BELLE FOURCHE—A community food drive and a matching donation from Allied Construction combined to provide about $3,000 worth of food to the Compassion Cupboard during Perk Up the Pantry on May 14.
Watson Hennessey Group-Keller Williams takes one day a year when they close up shop and dedicate their day to giving back to the community.
Every year that day is the second Thursday in May. “We’ve done different things in the past, but this year we thought, let’s do something for the food pantry, and so we created an event,” explained Michelle Watson, Watson Hennessey Group-Keller Williams.
The group enlisted the help of two other businesses in town and came up with an innovative way to collect food for the Compassion Cupboard. “We set up two locations—Wild Magnolia and the Pony Express-O—and we advertised for a period of time before that, so that people who stop at those businesses knew that we were holding a food drive, and we gave them a $5 coupon to use for their beverages or food that day if they donated at least three items to the food pantry,” said Watson.
Allied Construction Roofing, Siding & Gutters saw the advertising for the event and wanted to get involved. “The day before I found it on Facebook, and I reached out, and we set it up the day later to get everything,” shared Brett Ross, Allied employee.
Being in construction, Allied does work with realtors all around the Black Hills. Over the years they have developed close relationships with Alan Kindsfater and Michelle Watson. “Brett was the one who saw on Facebook that they were doing their Red Day—it’s a thing that they do once a year, where they shut down their offices and they go out in the community and do some good. This year they decided to partner with Compassion Cupboard and go out and do a food drive,” explained Jon Schaefer, owner. “We saw the night before, honestly, that they were gonna go do their Red Day, and we called them and said, ‘Hey, can we join you?’ and they said, ‘Yeah, that would be great!’”
Allied Construction decided that they would match the donations of everything Keller Williams raised. At the end of the food drive all of the food and the monetary donations were added up and Allied matched the amount raised. The food drive ended up bringing in about $3,000 worth of food to the Compassion Cupboard.
The willingness for the businesses to reach out and help in such a big way was exciting for the Keller Williams group. “I got goosebumps, just like the willingness to donate from our community, not just from them, but also from the people that came to the event,” shared McKenzie Hennessey, Watson Hennessey Group. “I mean, it was a minimum of three items, but many people brought bag after bag, or full boxes of stuff to donate. The contributions from both the community and the match of what Allied had done was incredible!”
Allied Construction is proud to be from this area and gives back to it when they can. “We donate to all the youth sports. We sponsor teams every year. We sponsor teams here, Spearfish, Rapid City and whenever we see things, we like to jump on them and get involved in them,” said Schaefer.
Ross added, “Well, the other thing is you’ve (Schaefer) lived here for 15 years. I was born here. Another guy that works with us, Sean Cole, he lives here. A lot of us live in Belle Fourche. This is our community. We’ve all got kids that go to school here.”
The successful food drive couldn’t have been accomplished without the help of Pony Express-O and Wild Magnolia Coffee Bar. “The coffee shops, I will say, were fantastic to work with—because here we are, showing up, invading their space, you know… interrupting their flow basically, but they were awesome! So it was great,” said Watson.
Tim Smith with the Compassion Cupboard said they serve 130 families a month and so the food is needed. “Well, it’s awesome to get donations at any time, and we appreciate groups that come alongside one another. Matching is awesome too, because that’s twice as much that would have been collected to start with. So, we really appreciate it,” he said.
It took a lot of coordination to pull off such a successful food drive. “Keller Williams people are awesome, and we’re really happy to be a part of what they’re doing,” said Schaefer.
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