Faye Overgaard and Marsha Odom will once again be bringing back the Funds2orgs shoe drive in the Crookston community this year. Overgaard and Odom are both on the Crookston Care & Share board, and all proceeds from the fundraiser will go to the Care & Share. Funds2orgs buys the shoes from local non-profits, schools, churches, and others and redistributes them to other countries.
The project will run from now until November 30, and the goal is to receive around 2,500 pairs of shoes to re-distribute to try and help other countries grow economic opportunities.
Overgaard explained more about the organization, its great cause, and how she learned more about it. “Funds2orgs is an organization that is out of Florida,” said Overgaard. “I contacted them through their website, and shoes are purchased by the organization as they partner with non-profits, schools, churches, and others to try and implement a shoe fundraising campaign. The shoes are redistributed to small businesses in developing countries to try and help them maintain and grow small businesses for economic opportunity.”
Odom explained you don’t have to have a set of shoes to get involved, as the foundation does take just a single shoe and uses it in multiple ways. “When the shoes are not in a pair, there are other ways to use the shoe,” said Odom. “They can cut the tops off and use the pieces of the shoe and fabric to shred it and make it into something else. They also can use the rubber soles to make another top for a different shoe.”
Overgaard help put on the fundraiser two years ago, and it was very successful within the community due to the great people willing to donate. She talked more about the goal for this year and what they can do with the money for Care & Share. “2,500 pairs of shoes is the goal because that return is $1,000 for Care & Share,” said Overgaard. “With that money, we can do something substantial. It would be fun to reach 3,000 this year, but I’ll be more than happy with 2,500. That’s a lot of pairs of shoes to sort through.”
The Red River Valley Sugarbeet Museum in Crookston will help store the pairs of shoes over the next three months so that Overgaard and Odom won’t have to keep them all at their houses.
For those interested in donating pairs of shoes, the following locations will have bins from now until the end of November. You can drop off shoes during normal business hours.
IN CROOKSTON
- Hugo’s Family Marketplace
- Benedictine Living Community – The Summit at the front door on the Westside
- Cathedral Church and
- Hardware Hank
- First Presbyterian Church
- Trinity Lutheran Church
IN FERTILE
- A&L Foods
IN FISHER
- Cenex C-Store Gas Station
For more information on funds2orgs, you can go to their website, funds2orgs.com/.
