MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) – Thanks to generous donations from the community, we were able to meet our goal for the 29th annual WMTV Share Your Holidays campaign!
Our goal this year was $1.5 million, which was set because of the ever growing need at area food banks.
Donors absolutely knocked it out of the park on Wednesday, exceeding our goal. As of 10:15 p.m., $1,623,240 was raised to benefit Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin.
Phones opened at 6 a.m. and volunteers were busy taking calls until the end of our 10 p.m. newscast. Many of them wore festive accessories, which you may have noticed during our Mike’s Miracle Minutes.
President and Executive Director of Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin Michelle Orge said these donations will help our neighbors and put food on their tables.
“This is the type of area, this is the type of community that takes care of folks in their community and it showed in this year’s Share Your Holidays,” Orge said. “It’s so heartwarming to be in a community that shows up.”
Also going on Wednesday at Alliant Energy Center was the Sort-A-Thon. During Sort-A-Thon, all of the food donated during Food and Fund Drives goes to the Alliant Energy Center for quality checking and sorting. This is the largest volunteer and sorting event of the year for Second Harvest.
Since the beginning, the WMTV Share Your Holidays campaign has helped provide nearly 75 million meals throughout southern Wisconsin. This year, the need is greater than ever. Every $10 donated allows Second Harvest Food Bank to buy up to $24 in groceries.
Share Your Holidays started as a one-day food drive in a grocery store parking lot in 1996. It was then-anchor Mike McKinney’s passion that no one should experience what he did as a child, growing up hungry.
The Army National Guard has been a part of the Share Your Holidays campaign since the inaugural campaign. One of the co-founders of the campaign was Mike Hart, who was in the Army National Guard when he and McKinney started the campaign.
What began on that cold winter day 26 years has grown more than Mike McKinney, who died in 2006, may ever have dreamed. Blossoming from a campaign that found success in the thousands of meals in a year to one that, with your help, brings millions of meals to people in southern Wisconsin.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Mike going into this,” said his mother, Barbara McKinney. “I’ve been thinking a lot about him today and the energy he would have had and just being in awe.”
Thank you to all who donated this year!
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