Open Your Heart is excited to announce our summer grantees! Thanks to our generous supporters, Open Your Heart awarded nearly $110,000 in funding this quarter to Minnesota crisis service agencies in need! None of this would be possible without you. Thank you!
A Place for Hope: Recovery and Wellness Center & Food Shelf
$3,500 | Moorhead
Partial funding toward non-electric Merchandising units to display fresh fruits and vegetables. This support will make A Place for Hope more streamlined and speed up the process of taking the clients through the Food Shelf.
Bridgepointe Community Church Food Shelf
$5,500 | Moorhead
Partial funding toward new refrigerator and providing vouchers for transportation to people in need especially the homeless population. This support will help increase the refrigeration and storage of foods, helping to keep food fresh. It will also provide transportation to those in need.
CROSS Services
$4,050 | Rogers
Partial funding toward a pallet jack. CROSS Services is currently serving record numbers of people and it continues to be challenged to ensure that their shelves are appropriately stocked. A new pallet jack will support CROSS Services in continuing to provide the best possible shopping experience for families with food insecurity.
Damiano of Duluth
$4,000 | Duluth
Partial funding for the Community Services program to get people replacement birth certificates and transportation vouchers. The lack of these items is a huge barrier for homeless and other low-income people – these forms of simple assistance can make a tremendous difference in someone’s life.
Feeding Our Communities Partners (FOCP)
$7,436 | North Mankato
Funding toward equipment to better support the staff and volunteers involved in growing youth hunger relief efforts. The growing number of youth/families served requires greater efficiencies in our operations while striving to decrease bodily stress on those that make the work possible.
GMCC (Founded as the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches)
$5,000 | Minneapolis
Partial funding toward equipment necessary to grow and sustain a weekly drop-in resource center for unhoused community members and/or those suffering from substance-use disorders. With these investments, GMCC will be able to serve a greater number of in-need unhoused individuals in the Midtown Phillips with greater consistency.
Grace House of Itasca County
$3,000 | Grand Rapids
Funding to support the youth in area schools experiencing homelessness or in transitional housing by creating pathways for improved access and academic success. The funds will support a student’s ability to participate in extra-curricular activities and school-related events, such as a fee for field trips, proper clothing for an event or sports activity, and most importantly learning supplies, books, or anything a homeless student needs to be successful.
Hope Avenues Twin Cities
$7,600 | Minnetonka
Funding toward two mini split heat pumps/A/C systems. This support will cool down Hope Avenues’ shelter space to be comfortable for safety, rest, and friendship for those experiencing homelessness and call North Minneapolis home.
Intermediate District 287
$6,000 | Plymouth
Funding to provide necessities for students -toiletries/personal hygiene products, clothing and footwear – and to provide transportation (cabbing) to and from school until their McKinney-Vento transportation starts. This support will remove barriers for homeless and highly mobile identified students, ages 5 to 21 years of age, so that they will have the resources to continue to attend school with dignity.
LCM Campus Cupboard
$6,520 | Mankato
Funding to move food shelf from a basement to a main floor more accessible location, and to expand refrigerator space because of increased need. The additional space will allow numerous students to shop simultaneously saving time. It will remove the safety hazard of hauling everything up and downstairs. The additional refrigerator space will allow LCM Campus Cupboard to reduce spoilage of produce, as well as provide additional display of Deli sandwiches and cut fruit.
Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless
$5,000 | St. Paul
Scholarship support for people who have experienced homelessness and housing instability to attend the 2023 annual conference. Providing scholarships to people with lived experience is essential to building a network that is grounded and led by people with lived expertise.
Pillsbury United Communities
$8,715 | Minneapolis
Funding to purchase necessary items such as refrigerators, branding equipment, bike supplies, and rider supplies to deliver meals and engage in outreach work, benefitting both the apprentices and the recipients, addressing food insecurity and economic stability among unhoused youth, ultimately promoting positive community impact.
Small Sums
$3,500 | St. Paul
Partial funding toward bus passes to help unhoused individuals get to their first and next paycheck. When facing poverty and homelessness, securing commonly required gear, tools, and transportation to get to work can be an insurmountable barrier to starting employment. Small Sum’s removes these barriers by providing required work items, a way to get to work, and additional services to help clients retain employment and achieve long-term economic and housing stability.
Sojourner Project
$3,500 | Hopkins
Partial funding to replace worn and broken furnishings in emergency shelter that is used by the women and children who are victims of domestic violence. This support will help ensure the comfort of every client that resides at the Sojourner Project shelter.
Southern Anoka Community Assistance
$5,880 | Columbia Heights
Funding for an electric, tilting forklift. A new, tilting forklift will increase Southern Anoka Community Assistance’s (SACA) efficiency sorting and stocking food and provide volunteers with a much safer, more comfortable environment. Many of SACAs volunteers are seniors, making it especially important that they provide a working environment that is as safe as possible.
St. Andrew’s Community Resource Center (CRC)
$10,000 | Mahtomedi
Funding toward a pilot program to determine the feasibility of extending current assistance focus to seniors. As part of St. Andrew’s Community Resource Center’s (CRC) work to end homelessness, the CRC operates a rental assistance program currently focused on families. Recent experience has exposed a need for assistance to seniors to forestall eviction. The goal for this project is to establish this as an ongoing program area for the CRC – one that addresses a current and growing future need.
The Bridge for Youth
$7,000 | Minneapolis
Funding toward outreach supplies (gender affirming and transitional clothing, personal care items) to distribute through The Mobile Youth Outreach Center, engaging approximately 1,500 youth in early intervention and prevention services that disrupts the cycle of youth homelessness.
The Drawer
$2,500 | Eagan
Partial funding for items required to complete Feet in the Street outreach, going into the streets of the Twin Cities, and handing out socks and underwear to the homeless. Impacts local MN residents and is an outreach collaboration with Loaves and Fishes. People can receive food and basic necessities of undergarments at the same time.
The Sanneh Foundation
$3,100 | Saint Paul
Partial funding toward a pallet jack. Support will have a direct, positive impact on those who are struggling with food insecurity because of their current economic status, as well as individuals and families near or experiencing homelessness in our community.
Wildflyer Coffee
$7,920 | Minneapolis
Funding to provide approximately fifty youth aged 16-24 experiencing homelessness with the basic needs’ items of bus cards, work attire, and gift cards to eliminate barriers to their workplace success. These items will support youth entering Wildflyer’s program in eliminating common barriers that might make their success difficult. This aid will give them the freedom to show up at work equipped to be fully present and engaged in their learning as they work towards leaving homelessness for good.