January 28, 2019
Tiger Packs Launches Fundraiser with Hy-Vee; Key Cooperative Makes Grant to Program
Tiger Packs, the local program fund that provides healthy food to food insecure students in the Grinnell-Newburg school district, will join forces with Hy-Vee in February to raise funds to support the weekly food backpack program.
The fundraiser called “Food 4 Thought” will run Feb. 1-28, with Hy-Vee customers given the opportunity to contribute to Tiger Packs at checkout, donating $4 to offset the cost of one weekly Tiger Pack or $10 to support three Tiger Packs.
Started as a pilot program in 2013, Tiger Packs has grown to serve more than 200 G-N students who are eligible for free and reduced lunch or identified by school staff as food insecure. Eligible K-8 students receive a weekly bag of kid-friendly, nutritious food to take home on the weekends during the school year, and high school students have access to an on-site food pantry.
Food 4 Thought Fundraiser
Research has shown that children who do not have access to nutritious food have greater difficulty concentrating in school, which leads to decreased performance. The “Food 4 Thought” concept, which Tiger Packs advisory board member Caleb Elfenbein thought would raise awareness of the group’s mission, addresses issues G-N teachers and staff see regularly—students who do not have enough to eat have difficulty learning in the classroom.
“One in eight Iowans doesn’t always have access to enough food. With kids, that increases to one in five. In our own school district, there are currently more than 400 students who are food insecure, and our goal is to serve 100 percent of that population. We think that the Food 4 Thought campaign will help work toward that goal,” Elfenbein said.
“We are always thinking of ways to make Tiger Packs sustainable over the long term. The advisory board is so grateful to Hy-Vee manager Ryan Benz and all of the folks at Hy-Vee for supporting the Food 4 Thought initiative by offering the opportunity to reach potential donors when they are thinking about food for themselves and their families.”
Benz is also a Tiger Packs advisory board member and facilitates the ordering and delivery of food to the packing site, where volunteers package the kid-friendly food for distribution by teachers to eligible students on Fridays during the academic year. Each Tiger Pack costs $3.86, and there are currently 228 students in the program, totaling more than $35,000 per year. During the summer months, eligible students have access to free lunch at designated school locations.
Key Cooperative Grant
Grinnell ag business Key Cooperative has made a grant of $500 in support of Tiger Packs. The Key grant will be matched by the Land O’Lakes Foundation, which works to fight hunger and support education. The $1,000 total contribution will purchase food supplies to prepare the weekly packs.
Key Cooperative has locations in 17 communities across north and east Central Iowa and provides 50 fulltime and seasonal jobs at Grinnell facilities. Key Agronomy Department Manager Brent Deppe presented the Key Cooperative grant check to Tiger Packs advisory board members at a recent packing session.
“We are pleased to have the opportunity to support the Tiger Packs program,” Deppe said. “Everything we do at Key Cooperative in our core business units of agronomy, grain, energy, and feed is at the start of the food supply chain.
“Key works with our member farmers to grow the economical and sustainable food supply, so being able to support the Tiger Packs program at the end of the food supply chain was something we very much wanted to be a part of.”
Additional information about the Tiger Packs program fund and ways to contribute is available at ahrensfamilyfoundation.org/partner-program-funds.
Tiger Packs is a nonprofit partner of the Claude W. and Dolly Ahrens Foundation, which serves as an umbrella organization and financial manager for nonprofit partners and their program funds, including Imagine Grinnell, JPK–Grinnell Mental Health Consortium, S.H.E. COUNTS, Take Away Hunger, and STRONG Foundation. Together, these partners achieve greater efficiency of scale while maintaining independent operating advisory boards.
