Second Harvest Heartland On AM Minnesota

Tony Mans, who is the food source director for Second Harvest Heartland, was my guest on today's AM Minnesota program. I first met Mans a couple of years ago at the Minnesota Farm Bureau annual meeting. Second Harvest Heartland is a food bank that works with local food shelves. While a food bank and food shelf are similar, a food bank works with large amounts of food. Tony said he might get a call from a canning company that they have a number of pallets of canned peas that got dented or the labels got misprinted. There is nothing wrong with the food but it cannot be sold. Second Harvest Heartland would send a truck to pick up the pallets and distribute them to food shelves across Minnesota. If there is more food than needed in Minnesota, they move some to other states.

Even though we hear that the economy is improving, there are a lot of families that struggle with getting enough food. Second Harvest Heartland is a 501C3 charity, which means donations are tax deductible. These days we get contacted by many organizations that seem like worthy causes. Many times you find out that a very large percent of the money raised goes for administrative costs of raising the money. Very little money actually goes to the charity we thought we were donating to. Mans said that for every dollar donated to Second Harvest Heartland, they are able to turn it into $8 of food to a food shelf. They also are in need of volunteers at their processing centers. Also go to KDHL's YouTube channel and you can listen to the whole program.