Join us this Saturday, May 11, for Stamp Out Hunger!

Stamp Out Hunger is the nation’s largest single-day food drive, collecting more than 70 million pounds of food for food banks and food shelves across the United States. Locally, Second Harvest Heartland is the proud partner of Stamp Out Hunger with the National Association of Letter Carriers Minneapolis Branch 9 & Saint Paul Branch 28. This year, our goal is to collect 1.3 million pounds of food, enough for us to distribute 1 million meals to our agency partners in Central Minnesota and Western Wisconsin!

Get Involved!

1. Look for a blue bag in your mailbox or grab one during your next grocery run at Cub. Fill it with non-perishable, non-breakable food items and set it by your mailbox on Saturday, May 11. Your letter carrier will do the rest!

2. Stop by one of the participating Cub Foods locations on the day of the drive and drop your food off with our volunteers.

3. Donate online from May 1-14, 2013 & TCF Bank® will match $1:$1 up to a total of $25,000!

For more information, visit here.

On Saturday, May 11, Second Harvest Heartland will be partnering with Cub Foods and the National Association of Letter Carriers to orchestrate the nation’s largest, single-day food drive: Stamp Out Hunger. In 2012, the Stamp Out Hunger event collected over 700,000 pounds of food in the Twin Cities, that is enough for over 530,000 meals for our neighbors in need!

Volunteer to be a part of this exciting day
We are in need of nearly 100 volunteers to help us collect food donations at various locations across the metro area. Volunteers work a 3.5 hour shift lifting 10 pound grocery bags from letter carrier’s vehicles into a Second Harvest Heartland truck. This is a wonderful volunteer opportunity for children and families!

We would love your support in this monumental, collaborative effort. And feel free to pass the opportunity onto friends and family!

Shift times:
2:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. for West Metro Locations
3:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m for East Metro Locations

To find the location nearest you and register to volunteer, click here.

Volunteer Category: The partner with the largest impact on operational productivity via donated time and labor.

UnitedHealth Group is a company focused on health and well-being, and that spirit is shared by
its employees through their gifts of time to help improve the communities in which they live and work.

As a testament to UnitedHealth Group’s commitment to service, its employees contributed 2,800 volunteer hours to Second Harvest Heartland in 2012—the equivalent of 350 full business days. They’ve also been instrumental in outreach campaigns to help raise awareness of senior hunger and have hosted food drives at Minnesota Vikings games.

Sincere thanks to General Mills for their generous contributions to Second Harvest Heartland through their annual Feed the Need Food & Fund Drive. This year, they raised nearly $180,000, enough to provide nearly 665,000 meals to our hungry neighbors!

To top it off, they made this video to motivate employees to participate in the drive.

Thank you General Mills for your continued (and creative) support!

Hunger exists everywhere in America. It doesn’t matter if you live in an urban, suburban or rural setting—hunger has no boundaries.

Listen to Destiny’s story, collected by WCCO Radio for our Let’s Kick Hunger Day Radiothon, and learn more about how hunger affects every community.

Give today to make sure that Destiny and families like hers have enough to eat.

Local businesses are stepping up in big ways this spring with promotional opportunities that give you a chance to make a difference right in your own neighborhood. Below are two of many campaigns that are working to raise funds for Second Harvest Heartland and our hunger-relief efforts. Consider participating in one of these, or start your own campaign to help our hungry neighbors in need.

Afton Alps
It’s Food Shelf Frenzy March 23 and 24 at Afton Alps! Enjoy the new snow cover this weekend when lift tickets at Afton Alps are just $8 with a donation of 4 non-perishable food items. More details at www.aftonalps.com.

General Mills Outnumber Hunger
Help provide more meals for our hungry neighbors through General Mills’ Outnumber Hunger campaign. It’s easy: Purchase any of the participating General Mills’ products with Outnumber Hunger codes, submit your codes from the packages at www.outnumberhunger.com, enter your ZIP code and select your local food bank to help make an impact in your own community. Each code you enter from participating General Mills brands will secure 5 meals for your local Feeding America food bank, including Second Harvest Heartland.

With close to 10% of people in our region at risk of hunger, there’s never been a better time to join us in helping close the missing meals gap. You can see all of our current campaigns here.

Save the date for our premier gala, Dish: Cuisine for Change, presented by Cub Foods, and help us bring hope to hungry children! With one in every six Minnesota children living at risk of hunger, there has never been a better time to help provide relief. Your attendance at this year’s event will help us reinvent hunger relief through continued leadership and innovation.

Enjoy a lively evening of gourmet cuisine from top local chefs, exciting silent and live auctions, fine wine, and great entertainment featuring Dana Carvey, Emmy-award winning comedian and cast member of “Saturday Night Live” from 1986-1992.

This year’s event will take place on Thursday, May 30 at the Saint Paul RiverCentre. Check out photos from last year’s event below, or head over to dishcuisineforchange.org to reserve your tickets or become a table host and enjoy exclusive benefits.

Can’t make the event? You can still make a gift to support the event and help support child hunger programs.

Thank you to all who attended, hosted and sponsored the eighth annual Vintner Ball on March 2!

This year, participants helped raise more than $230,000 to support Second Harvest Heartland—enough to provide over 851,000 meals to those in our community who count on us for support!

The Vintner Ball, a world-class, charitable wine tasting event, has been raising crucial funds for Second Harvest Heartland and our hunger-relief efforts for eight years. Special thanks to this year’s Vintner Ball sponsors whose generous donations made the event a success: Lunds & Byerly’s, BMW of Minnetonka, Bank of America, Lakes Sotheby’s International Realty, Milestone AV, Artful Living, Dolan Printing, MoCo and the Westin.

As the need for food assistance in our community continues to grow, your help is needed now more than ever. During the month of March, you can make a direct impact on your local food shelves and hungry neighbors through Minnesota FoodShare’s March Campaign.

For over 30 years, Minnesota FoodShare, a program of the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches (GMCC), has coordinated the largest food and fund drive in the state, called the March Campaign. The campaign brings together thousands of families, companies, faith communities, schools and civic groups to raise a significant percentage of the annual food distributed by its recipient food shelves.

Food shelves rely heavily on the food and funds that come in during the March campaign—this year, the campaign is expected to raise half of the food that local food shelves will distribute in 2013.

To get there, we need your help. Food and financial donations are the easiest way to give, and all donations will go directly to local food shelves.

To find a food shelf near you to support, click here or call 651.291.0211. Or, if you’d like to support Second Harvest Heartland with a financial contribution to help us secure more food for our food shelf partners, click here.

In just one month, the eighth annual Vintner Ball will once again be held at the Westin Edina Galleria. Join us on March 2 at 7 p.m. for this world-class, charitable wine tasting event—one you won’t want to miss.

You’ll enjoy an evening of some of the finest wines from around the world, gourmet hors d’oeuvres, and have the opportunity to participate in a silent auction and wine seminars. Wines are carefully selected by Bill Belkin, Lunds & Byerly’s wine manager, and each year approximately 125 different world class wines are available for tasting. All funds raised during the evening will benefit Second Harvest Heartland in helping provide more meals to more people in our community.

Over the past seven years, nearly $1 million has been raised at the Vintner Ball on behalf of Second Harvest Heartland—that’s enough to provide more than 3 million meals for our hungry neighbors. We hope to do even more this year, but we can’t do it without you.

Join us for the 2013 Vintner Ball and help us generate warmth in the heart during the chill of winter. Tickets for the Vintner Ball are on sale now. You can purchase your tickets here for easy registration or at the door the night of the event.

We want to extend a very special thank you to Bill Belkin and our presenting sponsor Lunds & Byerly’s who provide so much of what makes the Vintner Ball possible.

Hope to see you there!

Thanks to all who participated in yesterday’s Let’s Kick Hunger Day! We raised over $200,000 to kick hunger in Minnesota and western Wisconsin through generous donations and sponsor matches. And special thanks to WCCO Radio, Taste of the NFL, General Mills and Land O’Lakes for their continued partnership and support.

Let’s Kick Hunger Day raises crucial funds in support of hunger relief, 100 percent of which will stay local in our community. Times are tough for many of our neighbors, and the community’s support has never been more crucial.

If you missed the radiothon yesterday but still want to help kick hunger, you can still donate online here.

WCCO and Taste of the NFL present the fourth annual Let’s Kick Hunger Day tomorrow, a day-long event sponsored by Land O’Lakes and General Mills to benefit Second Harvest Heartland.

A record one in ten Minnesotans struggles to put food on the table every day, but you can help. Call in to WCCO at 877.866.4376 tomorrow or stop by the Mall of America Rotunda and become a Hunger Hero at $10 a month for a year. That provides a meal-a-day for the entire year for a child, working parent or senior in your community.

To get involved, call 877.866.4376 between 5am to 6pm, or click here to make a donation.

We hope you can join us in helping Kick Hunger!

On Monday, more than 400 kids and their families rolled up their sleeves and packed, sorted and labeled food to help provide for those in need as part of Bring Your Child to Serve Day, in honor of MLK Day. By the time the last volunteer shift ended, 25,830 pounds of food was packed—the equivalent of 19,869 meals!

It was inspiring to see so many youth excited about giving back to their community and helping others. Thank you to all who volunteered, and we hope to see you again soon! We’d also like to thank our sponsor Bremer Bank for making the day possible.

And remember, the need for volunteers and donations is year-round at Second Harvest Heartland. Please check out our website or follow us on Twitter and Facebook to hear about opportunities to continue to help.

As a semi-professional triathlete and running fanatic, Mike Buenting has run many marathons. But Mike has never run a marathon starting in dead last in a turkey costume like he did at this year’s Life Time Fitness Turkey Day 5K in Minneapolis. As the marathon’s official Transamerica Turkey Chaser, Mike was challenged by Life Time Fitness to start the race in last place, and see how many runners he could pass before he crossed the finish line, all while wearing a turkey costume.

For every participant Mike passed, Transamerica donated $1 to Second Harvest Heartland. After waiting almost 30 minutes for all the participants to start the race, Mike passed 14,500 runners out of a record 17,000 plus participants, raising a total of $14,500 for Second Harvest Heartland to help fight hunger in our community!

Thank you to Life Time Fitness and Transamerica for partnering in fun and unique ways to help fight hunger in our community. In addition to the $14,500 donation by Transamerica, Life Time Fitness also delivered two full truckloads of food donated by marathon participants to our warehouse.

And sincere thanks to Mike Beunting for his eagerness to run over three miles in a turkey costume—all to help provide food for our hungry neighbors!

A record one in ten Minnesotans struggles to put food on the table every day. To raise funds and support for hunger relief through Second Harvest Heartland, WCCO Radio, Taste of the NFL, Land O’Lakes and General Mills will host the fourth annual “Let’s Kick Hunger Day” Radiothon on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013 at Mall of America. The day-long radiothon, which will be broadcast on News Radio 830 WCCO, will raise funds to support Second Harvest Heartland.

Last year’s radiothon raised more than $170,000 for hunger relief. One hundred percent of your contributions will stay local and will help provide meals to children, working families and seniors in your community!

Participating in the radiothon is easy. Simply tune into WCCO Radio or stop by the Mall of America on Jan. 31 to become a Hunger Hero. Just $10 per month for a year, or a one-time gift of $120, will help provide 840 meals to those who are hungry.

To get involved, call 877.866.4376 between 5am to 6pm on Jan. 31, or click here to make a donation.

We hope you can join us in helping Kick Hunger!

Each year, Americans across the country come together on Martin Luther King. Jr. Day to serve their neighbors and communities in honor of Dr. King. As part of this national movement, we’re once again hosting “Bring Your Child to Serve Day” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Over the past several years, “Bring Your Child to Serve Day” has become an important day of community service throughout the nation, and we’re excited to join in and offer working parents and their children an opportunity to volunteer together and generate awareness around the issue of hunger!

The event will take place from 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. on Monday, January 21, at Second Harvest Heartland West, located at 6325 Sandburg Road in Golden Valley. More than 400 youth ages eight and older and their parents will work in shifts sorting and packing food for the nearly 600,000 individuals in need of hunger relief in our community.

Bremer Bank, a longtime supporter of community service with a keen interest in hunger relief, is sponsoring the event and will have employees and their children on hand volunteering. Thank you Bremer Bank!

Please consider joining us on January 21 to honor the late Dr. King and serve those in need in our community!

And remember, you can continue to serve your community after MLK Day. To see volunteer opportunities at Second Harvest Heartland all year round, visit here.

During the holiday season when we do our best to think about others and give back, the players and coaches of the Minnesota Vikings did just that at this year’s Taste of the Vikings event at Mall of America.

At the event, attendees sampled food and wine from some of the Twin Cities best restaurants and took pictures with and got autographs from the entire Minnesota Vikings roster. All proceeds from the Taste of the Vikings event benefitted the Vikings Children’s Fund Summer Lunch Program through Second Harvest Heartland, and this year, we were able to raised nearly $130,000! That’s enough to provide 481,000 meals to low-income kids in need of food!

Thanks to the Minnesota Vikings, Taste of the NFL founder Wayne Kostroski, presenting sponsor Carlson Companies, local chefs, the countless volunteers who gave their time and all those who came out to help us in our mission of fighting hunger!

Check out the video recap of this year’s event from the Minnesota Vikings here.

Thank you to the over 3,000 people that started their Thanksgiving morning by giving back and attending the fifth annual Walk to End Hunger!

This year, more than 3,000 participants helped raise over $306,000 to support 12 partner hunger relief organizations, including Second Harvest Heartland. Special thanks to the over 270 individuals that walked for Second Harvest Heartland and helped us raise over $21,500!

The Walk to End Hunger, presented by Greater Twin Cities United Way and The Mosaic Company, is a collaboration of hunger relief agencies to raise awareness and funds to end hunger in the Twin Cities and gather thousands of nonperishable food items for local hunger relief organizations. Thanks to all who participated!

Corporations, businesses, groups and families of all sizes are hosting Food & Fund Drives this holiday season. There are a lot of ways to participate in a Food & Fund drive: With your family and friends, at your workplace, or when you’re out
and about doing your holiday shopping.

Below are just a couple of different Food & Fund Drives happening around the Twin Cities that you can take part in.

Bring three canned food items to any participating Twin
Cities Qdoba restaurant now until December 9 and receive a free order of chips and queso.

Do some holiday shopping at one of the two Primp Boutiques between December 10-20, and 10 percent of all sales will be donated to Second Harvest Heartland.

Stop by Family Dollar and donate $1, $3 or $5 at the register, now through December 19.

With the growing demand for food in our community, your help is needed now more than ever. Consider participating in one of these Food & Fund Drives, or start one of your own this holiday season, and join the tens of thousands of people throughout our communities who are helping fight hunger.

You’re invited to help Panera Bread celebrate their Bread & Baking Discovery Day at 6 this evening at any of the 25 Panera Bakery Café’s in the Twin Cities. At the event, there will be a synchronized breaking of bread along with an opportunity to donate to Second Harvest Heartland.

Join us, along with Panera customers and community partners, in a celebration of their Bread Heritage and recognition of their commitment to fight food insecurity.

To find the nearest Panera Bakery Café, click here.