they saw me cooking,” Gorczyca says. “People who don't know where they're getting their next meal probably haven't eaten in a while, and they're willing to give me half their sandwich because I helped them out.”

Kids come first

When The Steak Club members learned recently that there are more than 144 kids experiencing homelessness in Cleveland Heights, the group went to action.

“We're hyper-focused on the children,” Ward emphasizes. “All of our hearts bled when we found out that some of these kids are homeless and many are food insecure.”

So, Steak Club began working with Church of the Heights to start a food pantry that is open the last Friday of the month.

“At our last food pantry, we fed about 155 people, of which over 100 were children in Cleveland Heights,” says Gorczyca. He adds that the club has engaged with three nearby schools to feed kids with food insecurity and have helped about 36 families in the past six months.

Alyson Kallmeyer, director of agency operations and production for Strategic 7 Marketing got involved with The Steak Club about 18 months ago, when she became an empty nester and was looking for networking events and opportunities to get involved with her community.

She connected with Ward through LinkedIn, when he invited her to volunteer at Church of the Heights. As a mother, the opportunity to help out called to her.

“We discovered there were a hundred families in the Heights elementary schools that did not have enough to eat,” she recalls. “How do you learn if you have an empty belly?”

Although Gorczyca says running the pantry is expensive, the club has relied on its corporate donors to help purchase food until The Steak Club can qualify to buy directly from the Greater Cleveland Food Bank.

Steak Club Foundation members regularly play sports with Empower Sports athletes“You know, Cleveland Heights is a food desert and a lot of the people we serve don't have access to a car,” he explains. “If you don't have a grocery store that's right around the corner, how the heck are you going to get food, where are you going to shop? You're going to shop at the dollar store. And what are you going to get? You're going to get garbage, you're going to get ramen noodles, maybe canned soups.

“These are kids that need meals, they're hungry,” Gorczyca continues. “We've really focused in on food insecurity and especially food insecurity that is, that is associated with kids, because we feel like we can make a difference.”

Playing around

Kallmeyer says she was at first a little hesitant to join The Steak Club. Although she has lived in the Heights for years and raised her children there, she says, at age 62, she worried she wouldn’t fit in.

“I was afraid that it was a really young group and I'm a little more seasoned,” she recalls. “They said, ‘No, no, no, come, come, come.’ I went to my first service event over at the Church on the Heights. It was called Fun Friday, where we fed people and kids and played games with the kids.”

Kallmeyer says she was instantly hooked and felt accepted. “It was a great event,” she says. “I was really moved by the fact that this group, especially some of the younger members, took time out of their Friday afternoon to play with little kids and to feed people. It really touched me.”

Steak Club Signature Dinner Addionally, foundation members periodically join athletes with Empower Sports for a game of pickleball or basketball.

All are welcome

The Steak Club Foundation welcomes members of all ages and backgrounds united by a desire to serve. “We want everyone who cares about the things that we care about and is willing to help stand beside us and roll their sleeves up,” James says. “The diversity of individuals involved in our organization is a strength.”

The Steak Club Foundation volunteers will be preparing turkeys and assembling Thanksgiving meals at Church on the Heights tomorrow, Friday, Nov. 22 for distribution to 50 area families in need.

The next Steak Club Signature Dinner is Thursday, Dec. 5 at 5 p.m. at Lago’s Sora Private Dining room, 1121 W. 10th St, 44113. Tickets are $175 each.