Once upon a time, way back at the very beginning of Meals by Grace, there were many families needing food. Oh so much food. But alas, with the founders still working multiple jobs and no one else with knowledge of how to proceed, their little church family was unable to provide for so much need.
Then the story came out from Suellen to one of her clients, who quickly became a life-long friend. “JoAnne! I don’t know what to do – we need more food, we need money to get the things we cannot get any other way. Do you have any ideas?” It seemed she did, so off on a little shopping trip they went.
JoAnne was something of a connoisseur of shopping, knowing all the best places to find the deals. She was also uber creative at creating tasty meals from the seemingly random things she found in the sales cases. One week she was beside herself with excitement over secret information she had discovered. “Suellen! Did you know Kroger has this ‘Plus’ card that gets you deals, but even better – they support charities like yours! You just go on their website and put in something called an EIN number. It finds your charity and you set it as your charity of choice. THEN, every quarter a percentage of sales from those who claimed you comes right to the charity!”
We wasted not a minute running to the computer, and sure enough, in very little time we had it figured out. At first it was just a tiny drip of an amount, but we talked about it to everyone and encouraged them to set us as their charity of choice. Little by little the amounts grew larger, until now – over a decade later – our quarterly gift from Kroger is $531.95. And it all started with JoAnne, the consummate deal-shopper who ALWAYS had our needs at heart and was up to the task of figuring out how we could do more with less.
Thank you, dear sweet JoAnne – you are forever loved and appreciated more than we can say.
What about you? Is your Kroger Plus rewards card still set for your kid’s old school, or some other place that’s no longer part of your life? Maybe you’re not even sure if that organization is still making an impact…
It’s time to update your charity of choice with an organization you KNOW is making a big difference in their community. Truly, JoAnne would tell you so herself. She’d also confirm what a huge impact such a small thing has made over the years – such a little thing, really, that makes such a BIG DIFFERENCE to those in need.
And when you do, you’ll be helping even more families in our community write their own “happily ever after” story.
