Cheyenne’s Friday Food Bag Foundation Gets Financial Boost, Plans to Expand Services

A program started by Holland & Hart’s Cheyenne office in 2007 to celebrate the firm’s 60th anniversary has snowballed into a communitywide project and nonprofit foundation that soon will be delivering more than 800 bags of groceries every week to students and their families who otherwise would go hungry over the weekend.

The program, now formally the Friday Food Bag Foundation, began as a community service project of the Cheyenne office to provide weekend meals to students who qualify for the free/reduced-cost lunch program in Laramie County schools. It had been observed that many of those children were able to eat a hot lunch at school but had very little or nothing to eat most evenings and over the weekends.

Using seed money from the Holland & Hart Foundation as well as individual donations, staff and attorneys purchased single serve, non-perishable, easy to prepare food items, packed them in bags and delivered them to the schools for distribution. Word got out in the community, and donations from individuals, firm clients, civic clubs, and churches started pouring in. By the end of 2009, the program had become too big for the office to handle alone. With donations and the help from Kiwanis, a nonprofit foundation was established.

With donations and volunteers from throughout the Cheyenne community, the program is currently distributing 530 bags per week to students in grades K-8. Recent grants and donations totaling $73,000 are now making it possible to extend the program into high schools, which will increase the number of bags distributed each week to more than 800. The high school program will include a volunteer component allowing students to contribute by volunteering their time to help fill and prepare the bags for delivery.

Click here to learn more about the Holland & Hart Foundation.