Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless

Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless hosted a reception on April 19 to celebrate a milestone year in employee giving and present awards to two outstanding campaigns— Walker Art Center and the Metropolitan Council. The reception continued our tradition of honoring our roots in workplace giving and recognizing the employees who continue to help us grow.

2009 was our best campaign year ever, with employees pledging more than $896,000 to support the mission of Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless. In this milestone year it was hard to choose from the many campaigns that showed such strong commitment to meeting Minnesotans’ most basic needs of food and shelter. However, the employees at Walker Art Center and the Metropolitan Council displayed an exceptional level of enthusiasm for increasing support.

Walker Art Center offered Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless as a new choice for its employees to support, and the employees responded in an amazing way. “With everyone sobered by personal financial strains over the past year, it would have been difficult to predict a record setting year for the Walker Community Fund Drive,” said Holly Hinton, HR staff member. But employee giving increased by $1,424 over the Walker’s previous year’s fund drive, with employees contributing $1,796 to Open Your Heart.

The Metropolitan Council, with its employees from Metro Transit, Environmental Services and Administration, increased its giving to Open Your Heart an unbelievable 35% over the previous year. Employee giving to Open Your Heart by Metropolitan Council employees has doubled in the last eight years. Each year the Metropolitan Council campaign is very successful in getting their employees involved in a fun way. This year employees donated items for a silent auction at their traditional wrap-up charitable giving event. “It was encouraging to see so many employees participating in the event in these trying economic times,” commented Tom Weaver, Regional Administrator. “It speaks volumes about the generous character of our staff.”

On behalf of everyone at Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless, we congratulate the employees at Walker Art Center and the Metropolitan Council for their outstanding support and give our heartfelt thanks to all of our employee giving campaigns. We are humbled and encouraged by your caring response to the growing number of people seeking food and shelter. And we are grateful to be able to continue meeting these important needs thanks to your generous support.