This past Wednesday was our second “3 Cans & A Good Time Happiest Hour”, a fun networking event designed to create connections and give back to our community. Our beneficiary was once again New Hope Food Pantry, a local not-for-profit food pantry located in Olathe, KS. At our inaugural event in October we raised 199 pounds of food for them, so for this event it was our goal to raise 400 pounds. We are excited to announce that we not only beat our goal, but we nearly doubled it! Thanks to our sponsors and attendees, we raised an astonishing 782 pounds of non-perishable food for New Hope! Absolutely incredible.
We would like to give a massive shout out to Caylon Umphrey who spoke on behalf of New Hope Food Pantry. She shared some staggering statistics with the crowd about increasing food insecurity and homelessness in Johnson County. Just in January through September they served 23,000 people, which is more than ALL of 2021. They have been averaging about 30 new families per day. And while these numbers are increasing, the amount of food and money donated are decreasing.
As of October, they New Hope was about 75,000 pounds of donated food down from where they normally are. That’s a massive amount of food! And on top of that, their food budget for the entire year is only $6,000. That does not go very far considering the increases in prices that we’re seeing. They use this budget to buy food, toiletries, etc. that they need to give to their families but have not had donated.
The supply chain issues the world has been facing is hurting them, as well. The organizations they can order from to save on costs don’t have the same amount of items available to choose from compared to past years. They’re currently only able to order from about half the selection they had last year.
When we heard about all of their struggles, we knew we had to make a difference. We are ecstatic that we have been able to donate just under 1,000 pounds of food to New Hope Food Pantry in just two events! We will continue to host a 3 Cans & A Good Time Happiest Hour every 6-8 weeks, so we hope you’ll plan to join us at our next event on February 1st!
We cannot have a successful event without all of our awesome sponsors. The sponsors of this event were:
Martin Taggart – Team Real Estate
Caleb Reed – A. Arnold Moving
Bob Cobb – CR Floors
Sara & Scott Coffman – Auto Home Insurance KC
Adam Grimsman – USA Mortgage
Brian Hughes – Defenders of Freedom KC
Blake Swetnam – Kansas Float Spa
Jaime Theisen – PuroClean of Olathe
Austin Watterson – Royal Roofing & Solar
Drew White – Guaranteed Rate
Another special shout out to the ACA Business Club of Overland Park for allowing us to use their facility, Torchy’s Tacos of Overland Park for helping us with food, Elizabeth Cowan for her massive behind-the-scenes contributions and planning, and Tiffany VanSickle of Greenhouse Social for promoting the event for us on social media. And thank you to EVERYONE who came out, brought cans, and made this event a huge success! We can’t wait to see the large scale of impact our collective efforts make on the Kansas City community.