Inspiring Good

Andy Murray on Why Calling, Not Career Ladders, Drives Real Change

• Community Foundation of Elkhart County • Episode 32

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We talk with Andy Murray, Chief Strategy Officer at the Community Foundation of Elkhart County, about aligning business discipline with community care to boost kindergarten readiness, expand trail connections, and coordinate hunger relief. A story-driven look at convening partners, funding systems, and building momentum that lasts.

The episode includes:
• role of a chief strategy officer as convener and funder
• career shift from RV industry to purpose-driven work
• translating business skills to nonprofit capacity
• kindergarten readiness as a keystone metric
• Countdown to Kindergarten summer camp and scaling plan
• childcare affordability and provider sustainability
• Pumpkinvine Trails vision, funding, and maintenance
• connections as a better metric than miles for trails
• forming a county food bank and coordinating 50 pantries
• leveraging scale for bulk purchasing and logistics
• what gives hope about Elkhart County’s culture

Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkhart County at inspiringgood.org. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn


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This show is a production of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded in The Riverbend building in Elkhart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communication students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkhart County at inspiringgood.org You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Music is provided by Sensational Sounds. Thanks for listening. We hope you are inspired and inspire good and your community.

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Marshall King

Welcome to the Inspiring Good Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the Community Foundation of Elkart County, which serves a vibrant community in northern Indiana, known for its generosity and strong network of nonprofit organizations. I'm Marshall King, who is hosting this podcast with Kevin Deary, a former nonprofit CEO who now coaches others. Andy Murray is our guest today. He serves as Chief Strategic Officer at the Community Foundation, where he supports the work of the Pumpkin vine Trails Coalition and Building Strong Brains. Welcome, Andy.

Andy Murray

Thank you. It's an honor to be here.

Kevin Deary

Andy, we are so delighted to have you today. And as a chief strategy officer, can you explain, let's start with that. What is a chief strategy officer?

Andy Murray

Well, so uh the Elkart County Community Foundation had decided um some number of years ago that um it wanted to be more directly involved in a couple specific causes, as Marshall mentioned, um, which which in today's current form primarily look like the Pumpkin Divine Trails Coalition and Building Strong Brains. And so our role in both of those spaces is to act as a convener and um kind of inspire thought leadership around those two topics. So so we um we bring folks to the table to have conversations. The other major role that we play is we serve as kind of a funnel for funding. Um and what I mean by that is that you know both of those pieces of work are supported by um not only you know some operational dollars from the community foundation, but um on a larger scale grant funding to actually to actually do the work. Um and so to be able to go out and seek those grants, there needs to be kind of a central voice for this work, and so we play that role as well.

From RV Industry To Nonprofit Calling

Kevin Deary

Yeah, I love that chief convener officer as part of the strategy. Yeah. So you used to be in the business world, very successful, and decided to uh come to the light on the other side of the fence here on the nonprofit. Uh tell me tell me about that journey.

Andy Murray

Well, so um yeah, it's it's kind of a long story, but I'll condense it. So I um about so I was in the um for-profit world for about 30 years, all of that in the RV industry, and probably about halfway through that journey um through um the encouragement of um my direct leader at that time got involved in serving in the community and um and it changed me. Like it um, you know, the way I would describe it to people kind of back in that time is like, man, you could have the most challenging or frustrating day, and then you go, you spend time um at a nonprofit organization, and it's like, and it just it would charge my batteries and it just changed my perspective on what was really important. So, so that was kind of running in the background of my mind for the last 10, 15 years of my career. And then I would tell you that um in the end for me it was just very much a calling on my life to to do something um different, but um, and I've learned to talk about that specific instance. Um, somebody way smarter than me described it as uh um uh similar to a radio signal. So, like as we're sitting here right now, if we had a radio and turned it on to the right channel, we could probably get you know 20 different programs. And I feel like God had had a calling on my life for some time, but um a few things happened in that that period of time that um tuned me into the right channel to really hear that call about three years ago. And uh so I um yeah, made the made the decision to step away from the for-profit world and spend more time in the nonprofit world, which is what I've been doing for the last three years or so.

Kevin Deary

So and why the community foundation?

Andy Murray

Well, so it really um it happened somewhat organically, at least from my perspective, and depending on um, you know, if you talk to some other folks, there's maybe a strategy at play there that I was was not wasn't observing, but um, but any rate, like I spent a lot of time in Elkhart um working with the very non-for-profits and um uh Pete McCowan, our um CEO, was kind enough to offer me some office space at uh kind of a landing spot, um, which I welcomed because I needed a um somewhat of a home base here. Um and then again, hindsight being 2020, I think it was you know his first her first cast of the rod to start reeling in a little bit, but got uh got plugged in here and uh um yeah, and ultimately led to a uh more formal position um with foundation.

Translating Business Skills To Service

Marshall King

I can confirm that that was Pete's strategy, and some of the rest of us were were aware of that because some of us were going, why are these people being allowed to work in our office? And and so yes, we're glad you're here.

Kevin Deary

So is your uh obviously your skills from the for-profit side, how is it transferred over either by a board member or by staff here at the community foundation? How have those skills helped you uh augment what what the nonprofit is so lacking?

Rethinking Success And Philanthropy

Andy Murray

Yeah, boy, so great question. Like, you know, we have so many amazing nonprofits here in Elkart County, and um and you know, almost you know, to a to an organization that are led by highly passionate, engaged executive directors who are really good at the missional work. Um, but um, but very few have had the um the benefit of running you know a truly sustainable type organization outside of nonprofit world, which that looks really different, right, in the business world or the for-profit world versus the nonprofit world. So I think that kind of niche that I um tend to fill are some of those gaps, whether it's around um team development and leadership, or maybe um financial management, or maybe fun development, or um sometimes it's even just basic operational things like facilities maintenance and how do you get things things done and how do you do those type of things. So anyway, it's it can be a variety of these um those types of gaps that I fill. Um that uh yeah, just my time in the for-profit world um ex exposed me to a lot of those things and try to share them where they make sense.

Marshall King

So Andy, you are certainly not the only one in Elkart County who has been deeply involved in the business world and plugged into nonprofits, but few people have done it to the level that you have. And you talked about personal call. What why is it a challenge sometimes to pull people from particular industries in our community to be philanthropists or to serve serve on a board or to be engaged at a deeper level?

Andy Murray

Well, I think you know that's probably a pretty personal question for everybody that they you know, each person might answer that question a little bit differently. You know, for me, it was changing the definition of what success looks like. Um and what I mean by that is there were um so and this was probably two or three years ago before I made the decision to make the transition um in a more official way. But um I actually I came to Pete here at the foundation because I was rolling off of um uh uh service with a board of an organization that I was uh involved with for a long time and I'm now re-involved with today, which is CAPS, and and was looking for kind of my next tour of duty. Um he introduced me to two organizations um and with my intention of choosing one, and I have trouble saying no, um, especially in that space. So so I wound up working with both those organizations, and that was Habitat for Humanity and Lifeline Youth Ministries. Um both of those organizations are led by um folks that were highly successful in their um original um vocation, and they chose to take that into um nonprofit work. And and in both cases, you know, the organizations are thriving underneath their leadership. And so I I looked at that, I met these guys, and I thought, man, these are guys that could be doing really anything they wanted to. Um in the for-profit world, um, would be, you know, way more lucrative for them personally by the traditional measures of success. But you know, they've they've chosen a different path. Why is that? And so I, you know, as I got to know them and got to understand why they're doing what they're doing, you know, it just really um yeah, it just it made sense to me. Cause it's like, you know, it it it um I believe that at some point um we're all gonna be um held accountable for how we chose to spend our lives and our time and and the gifts that we're given as individuals, and and to me this felt like you know, probably a lot more appropriate use of of those um yeah, of those things as opposed to um staying for in the for-profit world for another twenty years.

Kevin Deary

So as you look at some of the key leadership principles in as you work with these nonprofits, and you're helping them from a board standpoint, but what are some of the areas that the nonprofit leaders maybe have surprised you?

Leadership Capacity In Local Nonprofits

Andy Murray

I well, first just um skills, abilities, and and talents, and just the just the quality of folks that are involved in our nonprofit landscape, right? Like that's if I if I look at the single greatest um joy for me in this season of my life has just been meeting just these incredible people that we have in our community doing this crazy important work. So like I that's been you know, that's the first takeaway. But then beyond that, it's like I, you know, I'm a I'm a huge believer in leadership, like the the actual science of leadership um and what that looks like, and and that as a the leader of any organization has the ability to create the altitude that that organization will rise to, and that's a big responsibility, right? And so um so that's kind of typically where I start um as like you know, I I tend to gravitate towards um folks that I think have tons of leadership potential and runway um and finding ways how can I, you know, um in some way come alongside them and help support them on their journey. Um and uh that tends to be where I find myself spending my time.

Launching Building Strong Brains

Kevin Deary

Well, I want to jump into the initiative. So there are three that uh two the the biggies, pumpkin vine, and then also building strong brains, but then there's also the hunger initiative. Yeah. So let's start with uh the big one, which is uh building strong brains. So let's talk a little bit about what that is, how it started, and what we're doing to address those needs.

Andy Murray

Yeah, so um I'm gonna get my timeline probably a little bit off here, but I think it was about five years ago, maybe six years ago, um Elkhart County generated its own um kindergarten readiness assessment. Um, because there was not a statewide indicator available at that time. And when they when we did that for the first time as a community, the numbers um came back and showed that um only about 40, between 40 and 45 percent of the kids entering into kindergarten in our community every year were actually ready to enter kindergarten by a very conservative um set of standards. And and so um, as you can imagine, um, you know, that that indicator is the number one um leading indicator to third grade reading readiness, which is the number one leading indicator to high school graduation rates, um and just on down the road, right? So it so it to in some sense it becomes kind of the first measurable event in terms of the trajectory of a child's success, right? And so um so I think that's why the foundation chose that as um, hey, that's something that we care about. And and I don't think there was, you know, I think there was some real passionate around at that time of like that's not okay, that that's how we're performing as a community. And one of the really special things about this community is that um it not only um you know has a deep passion and pride, but there's a real sense of um urgency and action that um that comes by comes alongside those types of things. And so so that fueled this initiative to get started. And the the foundation said we're gonna we're gonna play the central convener role. And again, our our role in this work and other work is not we're not doing the work, we are um facilitating um the community members that are in those spaces um to to collaborate and and collectively problem solve through systems change. Um and that's kind of what we see happen then five years later.

Kindergarten Readiness As A Keystone Metric

Kevin Deary

So I've been very impressed with the uh collaboration and the overall connectedness that Building Strong Brains has been able to pull together everything from colleges to public schools to private schools to early childhood education. Uh how did how did all that come together?

Andy Murray

You know, it um it really has been fairly organic. So, you know, we we divided the work up into um what we call puzzle pieces because there's as you can imagine, something like early um learning, early um childhood development, there's a lot of components to that. There's um there's health and wellness is a component to that. There's certainly the early learning environments is a component to that. Um there's all these um support services that are a component to that. Um so so we kind of tried to divide it up into okay, groups of these areas of focus. And then with each one of those groups, we invited um, you know, representative folks from the community to the table and then just started um asking the question, what you know, what is most important and in this space, what are the most important things relative to this um this desired outcome of improving kindergarten readiness? And um, and then how do we move the needle in those those areas?

Kevin Deary

And talk to us about the uh we just recently had another boot camp. Yeah, and talk about the results of that.

Puzzle Pieces And Cross‑Sector Collaboration

Andy Murray

So uh so in that space that I just mentioned of the the early learning space, um, we we trialed a concept um this past year of what we called a kindergarten boot camp for lack of a better term. So um so hey, we can't necessarily control the first five years of a child's development leading up to kindergarten, but what we can do is we can come alongside of them um as they're transitioning into kindergarten and do our best to hand them off to the kindergarten teacher in a state where they're ready to learn, right? Um and so we we traveled at a camp last summer with 50 kids, um, learned a lot through that um and had some had very encouraging results in terms of the um impact we were able to make in an eight-week period of time with half-day um class sessions that were focused on specifically the curriculum of kindergarten readiness. And so, again, put kind of playing our role, we took that and we've secured funding now to launch that same program um at a community-wide level. Our goal for this year is to enroll 500 kids. The the program um is rolling out um as um Countdown to Kindergarten Um Summer Camp, is what it's gonna be called, and um and that will start this year. So you'll actually start to see enrollment um starting to hit the uh hit the wire probably about the time this podcast is released, and we're super excited about that. And our goal is to expand that to every child in Elkhart County over the course of the next um two to three years, which would be between 1500 and and 2,000 kids enrolled every year.

Countdown To Kindergarten Summer Camp

Marshall King

So, Andy, one of the big pieces with um that you've encountered as you've done this work is is child care and how challenging that is for so many families in our community and for s the community as a whole. Without, you know, you've got this whole presentation on the numbers and and but summarize a little bit if you can the that challenge and and how this um boot camp is trying to address that.

The Childcare Cost And Access Gap

Andy Murray

Yeah, so you know the ideal scenario would be that every child that um that needs it um has a a five-year um high-quality early learning program they could plug into to get them ready um for this ramp to kindergarten. The reality is um it's a it's an extremely challenged business model, not just for uh here in Elkart County or the state of Indiana, it's like a it's a nationwide issue. And the reality is that in order to provide a high quality environment, the cost um is such that it's it's not accessible to the majority of kids. So this is the easiest way I can describe it. So I have a I have a um son at Purdue and a son at IU. And um if I had a uh two-year-old that I wanted to send through an early learning center, it would cost me the same, or actually slightly more than what it cost me to um have either one of my children in uh in college for a year or so um and and so when you think about that, if you're a um a young family or you know, in a lot of cases, um we have a lot of um single parent families in our community. If you're a a single mom who's um raising a couple of folks and trying to, you know, and one of those children is not a is not a school age yet, um, you know, that's uh you know ten to twelve thousand dollars a year, that's a lot of money. And that's it's just not affordable for most of our most of our families. So as a result, um they don't have access to care. So um and it's not because the providers are charging too much money. In fact, um at those rates, most providers still are not even covering their cost structure. So without some type of um assistance funding, whether that's at a government or a local level, it's just uh the system is just not it's yeah, it's not sustainable the way it's built today. So so our role in all of that, because we don't have a checkbook that's big enough to solve it financially, is to come alongside of those providers and provide them with supports, resources, and things to help um help them along the journey um as best we can.

Kevin Deary

Such a big initiative. And I think this last boot camp, uh, what was the percentage of ready for kindergarten?

Andy Murray

Yeah, so we were able to, so again, if you assume the incoming kids are around 40, we're about 40% of kids um are ready, and I think our um incoming numbers were a little bit less than that. We were we were able to um better than double that um in terms of the the folks the the kids that plugged into kindergarten. And um and again, we're still kind of dialing in our our measurements um and exactly how we want to evaluate that, but it was significant improvement. And again, the goal being if you're a uh kindergarten teacher and you can imagine, you know, every year you're bringing in a uh you know a new class of kids, and if you know, um even 25% of those kids are not in a position where they can sit still and take direction or you know, are not potty trained, or um, you know, uh again, a number of there's a number of inventory of skills there that are fairly basic, but if if you have kids that aren't able to do that, like your whole class is disrupted, right? And so your ability to teach the in the other 75% of the kids is diminished. So our goal is to set our teachers up for success so that all the all the kids in the class can um benefit from that first year.

Measuring Gains And Classroom Impact

Kevin Deary

I had a teacher tell me once that in elementary school, not myself as an adult, uh we were having this conversation. She said the real journey is not bringing students from C's to A's. That's not hard. The real journey is F's to C's. That's life-changing. She said if we can just get the uh the kids who are unprepared to C's, then getting them to A's is much easier. Uh so that no child left behind is leaving them back in in the F's.

Andy Murray

Yep.

Kevin Deary

Uh so I really I really love what Building Strong Brains is doing. But you know, sometimes kids need breaks from school.

Marshall King

Uh-huh.

Kevin Deary

And sometimes they just want to get on a bike and go on the pumpkin vine. Yep. See how I transition there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's another initiative that you do in your free time. It's an important one.

Marshall King

Uh and then and then we'll circle back after they're done riding bike, they're hungry. And so we'll we'll we'll hit that one.

Enter The Pumpkinvine Trails Vision

Andy Murray

Bring it on home, yeah, yeah. So yeah, so um man, our the work we're doing in the Pumpkin Vine Trails Coalition is it's so unique and it's so important, and it's um so potentially transformative for the community. So think about this. So, you know, if if your goal is to build a path from you know where we're sitting today to the other side of Elkhart County, um just stop and think for a minute of how many um cities, um, zip codes, private um individuals' properties that you have to move through to build that path, right? And you can start to understand the complexity of this work. So um, so ultimately our goal again is to um help cast a vision and then bring together uh all the community partners that are needed to execute on that vision. And so it's a it's a complex um the the execution is complex, the the vision and the um the form is you know very simple and beautiful. It's a it's a community path that um allows us to um move through our community for workplay and access. Um and uh yeah, that's the goal.

Kevin Deary

Now we have listeners from not only in Indiana, but outside Indiana and even outside of the country. So the pumpkin vine is actually uh a trail or a connected area where people can walk and can bike and around the county that's off the main roads in most cases, sometimes it isn't, but it's close. Um so that's very important. How many, how long is the pumpkin vine?

Andy Murray

You know, I don't know that number off the top of my head. 17 miles. 17 miles, yep. And and again, part of the magic here, so our one of our um top projects right now is actually to connect our trail system um to the uh the Michaelka South Bend trail system. So because what happens is you bridge you know those handful of miles of trails. Now all of a sudden, instead of you know 10 or 20 miles of trails, you have 50 or 75, right? So like part of this is just networking trail work together. But again, sounds easy, but the reality is there's a lot of people that own land in between. Where you are and where you want to go.

Funding, Shovel‑Ready Work, And Maintenance

Kevin Deary

This is farms and neighbors and governments and counties. And this is this is really complicated stuff. Very complicated. Including the state who's got a hand in this. So how does all this get funded?

Andy Murray

Yeah, so it's um a variety. So I would tell you in in different political environments, the there has been more accessible funding than what there is in the current state of time. But again, part of the great news for us as a community is we have the community foundation that has the vision that says, look, um, not only um will that funding landscape um come back around, it always does it's cyclical, um, but we have you know the wherewithal to generate funding um and and fundraise um ourselves, right? So so our interim strategy until some of those um federally funded projects become more available is one, continue to get the project shovel ready. And what I mean by that is so like you know, a project might cost $15 million to build a segment of trail, but it might cost six, seven, eight hundred thousand dollars to do the feasibility study and all the engineering work and like get it ready to actually build. So so that's what we're working on right now, so that these projects are shovel ready, and then and then if the you know the federal dollars are not there, then we'll go out and we'll fundraise on our own to get them done. Um so yeah, it's it's a variety of different ways. Who keeps the maintenance up? So yes, that's again part of the beauty of the design is once um once the trail is done, their agreements put in place that those local municipalities then take ownership to maintain the trail. But we again we act as that central um kind of landing spot because if you're out riding on the trail um and there's a branch across the trail, um you're not gonna necessarily think to call um, you know, whatever, um Millersburg town council, right? Like you're gonna um you're gonna say, Hey, I'm on the pumpkin vine trail, I need to let somebody from the pumpkin vine know there's a problem here. So we kind of act as a as a distribution for for some of that trail information.

Trails As Connection And Mobility

Kevin Deary

I think one of the first uh trails that opened up was Shipshawana to Middlebury, and then Middlebury to Goshen. My wife and I would be on the golf course. I mean on golf course, we're on the bike, and we were and the Amish.

Andy Murray

Oh, yeah.

Kevin Deary

The amount of Amish that used the bike path is for just for Sunday walks or transportation. Incredible and the amount of bikes.

Andy Murray

Yeah.

Kevin Deary

Uh it was I any thought?

Andy Murray

Did you know all that was gonna happen beforehand or well this I I I want to be clear, like I'm I'm I'm late to the game, right? Like a lot of the this work had been done and was well um well underway, and I've I've just come alongside it in the last year or so to try to help any way I can. But I think you know, I uh those folks that have been involved and had the vision from way back in the early inception, I think they would tell you that it is, you know, it is truly a multi-purpose trail. You sure it's for um you know Sunday afternoon walks and and family time, but it's also for um you know, it's for transportation to to works, it's for um, you know, kids taking the trail to get to school, it's um, hey, we're gonna go shop. So like we one of the things we've been kicking around is like um you sure it's easy to measure trails and miles, but is a better measure of success connections potentially, because if you can connect, if you if you only build a quarter mile of trail, but that connects a neighborhood of 200 homes to a shopping center, like that's a major connection, right? Um with the number of connections there have just increased exponentially. So um so we're you know, we're looking at the work in different ways. But to your point, it's not just a it's not just a leisure path. It is absolutely used for um for transportation and um and for you know to help support the um the economics of a community, yeah.

Kevin Deary

So the future is bright for pumpkin vines.

Andy Murray

Absolutely.

Turning To Hunger: Network Power

Kevin Deary

But then you're hungry. So now we're gonna transition into hunger. Let's talk about that initiative.

Building A County Food Bank Fast

Scale Purchasing: The Peanut Butter Story

Andy Murray

Yeah, so you know, this is kind of born from a couple different ways. Um, you know, in the Building Strong Brains work, we heard consistently from all of our groups, no matter that whether they're working on um health-related initiatives or learning-related initiatives, like, hey, we can do all these things, but if the kids that we're building these systems for go home and they go to bed hungry or um they're sleeping on somebody's couch um, you know, at a different home every week, like the work we do is just not gonna have the impact on sustainability. So it became very clear that um food and housing insecurity were were definitely highly impactful on the work. Um so big, you know, big issues and um not again not unique to our area, not unique to um our this ecosystem, but uh but nonetheless um impactful. So we started to say, okay, how can we influence this work? So we started to and we started with food and security, we started bringing together um a group that represents the larger network of um food pantries in Elkart County. You might be surprised to know as I was that we have over 55-0 food pantries in Elkart County. Um so chances are wherever you're sitting in Elkart, you're um very close, um, very close to a food pantry. But um, so we decided to bring these folks together, start conversations about how can we help you um do what you do. Um and that led to a variety of different things, but ultimately um that group built some momentum, um, kind of had created some vision and created a voice really for the food work. And that was what we call hunger ends here. So that is the um that is the name we use for this this initiative, and um, and what and so that's the group that's representative of the all the food pantries in Elkhart County. And um just about the time that group started to get um some momentum and started an education and outreach campaign, which was their first order of business, was to share the um the need or the uh spread awareness about the issue. Um along came the the government shutdown back in um late August, early September, and um and it really propelled the work that we were doing forward in a big way. Um so what happened was um, as you may remember, there was a lap lapse in SNAP benefits. So um the estimates we had in Elkhart County was that it would potentially increase the demand on food pantries by anywhere from three to five X what their current demand level was, which nobody was staffed for, nobody had enough food for, et cetera. So so the group kicked into high gear and in the course of literally two weeks um stood up um Elkhart County's um first fully functional operating food bank. Now, that there's an important distinction between a food bank and a food pantry. A food pantry um distributes food to directly in individuals, a food bank supplies the food pantry. So prior to having this resource in Elkart County, our food banks were um seeking um food resources from other um food banks um outside of the county. We have there's several great partners here in northern Indiana, the Milford Food Bank, Northern Indiana Food Bank, but um, but you know, none of them are close and local. And um in the nature of a you know local food pantry is um you know it's typically the executive director who's driving over to load up their car full of food to keep their their shelves stocked. And so if they're having to, you know, make a trip that's um an hour or two away, you know, sit in line for a couple hours, they might kill a half day or whole day just trying to um fill up their pantry when they need to be working um back to distribute food. So anyway, long story short is we we decided to take control of our destiny here in Elkard County, stood that up. The community foundation provided some initial funding to get that going, and and within 45 days, um, above and beyond the community foundation's initial contribution, we estimate that we received about $750,000 in in contribution of both um in kind, whether it's food donations and or equipment donations, and some funding as well to get that food bank up and operational.

Marshall King

So, Andy, part of that with the snap benefits, and I think it was actually um early like the month of November was when they were shut down. Sorry, yeah, but I but uh I have uh over here on my shelf a jar of Peter Pan peanut butter. Yep. Um, as part of that effort to make sure that people had food, you know, we ended up buying a semi-load of peanut butter.

Andy Murray

Yeah.

Marshall King

Talk, I mean, I love the story, so just tell us briefly how that happened.

What Gives Hope And Closing Credits

Andy Murray

So, you know, the the beauty of the design of any collaboration is um benefiting from scale, right? And that's really what the design of when we got the food pantries around the table for the first time, we said, look, you're all doing great work you're doing, but you're you're all doing the same thing. How could we um collectively do more um with the resources that we have? And so so this is a great example of that. So when when um that all um became evident that there was a big problem there, and we were able to garner a little bit of funding to make some purchases, we um we plugged in um uh resource um uh one of those folks sitting at the table is Milford Food Pantry, and they have a um uh gentleman there um who is just extremely gifted at food acquisition um on what I'd call the secondary food market. And he would tell you that um the world he lives in, he will get a phone call tomorrow with an opportunity to buy you know a bulk quantity, typically truckload of some type of um food, you know, might be peanut butter, might be um spaghetti, might be snack bars, who does, you know, everything under the sun. And he usually has between five and ten minutes to decide. Um and so um what happens, you know, for whatever reason, that truck went out to deliver somewhere and it it um got refused, and so now that company is as opposed to paying to ship it all the way back to its origin, they want to get rid of it where it's at and move on with their lives. And so you have the opportunity to acquire um high-quality food that's gonna wind that was intended for a grocery store shelf that you know in this particular case, I think we acquired it for about 10 cents on the dollar. We acquired uh uh um three thousand um jars of Peter and peanut butter.

Marshall King

So three hundred thousand, right?

Andy Murray

Uh sorry, no, uh uh thirty thousand. Thirty thousand. Okay, thirty thousand.

Marshall King

We're dealing with multiples here, but I know it was somewhere in there.

Andy Murray

Yeah, thirty thousand um jars and again about ten cents on the dollar. So it um so it's just it's representative of the type of opportunities that are out there. But again, any one of our individual food pantries, that never would have been an option for them because they can't handle it. But when you when you bundle them all together, scale it up, um, you know, we now have been able to take every dollar that's been allocated to that work and stretch it way farther than what they would have been able to do on their own. And again, that's the beauty of the collaboration. So yeah, yeah.

Marshall King

Andy, um, thanks for joining us today. I I'm delighted to have you as a teammate. Um, your passion and your leadership is infectious, and um it we're just delighted that you're part of the community foundation team and um making a difference in this community. We always end with this question of what gives you hope.

Andy Murray

Yeah. You know, that's an easy one for me. Like um living and working in this community my whole life, like I um but having visibility on other communities, like I can say without question that you know, we are blessed to live in a just a highly unique environment. And what I mean by that is we have um we have a very connected community. I think largely because you know we serve you know a handful of um common industry, so there's a high connectedness in our community. Um we have a very high entrepreneurial spirit in this community, so a lot of people that um don't take no for an answer and and can solve any problem. And then you combine that with um, man, just a sense of pride. Like, no, just you know, like I mentioned in the kindergarten readiness, like, no, that's not okay. We're not gonna let that happen in our community. Like, we're we're gonna fix this, right? And then the additional layer is you have, you know, a lot of highly philanthropic folks who have um done well for themselves um and their families, and they and they share that with the community. So you put all those things in the same environment, and like we can solve any problem we put our minds to, right? Like it's just it's a matter of focus. So so what gives me hope is is the opportunity to you know shine a light on some of these um opportunities as they rise to the surface and then and then watch our community come together and solve those problems. And so um, so it, you know, we we're very blessed as a community, and it's just man, it's so fun to see it all kind of play out.

Marshall King

So this show is a production of the community foundation of Elkart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded at the Community Foundation's offices in Elkart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communications students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Music is provided by sensational sounds. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkart County at inspiringgood.org. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We hope you're inspired and inspire good in your community.