Open Your Heart is excited to announce our Fall grantees! Thanks to our generous supporters, Open Your Heart awarded nearly $85,000 in funding this quarter to Minnesota crisis service agencies in need! None of this would be possible without you. Thank you!
$4,295 | Minneapolis
Toward a double wide commercial freezer and stainless-steel food preparation table. A new freezer will increase storage space, ensuring that Peace House Community can provide generous and healthy meals to community members in need.
Western Communities Action Network (WeCAN)
$5,088 | Mound
Toward an additional refrigerator unit, providing safe storage of a greater quantity and a variety of perishable items for WeCAN’s food programs.
$7,116 | St. Paul
Toward a refrigerator, freezer, shelving, and other needed infrastructure, allowing volunteer and neighbor-led initiative to function more independently. For The Midway Project’s neighbors experiencing food insecurity, giving them a dedicated, discrete, and organized space to choose their food and other supplies will increase their access and comfort.
$8,000 | St. Cloud
Toward a three-door fridge for Loaves & Fishes commissary kitchen in St. Cloud. By opening a commissary kitchen in St. Cloud, Loaves & Fishes will be able to prepare large bulk amounts of food to be prepared and served throughout the St. Cloud community. A three-door fridge will help them properly equip this commissary kitchen which ultimately will allow them to provide more meals to people in need.
Trinity Lutheran Church of Minnehaha Falls: Nokomis East Giving Garden
$1,726 | Minneapolis
Toward a garden shed and the installment of an underground irrigation system, ensuring that all of Nokomis East Giving Garden’s various crops are watered based on their unique needs to produce at the highest rate and also survive during the hottest days. The ultimate beneficiaries are the many residents in Nokomis East’s surrounding neighborhoods who are experiencing food insecurity.
$5,812 |Burnsville
Toward the purchase of a new freezer. The new freezer will enable 360 Communities to provide The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) foods to their clients, particularly frozen vegetables during the colder months when produce is not in season in addition to frozen proteins.
$5,748 | St. Paul
Toward the purchase of two new two-section reach in refrigerators for Hallie Q. Brown’s Basic Needs program. This funding will increase Hallie Q. Brown’s capacity to serve participants a wider variety of healthy nutritious food.
Haven Housing DBA St. Anne’s Place
$3,493 |Minneapolis
Toward the purchase of a new commercial refrigerator for St. Anne’s Place emergency family shelter. A commercial refrigerator is a crucial piece of equipment in St. Anne’s Place’s kitchen and is required for them to produce the 13,000 meals they serve annually to mothers and children experiencing homelessness. This helps reduce food insecurity among guests and provide a stable base for them in a time of crisis and transition.
$7,000 |Minneapolis
Funding will support the purchase of replacement bed frames and memory foam mattresses. This grant will improve the quality of Avenues’ crisis and basic needs services. When given a safe place to call home and the support of caring adults, youth experiencing homelessness can grow into thriving young adulthood.
$3,845 |Minneapolis
Toward the Pantry Saver software and much-needed hygiene items. Since opening to the community, FreedomWorks has seen the number of households served double from one month to the next. A more efficient software database will help FreedomWorks keep up with this rapid rate of growth.
$7,392 | Eagan
Toward the purchase of a floor scale for The Open Door’s new food pantry facility. This floor scale will enable The Open Door to take in food donations and purchases quickly and efficiently from hunger relief partners, enabling them to distribute a wide variety of fresh food and pantry staples to the food insecure across Dakota County.
$7,000 |Apple Valley
Toward the purchase of supplies for youth experiencing homelessness served by The Link’s Street Outreach Program and C.O.R.E. Drop-In Center. These funds will allow The Link’s Street Outreach Program and C.O.R.E. Drop-In Center to provide basic needs supplies to help youth stay safe and comfortable during winter months.
$8,000 |St. Paul
Toward temporary hotel/motel stays. This support will help Neighborhood House prevent eviction and homelessness for low-income St. Paul families in crisis or transition.
$2,000 | Plymouth
Toward needed documents and resources that will aid a person experiencing homelessness, or at risk of becoming homeless, in housing stability. This funding will remove barriers by enabling 1st Step Housing to provide the documents necessary for their clients to obtain certain benefits, pay application fees and/or apply for housing.
Servants of Shelter of Koochiching County
$7,765 | International Falls
Toward security cameras, helping to create a secure, fair, and safe housing community. Servants of Shelter have community guidelines based on harm reduction, client choice and maintaining safe, accessible, low barrier housing. Security cameras help to promote accountability and provides equity to guests who may not be able to express themselves as well as others.