As he walked around the sales floor, JP Liesenfeld pointed to a group of sleek, modern chairs with a butterflylike design: the Herman Miller Aerons. "They're the Mercedes of office chairs," he said. They retail for $1,400 new. But here, at Furnish Office and Home, a nonprofit store in northeast Minneapolis that is like a Goodwill for office furniture, used models go for $399. And it has a .
Not everyone stayed to help. When a crisis happens in America, we run to the rescue. Everybody runs to the rescue, said Will Wallace. But then I had to say to myself, what s the aftermath? Who s going to keep it going?
Wallace, director of youth programs at Emerge Community Development in north Minneapolis, stood in a room crowded with everything his neighbors might need to make it through the week. Cans of soup, bags of onions, stacks of cleaning products and diapers, warm clothes, school supplies.
These were the sort of donations that came flooding in over the summer, piling high at drop-off sites between the shattered grocery stores and burned-out gas stations along Broadway. Volunteers showed up with brooms to sweep broken glass off the sidewalks; people brought gift cards at struggling shops and donated to North Side nonprofits. But public attention shifted to the next crisis of 2020 and the one after that and the one after that.
Hometown investments benefit more than 70 nonprofits. WoodysPhotos / Shutterstock.com
The Target Foundation has unveiled more than $5 million in donations to more than 70 Twin Cities nonprofits as part of its “Hometown Racial Equity Grants” program. The money is directed to nonprofits dedicated to serving Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities in the metro.
“We have immense pride in our hometown, and we know there is a lot of work to be done to advance racial equity in the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota,” said Amanda Nusz, Target’s vice president of corporate responsibility and president of the Target Foundation, in a statement. “To help do our part to address the specific systemic and structural barriers facing Black, Indigenous and communities of color, we’re both excited and humbled to provide grants to more than 70 nonprofit organizations who serve and support these communities.”