Best & Flanagan celebrated Do Some Good Day on September 18, as part of our tradition of giving back to the communities in which we live and practice. This year’s fundraising and volunteer efforts went to two organizations focused on supporting families and young people in under-resourced neighborhoods, and those struggling with poverty or homelessness making transitions into stable housing.
The Link - founded by former Minnesota Vikings players, Jim Marshall and Oscar Reed – aims to help youth who are struggling with poverty, homelessness, or at risk of involvement in the juvenile justice system. They have 28 programs that provide supportive housing, intensive case management services, and skills development to empower youth and young families to overcome the impacts of poverty and social injustice. Our volunteers prepared taco lasagna in their community kitchen and packed individual servings that were labeled and frozen for the youth and young families who need access to such meals each month. Last year, the meals we made were fully distributed by the end of the day. The Link expected the same to be true this year, which goes to show just how much of an immediate impact our donations and efforts have with their organization.
Urban Ventures primarily serves south Minneapolis, with a mission of ending urban poverty. They strive to determine “opportunity gaps in academics, nutrition, physical activity, parenting resources, and more—all with the overarching goal to prepare and send every youth in our neighborhood to college or postsecondary education.” On the nutrition front, they grow their own food at an urban farm and then provide fresh produce to the community. Last year, our volunteers put soil into the raised beds, and this year we cleaned out the beds by pulling up weeds and corn stalks, and removing other debris and raking and adding topsoil into the raised beds. It was a labor-intensive morning, but our team did fabulous, fulfilling work.
Nearly doubling our contributions from 2023, we also had over two dozen individuals contribute monetary and in-kind donations. We collected nearly $3,000 worth of items to create household kits for The Link, with an additional $3,000 in financial donations for both The Link and Urban Ventures. We are proud to partner with and continuously support the work these organizations are doing and contribute to their efforts directly impacting our communities.
