By Dominic Yates, reporting intern
Two Dunn County nonprofit organizations providing support for people in need of food and shelter have made adjustments during the COVID-19 pandemic to assure that they can continue helping the people of Dunn County.
Stepping Stones, which provides two types of direct assistance, has switched to curbside food pickups. It has also seen a doubling of requests for it to provide shelter.
United Way of Dunn County, which provides indirect support through its funding of various local nonprofits, has utilized disaster relief funds received previously in an effort to keep local non-profits funded.
Food collection and distribution altered
Katherine Dutton, Executive Director of local non-profit Stepping Stones, said in a recent phone interview that the pandemic has completely changed the way the organization is able to collect and distribute food to the people of Menomonie.
“The biggest change we’ve made is switching our food pantry to curbside pick-up,” Dutton said. “We used to have people come inside and shop and choose what they wanted from what we had available.”
With the economic aspect of the pandemic hitting as hard as ever, Dutton said that Stepping Stones is seeing an increase in people who need shelter.
“There has been an uptick in the sheltering,” she said. “I could probably say that we are sheltering twice as many people as we would ordinarily. With the pantry, we’re not seeing a huge increase yet in numbers of people needing food assistance. But we really expect both areas to increase, especially as people feel more of the economic impact.”
Dutton also said the pandemic has halted programs that require face-to-face interaction, such as its community connections program. That program serves people requesting transportation or needing in-home assistance for things such as handywork.
Dutton reported that volunteers grew slim in the spring, but Stepping Stones was pleasantly surprised with how many people stepped up as time went on.
“We had a lot of older volunteers who needed to step back for right now, so we had to push for volunteers in late March and early April,” she said. “Since then, we’ve gotten quite a few new people, who’re a little younger overall. People have really come forward knowing that they are needed right now.”
United Way support from disaster relief funds
United Way Dunn County, an umbrella social services organization, has also worked hard to obtain relief funds for the nonprofits in Dunn County.
Jennifer Thatcher, the organization’s executive director, said she utilized earlier disaster relief money to try and keep local non-profits funded, once she learned that United Way had about $20,000 in unused disaster relief funds.
She said that since she was new in the job and wasn’t yet familiar with the county or its needs, the best way to approach the situation “was for me to pair up with the community foundation on a COVID response to the non-profits across Dunn County.
“I think we took $17,000 out of there, and granted it out to several different non-profits,” Thatcher said.
She added that United Way has also been doing its best to obtain face masks for those who are struggling during the pandemic.
“Because we’re a non-profit, we’ve been able to order cloth face masks from the government for the communities that we serve,” Thatcher said.
She added that families in need of masks could obtain them at United Way’s C-3 center, 1620 Stout Rd.
Thatcher, who has been at United Way Dunn County for five months, said that COVID-19 started as she had gotten the position at United Way, and complicated her start at the nonprofit.
“I started on March 2, in this role. COVID happened while I was in the job for two weeks, and then we all had to start working from home.”
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