KidsPak launches fundraising campaign

LOVELAND — Finally after 14 years, KidsPak will have a permanent home but still needs another $800,000 in community support.

The weekend backpack program for students in Thompson School District operated out of four different locations, including its latest, the Forge Campus, but it needs additional space to meet the program’s growing demand over the next 10 years. 

“Just standing in the building and seeing what it is and how it looks and what we can do there — how much we can do in there — we both stood there and cried,” said Corinne Carrigan, volunteer coordinator of KidsPak, who works alongside her husband, Tom, president of the nonprofit. “It was a culmination of 14 years of work for us and the community.”

The Carrigans launched their capital campaign Feb. 22 at the site of their future facility, the KidsPak Distribution Center (its working name), at 250 W. 69th Court in Loveland. The facility is estimated at $2.6 million, including $400,000 for the two-acre site and $2.2 million to construct a new building. 

So far, the Carrigans and executive director Jennifer Blando, the nonprofit’s first and only employee who started March 2023, secured $1.4 million from various foundations and individual and corporate donors for the building. The largest gift so far is $250,000 from Larimer County through the CARES Act, plus the city of Loveland waived a $103,000 building fee. The rest will be raised through the campaign, anticipated by the end of the year with a naming option available for the building.

“We know the community is supportive. We don’t have any doubt we’ll get there,” Blando said. “Nobody wants hungry kids in our community. It’s not a feel-good thing.”

KidsPak initiated a feasibility study in June 2022, and once results were in, the board agreed to pursue the capital campaign, hiring Evergreen Industrial in Johnstown as the general contractor. 

“We don’t need a fancy building. What we need is warehouse space,” Blando said. “It’s built to make the best use of the gifts we’ve been given and to put the impact back on the kids.”

KidsPak is operating out of a leased 4,000-square-foot space in Building D of the Forge Campus, where it’s been since May 2021, and will be moving into a 7,250-square-foot building by early summer. The new building will primarily consist of warehouse space for storing pallets of food, an area for packing the backpacks, a loading dock, a drive-through portico for drivers to pick up the backpacks to deliver on their routes, an office and a conference room, which the nonprofit will make available for community use.

“Space in the nonprofit world is a big, big issue right now, especially in the north end of town,” Blando said. “We’re excited to be able to offer that to the community.”

At the Forge, KidsPak shares access to a loading dock, and volunteers have to haul pallets 150 yards in and out of the building. In the new building, everything will be in one location, plus KidsPak will have access to its own equipment, including scales and electric pallet jacks. Once the growth is there, the nonprofit also will add shelving to store the pallets.

“We’re really grateful to the owners of the Forge Campus because we had no place to go,” Tom said. “We’re eternally grateful for three years.” 

Each Wednesday, 19 KidsPak volunteers pack and deliver the backpacks, which essentially are grocery bags filled with enough food to cover six meals over the weekend, when students do not have access to school lunches. Four of the volunteers do the packing and the rest deliver the backpacks on 15 routes.

KidsPak works with 270 core volunteers and several hundred more who volunteer once or on occasion. Last year, the nonprofit worked with approximately 800 volunteers and even has a waiting list for additional volunteers. 

“That’s how much the community loves KidsPak,” Blando said. “It’s pretty amazing what they accomplished with just volunteers. … They’ve definitely grown to a point where it was time.”

The new building will have many advantages, including providing more space for larger groups to do the packing and for food storage, allowing the nonprofit to purchase food in bulk and at a better price. KidsPak gets its food from donations, primarily from its largest fundraiser of an annual food drive every March, as well as purchases from the Food Bank for Larimer County, local grocery stores and contacts made through a deals buyer. KidPak’s goal for the food drive this year, which will be March 1-3, is 35,000 pounds of food, up from last year’s donation of 32,200 pounds of food. The nonprofit also receives free beef sticks through the Beef Sticks for Backpacks program that supports backpack programs across the state. 

“Our efficiency will increase 100% because of the extra space,” Tom said. “Everything is right there.”

KidsPak, founded in April 2009, started with 34 kids at three elementary schools and has since grown to all 35 schools in the school district, including Early Childhood Program sites, which were added five years ago. Also added were the Loveland and Berthoud libraries in 2020, as well as Sunrise Community Health, The Salvation Army and Project Self-Sufficiency. 

The nonprofit delivered 21,200 backpacks during the 2022-2023 school year and another 5,000 during the summer months, when the Boys & Girls Club-Loveland and the Loveland Housing Authority are added to the list — in the spring, the Boys & Girls Club will become year-round when its new facility opens.

This year so far, the nonprofit delivered 15,000 backpacks, on track for its biggest year ever estimated at 22,000 to 23,000 backpacks by the end of the 2023-24 school year. The backpacks go out to students in need and who are on free or reduced lunch, as selected by each school without names given to KidsPak.

KidsPak delivered 1 million backpacks as of October 2022 and is nearing giving out 670 to 690 backpacks a week. The weekly number is up nearly 15% from the year before, higher than the typical average of a 10% annual increase.

“If you look at a family’s budget, the easiest number to change on a dime is food,” Blando said. “That’s what we’re meant to be — we are going to get them through the rough time until things settle down. It’s more than providing food, it’s providing a fail-safe valve on their budget.”

Research shows that if children are deprived of food over the weekend, it takes them until Wednesday before they can start learning again. In Thompson School District, that’s a loss of 72 days or 2.5 months of the school year.

“These kids are the future of Loveland, so if we get them in school learning at their maximum ability, then we’re building Loveland’s workforce,” Blando said. “The whole community benefits when we raise (it to) that level.”

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