If your organization would like to compete in MATTERbox Madness to help feed hungry kids this summer, please contact Victor Salamone at MATTER for more information!
It’s January in Minnesota. The snow is flying, the temperatures are plummeting and everyone is looking forward to spring. For us here at MATTER, it’s not just green grass and baseball we’re anticipating. Springtime at MATTER means MATTERbox Madness, our annual MATTERbox packing event that brings together some of the most generous companies in the Twin Cities to help feed hungry kids throughout the summer.
During the school year, over 300,000 Minnesota school children rely on school lunch programs. For these kids, the summer months often mean missed meals and poor nutrition. Believing that no child should go hungry over the summer, the 5 Eyewitness News Summer Harvest for Kids annual campaign was created to raise money to provide children with the food they need to have the healthy and fun summer they deserve.
For the last five years, MATTER has partnered with KSTP and The Food Group, for the Summer Harvest for Kids campaign, resulting in our healthy MATTERbox snack packs being distributed to numerous community partners. As part of this event, our MATTERbox Madness competition allows local businesses and organizations the opportunity to join in this important effort to keep Minnesota’s school children from going hungry in the summer.
Now in its sixth year, MATTERbox Madness is a high-energy event that pits teams from different companies against each other in a spirited, bracket-style competition to see which team can pack the snack packs in the shortest amount of time. In 2019, our highly motivated teams packed 9,000 snack packs during the competition. Combined with the funds raised by the Summer Harvest for Kids campaign, approximately 300,000 meals were provided to kids last summer!
This year’s MATTERbox Madness takes place on April 30 at the Mall of America. Your organization can join the fun and be part of the solution to the summer hunger problem!
MATTERbox Madness is not only a way for your company to connect with the community to help Minnesota kids but also provides a memorable employee engagement opportunity that will develop important team-building and collaboration skills. With possible short on-air interviews and millions of impressions through KSTP media outlets, it’s also a great way to raise your community engagement profile. And it’s a whole lot of fun!
Just ask last year’s third-place winners, Trimble. “We are so competitive, and MATTER does such a phenomenal job in making a volunteering event that benefits the community into a game that allows our inner child to come out and play!”
For the 2019 MATTERbox Madness Champions, InSports Foundation, participating in the event was especially meaningful. During the summer months, InSport runs sporting camps and clinics for schools throughout the Twin Cities and distributes MATTERbox snack packs to their campers, 93% of whom are on free or reduced lunch during the school year. One of the InSports Foundation team members explained what the packing event meant to them,
“The kids love getting the snack packs and we love that they’re getting healthy food. And some of this food, the kids have never seen before. Today, it was great to be on the other end to help pack them. It was a lot of fun!”
If your organization would like to compete in MATTERbox Madness to help feed hungry kids this summer, please contact Victor Salamone at MATTER for more information!
Check out these highlights from 2019 MATTERbox Madness…
