To Jeff Swartz, Bill Shore looked way out of place in the migrant camp in Immokalee, Fla. Swartz is the CEO of Timberland, a company with a tradition of public service, and he and his party were working at the camp in T-shirts and jeans. "Billy shows up in a suit," says Swartz. "I catch him leaving the church, and he's wandering across to a shelter. . . . It's just unbelievable to watch him be quiet. His body and face are very expressive. In a genuine, human sense, he says, 'I care about you.' "

For 20 years, Shore has made it his business to care. Share Our Strength, his Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, has raised close to $190 million in the fight against hunger by forging alliances with restaurants and businesses. Timberland signed on several years ago; American Express alone has raised $21 million.

Shore's initial inspiration was the Ethiopian famine of 1984. He was working for Sen. Gary Hart, and he couldn't get the television images out of his mind. He opened Share Our Strength in a Capitol Hill basement, juggling nonprofit fundraising with the demands of the Hart campaign.

Shore discovered that people can be remarkably generous if you ask them to donate what they do best. In the restaurant industry, that meant asking people to cook for fundraisers, now an annual series called Taste of the Nation. Shore estimates that he has enlisted 10,000 chefs, sous-chefs, and restaurateurs in his cause. "He came up with this notion of using people's passion to give back rather than writing checks," says Kathy Bushkin, a colleague from the Hart years.

Shore talks animatedly of the power of "bearing witness," convinced that if business leaders are exposed to needy people, they will discover a natural impulse to help. Toward that end, he has taken executives into blighted neighborhoods in Washington and a medical clinic in Boston.

Shore bears witness himself through a series of personal letters to supporters. One describes a visit to the Mississippi Delta and the Rio Grande Valley: "There are two kinds of poverty in America. There are those who don't have. And there are those who don't know. I've seen one. I've been the other. At least until last week's trip."

Partnership. By focusing on alliances with profitable companies, Shore challenges America's nonprofits to stop thinking of themselves as charity cases bickering over a finite pool of grant dollars. "Instead of fighting for our share of the charitable pie," he says, "we decided to make that pie grow."

Dismissive of his own administrative abilities, he says he exercises leadership instead by focusing on vision. He embraces Big Hairy Audacious Goals, the term Jim Collins and Jerry Porras coined in their book on exceptional companies. SOS's ultimate goal is nothing short of ending childhood hunger in America. "It really put us out there on a limb," Shore says. "But it can be very motivating and inspiring to have a big goal."

Shore is generous when other nonprofits ask for help. J. B. Schramm, who heads College Summit, thinks so highly of Shore's advice he calls it "brain time with Billy." And Share Our Strength has a for-profit spinoff called Community Wealth Ventures that helps nonprofits cast off their tired roles as perpetual grant recipients.

Perhaps Shore's greatest success, though, is in talking others into stepping up--people like Mike McCurry, the former White House press secretary. Danny Meyer, a longtime supporter whose Union Square Hospitality Group in New York City owns nine restaurants and a jazz club, says Shore "has an extraordinary way not only of connecting people with good opportunities but getting people to do the hard work."

Meyer should know. He met Shore at a Taste of the Nation fundraiser and was talked into running it the following year. "That," he says, "was one of the greatest 'yeses' of my life."

BORN: Feb. 3, 1955 EDUCATION: B.A., University of Pennsylvania; J.D., George Washington University Law School FAMILY: Married, three children; sister, Debbie, helped found Share Our Strength and still works there PREVIOUS LIFE: Aide to former U.S. Sens. Gary Hart and Bob Kerrey MANTRA: "^ Repeat after me: Profit...is...good."--Jed Emerson