All Kids Win Food Bags a Community Effort

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The agents and staff of Olympic Sotheby’s International Realty pride themselves on their close connection with their community. Throughout the years, the team has supported numerous nonprofits through monetary support and regular volunteerism. One of the organizations that Olympic Sotheby’s International Realty feels a close connection to is All Kids Win.

Founder and board chair Kelly Wilson leads the All Kids Win nonprofit that feeds hundreds of Thurston County students. Through a network of various community organizations, local companies and generous volunteers, All Kids Win is funding, packing and delivering food to students from Yelm, Rainier, Tumwater, and Olympia school districts. From their ready-to-go production line in the Lacey Umpqua Bank building, volunteers fill plastic bags that discretely fit into a backpack and hold enough food for a teenager over the weekend.

After Wilson and her friends found themselves discussing the issue of homelessness, the group concluded they would take action by filling backpacks with necessary items and hand them out. When they went with the Lacey Police Department to deliver the bags, a reporter’s snapshot and Wilson’s personal phone number landed on the front page of the newspaper. Phone calls started rolling in. Wilson and her friends were off and running, and soon became a 501(c)3 organization.

Wilson consulted with other community outreach organizations and decided to narrow the focus to closing hunger gaps for middle school and high school students who face food insecurities especially on weekends when school breakfast and lunch are not accessible. Word spread among high school counselors, and from the resulting demand they quickly outgrew using extra bedroom storage spaces in their homes for supplies.

For the second year running, funds have also provided scholarships to bag recipients who graduate from high school. Students apply, and a committee reads all of the applications before distributing the scholarships to as many applicants as possible.

“The kids are anonymous and always have been,” Wilson says. “Once in a while we get the opportunity to have somebody come forward and say, ‘I received your bags.’ To be in a room with 15 kids from our program who are graduating, have plans for something afterwards and some who have their parents or siblings with them, is just so sweet.”

Bagging parties of 8-12 people can arrange to come in and fill bags. Volunteers grab a bag and move down the table of plastic totes. At the end of the line, bags contain easy-open cans of soup, chili, breakfast bars, Rice Krispy treats and other ready-to-eat foods.

Ingredients are simple and the same all the time. Cases of canned soup and boxes stacked high with nonperishable foods are ready for reloading the assembly table.

Finished bags get stacked on racks to await one of the 43 delivery drivers who take them out to the various schools. Sponsors can also contribute funds by having their business name printed on each bag.

Needs were already strong when All Kids Win supplied weekly food bags to an estimated 600 students. When school closed due to COVID-19 and supply chain issues emptied store shelves, that number soared to 2,400 students each Friday.

“We figured out how to produce in that kind of quantity and how to deliver in that kind of quantity,” says Wilson, “but we hadn’t figured out how we were going to fund that kind of quantity. The community just knew, and we had money every day. We never dipped down into our reserves at all.”

The number of students served still sits at about 1,000 each week.

From everyone’s efforts and contributions, students in districts all over Thurston County are benefitting.

“The community has really wrapped their arms around this program,” says Wilson in an Olympic Sotheby’s International Realty feature video, “because universally people don’t want kids to be hungry, and it feels good knowing you played a part in a kid not being hungry on the weekend.”

Pope John Paul II High School in Lacey has a canned chili collection contest and a canned tuna contest each year to support All Kids Win. The single item food drive helps with the ease of the assembly line procedure. Community groups also schedule time to come over and pack bags, such as the Twin Star Credit Union employees and the Chambers Bay Women’s Club. FASTSIGNS in Lacey helped by donating and installing a new sign with the All Kids Win name and logo. Local Rotary clubs, such as the Hawks Prairie Rotary club, have been longtime supporters as well.

“They are a force,” says Wilson of the Rotary clubs, “and they keep this community moving. They are generous, hardworking folks.”

All Kids Win has featured special fundraising events too. For example, they had a Summer 10K Bag-a-Thon, a virtual 12 Days of Christmas that raised $33,000 for food and their first golf tournament ever at the Golf Club at Hawks Prairie, which they paired with a raffle. Kluh Jewelers summer car show is also supporting All Kids Win, and the Woman’s Club of Olympia held a tea party fundraiser for them at the Abigail Stuart House. And that’s just name a few of the many organizations that contribute.

The goals at All Kids Win unite people and build the community. Wilson and her friends sparked the idea, and the many generous donors, drivers and baggers are helping them build upon and expand their vision to help more kids and more schools. To learn more about how to help, check out the All Kids Win website.