92130 Cares, Cheryl Hsu - The journey from identifying a need in her community to creating a non-profit

In this episode of The Business of Non-Profits, we speak with Cheryl Hsu, founder of 92130 Cares about their journey from identifying the needs in her area to creating a non-profit and beyond.

 

92130 Cares, Donate a Thanksgiving meal for a family in need

92130 Cares Facebook

 

Mentioned Tech:

https://www.signupgenius.com/

 

 

 

[00:30] Stacey Lund:

Hi, everyone. You're listening to the business of nonprofits. We're talking to 92130 Cares, an organization serving the needs of the 92130 community by sharing resources, making meaningful connections, and spreading neighborly love. With me today is founder Cheryl Sue. Cheryl, thanks so much for joining us today.

[00:51] Cheryl Hsu:

Thanks for having me.

[00:52] Stacey Lund:

Why don't you take a couple of minutes and introduce yourself, the organization and mission and your role at 92130 Cares.

01:00] Cheryl Hsu:

Great. I never thought that I would ever start a nonprofit organization. At the beginning of the pandemic, it became pretty clear to me that there were a lot of people who were hit harder by the pandemic, either the economic effects or the social effects. And I just felt compelled to do something. So it really started in September of 2020 when my family and I, we try to do some kind of volunteer work relating to Thanksgiving dinner. I had called all the usual organizations, and no one was offering anything because of the pandemic. So I went out on next door, made a post, and asked, hey, if anyone knows of a place where I can volunteer or sponsor a family, let me know. I'd love to do something with my family this year. A woman reached out to me privately and said, hey, I live in the community. We are really struggling right now, and we can't find a place to have Thanksgiving dinner. Would you consider sponsoring us? I responded and said, definitely, I would love to sponsor you. And, do you know of others who are struggling right now? She wrote back and said, I know many families in the community who are struggling. So that initial conversation with her really created this huge effort. She started connecting me and sending me names of 20 families that she knew of who either lived-in low-income housing or just lost a job or a parent was required to stay home to help with kids. And it started with me texting my book club group first and saying, listen, I've got a bunch of families. Would you like to sponsor a family, a local family for Thanksgiving? So everyone said yes. And that's when I started doing a bit of more research, and I found that there are actually over a thousand units in Carmel Valley that are considered low income rent units. And to get into those units you have to prove that your income is, around half of what the median income is. It was a real effort to sort of get out there, learn more about my community. I had, at the time, lived in this community for eight years, and I never knew the economic diversity that was here. I created a Facebook group, and it quickly grew to a thousand members. I reached out to see if anyone wanted to come door-knocking with me to sign up more people for Thanksgiving. And that first Thanksgiving in 2020, we had 150 families signed up. And on the other side, we were able to find private sponsors. So my neighbors, my friends, anyone in our Facebook group signed up to sponsor these families directly. And it was by whichever the recipient sort of felt would be most helpful. So it was either a grocery store gift card, a groceries, a precooked meal, or a restaurant gift card. During the height of the pandemic, when people were required to stay home and give up all of their regular social activities or going out or being in the community, that was a time when we were creating this thing where people were reaching out to each other in a way that we had never done before in our community. So it was cross cultures, cross economic differences. It was just really, really cool. So that's sort of the genesis. The very first project that we took on as 92130 Cares, we’re rolling it out again right now for 2022, so it will be our third annual sponsorship. We've done other projects with December holiday dinner sponsorship. We've done one for kids backpacks and school supplies where we have any family who needed help with a school backpack could sign up. And then we had sponsor families sign up to deliver sort of some school supplies to a family directly. And then our ongoing project right now is a farmers’ market. This has really taken on a life of its own. We run a free farmers market every single Sunday for the last year and a half. And we have partnerships with Whole Foods, Jimbo’s, Trader Joe's, where they donate their slightly cosmetically damaged foods or any f