Baxter Community Center

If funding were limitless, we would be able to pay staff more and provide better benefits. We believe in hiring from within our community and treating our staff well so that they can best serve our neighbors. Over the past few years, we raised wages to ensure that all staff make at least $15 per hour, but we know that is not enough. A living wage for one adult with no children living in Grand Rapids would be $22.53 an hour. Individuals that choose to work for a nonprofit should be able to support themselves without relying on government assistance and right now we do not have the capacity to offer that to employees unfortunately. Moving all employees up to at least $15 an hour cost us an additional $250,000 across the whole organization. We believe that better compensating our employees would help us with employee retention, recruiting new employees, and encouraging our entry-level employees to pursue degrees.

We are aiming to raise $10,000 to support our Holiday Baskets emergency food assistance program. This would provide 120 Holiday Baskets for families which include all the fixings for a complete holiday meal - turkey, green beans, stuffing, cranberry relish, pie crusts, potatoes, and more. Our Holiday Baskets program is one that attracts many volunteers and organizations that want to help, which often leads to new monthly donors or relationships that can help sustain us long-term. We are able to connect with the media to share the impact of Holiday Baskets, which further gets the message out about Baxter and leads to opportunities for us to connect with new investors in our work.

Martin Luther King Jr."Life’s persistent and most urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"