FORK Legacy Fund Reaches ‘Phase ONE’ Goal

My name is Perry Pokrandt, and I am President of a local nonprofit organization called Feed Our Rural Kids (FORK). Within this article, I’d like to speak about the progress we have made related to our organizational endowment, FORK’s Legacy Fund.

FORK was established in May 2019 to provide nutritional support to students from food-insecure homes within the Northland Pines School District. We did that through a single program called FORK Cares. From that starting point five-plus years ago, FORK today supports the nutritional needs of children of all ages across the Phelps, Three Lakes and Northland Pines School Districts, covering over 880 square miles of northern Wisconsin. We provide that support through four free food programs: the original FORK Cares program, FORK NOW, FORK Extra and twelve local FORK Pantry locations. Additionally, we support the Family Food Helpline, (which you can reach by calling 888-479-FORK) through a partnership with the Vilas and Oneida County Departments of Human Services.

The Story of the FORK Legacy Fund started in June 2020. At that time Feed Our Rural Kids (FORK) received a $100,000 donation from Margaret Baack and Mike McAdams of Land O’Lakes. Their goal was to ensure the long-term sustainability of FORK’s efforts to feed children from food-insecure homes.

Baack and McAdams said at the time, “We want to ensure that tomorrow’s kids will enjoy the same support that students are getting today.”

With that goal in mind, FORK embarked on a four-year, $1 million “Phase ONE” Capital Campaign in February of 2021. At that time, we established the mission of our Legacy Fund to provide financial stability and long-term sustainability to both FORK programs, as well as other local childhood nutrition support programs.

McAdams and Baack tagged their donation with a challenge to area residents, inviting all people who care about the ability of tomorrow’s kids to succeed, to join in this effort.

That gauntlet, thrown down by Baack and McAdams, was not only accepted by the FORK Board of Directors, but has inspired incredible community support along the way; which allows me to proudly announce that the FORK Legacy Fund has met its $1 million ‘Phase ONE’ goal.

Over these last four years, the Legacy Fund has grown in value, allowing an annual distribution of the fund’s assets. These cash distributions have already helped to provide nearly 20,000 meals to area kids through three Northwoods Weekend Backpack programs. Additionally, those funds fully underwrite the FORK Extra program, an effort that is designed to help our three local food pantries to attract new financially challenged families with children.

Those efforts are two examples of the power of the Legacy Fund, to impact food insecure children today. But most importantly, from our organization’s perspective, is the fact that the Legacy Fund will continue its impact on this area’s children for decades after we are all gone.

Some people ask why it was so important to take on the challenge of creating a Legacy Fund. I think that FORK Vice President Scott Foster expressed it best in our early discussions around the Legacy Fund’s initial creation: “We already know that there will always be families who financially struggle and there will always be kids who don’t get the food they need because of that struggle.”

This is why we created FORK, to give all of our kids an equal chance of success in life. We wanted this to be the best possible place for our area’s kids to grow, learn and succeed. The donation of McAdams and Baack did challenge our thinking. The FORK Legacy Fund says that if it is important to help hungry kids today, how then could we not do everything possible to make sure that the children, yet born, would have the same chance at success?

When it comes to the need for nonprofit organizations to raise money, research shows that there are predominantly two types of charitable donors. Those who want to specifically help today, and those who support the efforts of an organization with an eye toward the future.

Dan Beihoff, FORK Treasurer, explains it this way: “The wonderful thing about our endowment is that we have built it to achieve both those goals. We can meet the needs of children today through the fund’s annual asset distributions, while the sustainability of the organization’s future efforts is secured through the growth of the fund’s portfolio conservatively invested over time.”

This organization has come to believe that since no one has a crystal ball, having an eye toward the future is not only prudent from FORK’s standpoint but also imperative when planning for the organization’s long-term survival.

Current FORK Legacy Chairman, Ben Rabenn, adds, “FORK is making a difference in the lives of the children we serve, and FORK’s Legacy Fund ensures that promise of hope will be around for generations to come.”

In a recent editorial within the Vilas County News-Review, the newspaper offered their support saying, “We believe the Legacy Fund to be a brilliant idea.” As organization President, I could not agree more!

Thank you to all of our supporters from the FORK Board of Directors — to Mike and Margaret for charting a path, to the donors large and small whose support is the very foundation of FORK, and to each of our volunteers who give of their time to make life better for so many of our area’s kids.

Let me also recognize the Board of Directors and Advisors of Feed Our Rural Kids: Scott Foster, Dan Beihoff, Rick Miech, Carol Clure, Jean Arndt, Kate Ferell, Kathy Schmitz, Mindy Wessel, Ben Rabenn, Julie Szafranski, Lynn Kenning, Karolyn Connolly, and Lexi Scafaro. I want you to know that these people are making a difference in the lives of children in your community.

If you would like to know more about Rural Food Insecurity, FORK programs, or the FORK Legacy Fund, visit us online at FeedOurRuralKids.org.

Feed Our Rural Kids is a registered 501 (C)(3) nonprofit organization.