GREEN BAY (NBC26) — Michelle Blackman, founder of Giving is Good, began collecting donations from companies and individuals last year.
"Our mission is to get good things into the hands of the people that need them," she said. "I wanted to start a charity for so many years, been thinking about it thinking about it and then let's go for it in 2019 and it just took off from there and it just keeps growing."
Blackman and Cami Behl, program coordinator for Giving is Good, find where people are in need: from local food pantries to homeless shelters and nursing homes, to children in third world countries.
"They want to get it into the hands of someone who could really use it or really needs it," said Behl. "But that's a lot of legwork and research. And so that's what we do."
With the COVID-19 pandemic, donations slowed and even stopped. The work kept going, and the team developed a new care package program.
"People that were isolated, quarantined, essential workers," said Blackman. "It was really neat to see people contacting us and asking if we could send them a care package."
When her six-year-old son needed heart surgeries, Behl spent two months of her summer in the hospital with him. She received a care package herself.
"You don't realize until you're there," said Behl. "It was neat to see it from the other side how much it really does mean. Especially during covid when you can't have visitors. It just made a world of a difference."
This holiday season, Giving is Good is doing a 'Nominate a GREAT family program.' If you know a family going through a crisis, the charity will pick ten families to provide an entire Christmas for, with toys, items for parents and food.
You can nominate a GREAT family here.
You can donate items from their Amazon Wish List here.
