St. Cloud businesses sponsor meals at dizzying pace
It’s getting harder and harder to find a business in St. Cloud, Minn., that hasn’t sponsored a meal at the St. Cloud Salvation Army.
This year, the St. Cloud Salvation Army is on track to welcome 50 to 60 sponsors of its “PhilanthroFEED” program, which allows local businesses and organizations to purchase an entire community meal for as little as $250.
Not only do sponsors purchase the food, they also serve it themselves.
“There are very few charities where you can directly hand out your donation to the people benefitting from it,” said Development Director Jim Muellenbach, adding that up to 180 people eat lunch at the St. Cloud Salvation Army every weekday (pictured). “I think that’s a big part of PhilanthroFEED’s success.”
Success indeed: The program started in 2013 with 10 sponsors and grew to 29 sponsors in 2014. This year, PhilanthroFEED is already at 24 sponsors, with several companies signing up to be monthly sponsors during the rest of 2015.
“If and when we reach 50 sponsors this year, that’s a savings of about $25,000 – money we can use for our other important programs like food shelf and housing,” Muellenbach said. “The nice thing is, most of the sponsors who sign up once, sign up again.”
Texas Roadhouse of St. Cloud can attest to that. On June 24, the steakhouse sponsored its sixth meal in less than two years.
“This is right up our alley – we like to do things for vets,” said the restaurant’s co-owner, Tiffany Mason, noting that the St. Cloud Salvation Army serves a large number of veterans from the local VA Medical Center.
She helped serve the meal with three Texas Roadhouse employees and three employees from another repeat supporter – St. Cloud Toyota Scion, a two-time PhilanthroFEED sponsor (all of them pictured).
PhilanthroFEED is an attractive charitable activity because it’s fun and affordable. In some cases, it doesn’t even cost a dime. In April, students from a local elementary school held a spaghetti drive, then hauled the noodles and sauce to the St. Cloud Salvation Army and served it themselves.
The program is also important because it gets the public involved with helping their community year-round, and introduces new donors and volunteers to the important work of The Salvation Army.
“PhilanthroFEED provides more opportunities for groups, companies and individuals to work side-by-side with The Salvation Army outside of the holidays,” Muellenbach said.
How PhilanthroFEED works
PhilanthroFEED sponsors have two main options: purchase an evening or weekend meal for $250, or a weekday lunch for $500.
A third option is available to restaurants and other food service companies: cater a meal themselves. That’s what Texas Roadhouse did on June 24, providing trays of piping hot pulled pork, corn and baked potatoes.
“Every time we’ve done PhilanthroFEED, we’ve catered the whole thing,” said Mason (pictured). “The people coming to eat are happy to have something different.”
As for the volunteer component of PhilanthroFEED, it’s simple: Bring a few people from your business or organization, and help serve meals for a couple hours.
How PhilanthroFEED helps
Supporting PhilanthroFEED does much more than provide hot meals for hungry men, women and children in the St. Cloud area. It also houses them.
PhilanthroFEED saves the St. Cloud Salvation Army (pictured) thousands of dollars that can be repurposed for its free 69-bed transitional shelter. The shelter is expensive to operate and is almost always filled to capacity.
“With so many people in need of housing, there’s a lot of wear and tear on this facility – it costs us $50,000 to $60,000 just to keep it in shape,” said Major Lee Morrison, St. Cloud Salvation Army administrator. “Just last week, we had 28 single women and several families on our waiting list.”
Seven of the 69 beds are reserved for veterans, who can stay for up to two years. The rest of the facility is a mix of rooms for families, single men and single women, all of whom can stay up to 90 days while receiving intensive one-on-one case management.
“It’s not unusual for one in four of our beds to be occupied by a child,” Morrison said (read youth success story about brothers Stephen and Cerrano Moore). “Our policy is that if people are working on achieving a goal but have not reached it in 90 days, they can stay longer. If people don’t take this program seriously and they aren’t actively trying to help themselves, we kindly ask them to leave.”
These housing programs have an excellent success rate. Last year, for example, about 100 families left the shelter having secured permanent housing.
“We’re happy to say they left and haven’t come back,” Morrison said.
In addition to housing, PhilanthroFEED helps offset the rising cost of the St. Cloud Salvation Army’s food shelf, which has doubled its output.
“We’ve seen a 200 percent growth in new families in the last few years,” Morrison said. “It’s been difficult trying to keep up with the increased expenses of the food shelf and shelter. Thankfully, PhilanthroFEED and its sponsors have made a huge difference.”
To become a PhilanthroFEED sponsor, contact Jim at Jim_Muellenbach@usc.salvationarmy.org or 320-257-7436. More information can be found on the PhilanthroFEED page.