Business Innovators Radio - The Inspired Impact Podcast with Judy Carlson-Interview with Brie Dilley, Executive Director, SECOR Cares

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

Brie Dilley is the Executive Director at SECOR Cares, a nonprofit in Parker committed to eliminating food insecurity and suburban poverty. Brie has worked in the nonprofit sector in various capacities for most of her career. At SECOR, she has worked both on the program and development teams and has a heart for connecting donors and community members with the meaningful stories of SECOR guests. Brie is a mission-driven leader with a big vision for well-researched, comprehensive solutions to complex issues like poverty.Brie holds a BA in Communication and an MA in Organizational Leadership. Outside of work, you can reliably find her hiking, camping, cycling or anything else that gets her outside enjoying the gorgeous Rocky Mountains.https://www.secorcares.com/https://www.instagram.com/secorcareshttps://www.linkedin.com/company/secorcareshttps://www.facebook.com/SoutheastCommunityOutreach*************************************************************Judy Carlson is the CEO and Founder of the Judy Carlson Financial Group, where she helps couples create personalized, coordinated financial plans that support the life they want to live – now and in the future.As an Independent Fiduciary and Comprehensive Financial Planner, Judy specializes in retirement income and wealth decumulation strategies. She is a CPA, Investment Advisor Representative, licensed in life and health insurance, and certified in long-term care planning.Judy’s mission is to help guide clients with clarity and care, building financial plans that focus on real planning built around real lives.Learn More: https://judycarlson.com/Investment Adviser Representative of and advisory services offered through Royal Fund Management, LLC, a SEC Registered Adviser.The Inspired Impact Podcasthttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-inspired-impact-podcast/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-inspired-impact-podcast-with-judy-carlson-interview-with-brie-dilley-executive-director-secor-cares

Welcome to the Inspired Impact Podcast, where dedicated female professionals share how they inspire impact every day. Authentic stories, passionate commitment, lives transformed. I'm your host, Judy Carlson. Welcome to today's episode of the Inspired Impact Podcast. Today I have such a special guest to introduce to you. She has worked in the nonprofit sector most of her career, and she's also the youngest person working in her current nonprofit. I'm so excited to introduce you to Bree Dilley,

the executive director of Seacore Cares. Bree, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Judy. I'm excited to be here. Yay. So we want to know your story. Tell us how you got to where you are. And you can start wherever you want to.

Yeah. So right out of college, I started working in ministry. My husband and I did youth ministry for four or five years over in the Seattle area where we're from. And after we'd been doing that for a little while, we started thinking we really needed to get some sort of theological education if we wanted to stay in ministry. and we ultimately chose Denver Seminary here in the Denver area. So that's what brought us out to Colorado. And when we moved out here, he started working at a church that is closely connected to Seacor. And I decided I was going to kind of take a pause from church ministry.

And I just very randomly got connected to Seacor because of, of his connection to this church. We started going there and attending regularly. And I was introduced to Seacor. I kind of got hired on the spot by the executive director at the time who before then called me, cold called me and said, have you ever heard of Seacore? And I said, nope. Somehow my resume made it to his desk.

I still don't know how. But yeah, he called asked Fred Ever heard of Seacore. You know, we've lived in Colorado. for a couple of weeks tops, you know, at that time. So I said, no, no, what is that? And he invited me in and we talked a little bit and he hired me that day. So I started working there. Just some backstory for those who don't know, Seekore is a nonprofit free food market here in the southeast metro area serving all of Douglas Arapho and Elberg counties. And the model is, is set up like a grocery store.

So it really centers around dignity and the fact that people, when they find themselves in a place of need, dignity is oftentimes kind of the first thing that is stripped from them. You know, they're forced to wait in long lines. They're forced to, you know, prove really sensitive financial documentation

to kind of prove how much need they have, all this sort of stuff. And Seekore's model is very different. And it really centers, centers the folks that we serve and looks through the lens of dignity in service. So anyway, I started working at Seacore and I was working directly with the people that we serve. So I was doing some kind of resource navigation, helping people get set up with, you know, with our market, doing intake stuff, but then also connecting them with other resources in the community. I got to spend a lot of time with other organizations and figuring out what they do and how I can refer our guests there and that sort of stuff.

And I just immediately fell in love. I felt so hard. I was like, especially, you know, coming from the background of the church, I remember having some really clear thoughts around. This is the kind of work that we always talk about doing in our churches. But not so often are we actually doing those things. And this is the place where we actually get to do that stuff. You know. Yeah. And, and I just, yeah, pretty quickly was like, this is it. I want to stay in this, in this field, you know, this nonprofit work. This is where I want to be. And I had enough people in my life, thankfully, who, you know, were just great, great mentors to me and help me understand that if I wanted to keep doing this kind of work and stay in this field, and I wanted to kind of also grow in my career, I needed to understand the business side of things.

You know, in the nonprofit world, the thing we talked about the most is the programmatic side of things, you know, the heartwarming things that we get to do, the incredible stories. But there's, you know, a whole other side to how this work is done. And the way, you know, nothing can be done without those business components, without fundraising, without understanding, you know, accounting and all that sort of stuff. So I left Seacore after about a year, a year and a half. And I moved on and went to another organization that I got involved in the fundraising side and started learning, yeah, nonprofit development, working with donors.

I got a really good crash course in how a nonprofit should be run. And fundraising best practices and philanthropy and, you know, how all of that works. works. And then about three years ago, I got a call from somebody who I had met initially when I worked at Seacore the first time. He and his wife really took my husband and I under their wing, just loved on us when we moved to Colorado, you know, had us over for dinner. We, we sort of became, you know, they were like our Colorado parents or aunt and uncle or best friends or, you I don't even know how to quantify or what to call our relationship, but they're just really incredible people. He was the operations director at Seacor at the time. And he called me up

and he said, hey, you know, would you want to come back to Seacore at some point? And I said, well, who's running the show over there? You know, what's going on? And he was. He had stepped into the interim role after the last executive director left. And I was like, absolutely. You know, it was the easiest yes of my life, right? I just, I saw such an affinity for this work and the people that we serve. And I also was like, you know, one of my best friends is my boss now. I mean, that's pretty incredible, right? So, so I came back in the development director role, which is kind of, the nonprofit lingo for the chief fundraising position at the organization. And I was in that role for about a year before his time as interim came to a close. And I threw my hat in the ring to the board

to be to be considered for the executive director role. And I have been in that role as of this month, two years. I just had my two year anniversary. Congratulations. Wow. Yeah, really exciting. And kind of during that time, you know, I moved out here to go to Denver Seminary, right? My husband and I, and obviously, you know, took a hard left turn. But one of the incredible things about that school is that they have a program for a master's in organizational leadership. And so at some point along the way, when I realized that I wanted to stay in this work, I pivoted and changed my degree program. So, yeah, which I have to say I use that all the time. You know, there's so many concepts that I learned in that program that I really, that I

applied to, you know, leading us as an organization, leading our stack here, our volunteers. So, you know, there was a plan in all of it. Absolutely. Wow. So you mentioned staff. So what comprises the staff at Seacore? Yeah, we have 16 staff, about five folks, six, six, five or six. Five or six of us are full time.

Okay. And the rest are part time. Okay. And then we also have a volunteer workforce of, you know, maybe 300 or so. Wow. So is one of your staffers then in charge of the volunteers? Yes. Yeah, we have a full-time volunteer coordinator who oversees all of that.

So what are some of the things that the volunteers do if people listening are interested in learning more and you share some of the different roles volunteers can have? Yeah, absolutely. Well, first I'll expand a little bit on what Seacor does. and then talk about what those fallout opportunities are. Sure. That's all right. Yeah. So our flagship program I kind of already touched on is that free food market, that client choice, grocery store style market.

So we have volunteers who help people get checked in. We have volunteers who help people as they're going through the market, restocking the shelves. We also have volunteers who are in the warehouse as we're receiving food in the mornings and throughout the day. and they're sorting, sorting through all of that food, getting it out into the market, getting it into storage in our warehouse. So that's a great opportunity for folks who are less people, people. Oh, gotcha. You know, they can kind of be back in the warehouse. But then we also have two outreaches as well.

So we have an outreach that's called our mobile market. And that is, it's an outfitted beverage truck like a peasant. taxi truck. So it has these these bays that roll up on both sides of the truck. And the idea came a handful of years ago. Seacor started thinking about, you know, how can we get to people who can't get to us? And so then this dream for a truck, a mobile market, started growing. And they pitched that idea down at Christian Brothers Automotive at their headquarters in Texas. And they funded the building of the truck. So yeah, so it has kind of custom racking built into it. And it takes that same client choice model that we have in our brick and mortar and kind of puts it on wheels.

So the bays roll up, people shop all the way around the truck just like they would in our market. There's now a refrigeration and freezer unit on that as well. So that mobile market goes into a couple of different areas. We kind of target places like, you know, income qualified housing, senior living facilities. And then our biggest one is college campuses. So we, we go out to almost all the kind of community colleges in the, in the south metro area. And so folks can come in and stock that truck before it goes out. Every time that truck goes out, it goes out with over $3,000 worth of food. And it can serve about 200 people.

So it goes out right now about once a week. And so it's, you know, we're constantly stocking and restocking and unloading and reloading. So that's another volunteer opportunity. And then we also have opportunities for folks that they wanted to come and help with service on the mobile market, you know, if they wanted to come out to community college of Aurora and, you know, and help their student population as they're shopping through, stuff like that. So, and then our third, our third core program is called food for thought. And food for thought is, I think you said you had June on here with the Backpack Society, similar kind of program,

you know, really targeting those, those kids who show up to school, they're reliant on that free breakfast and lunch. But then the weekend rolls around. And, you know, the cupboard is still empty. Right. So we get those kids a bag of food to kind of cover the gap over the weekend. And that program serves 33 schools, I think, right now, over five school districts, totaling about 2,200 kids every single week. So we have volunteer shifts for folks to come in and pack those bags, as well as, you know, help us just distribute them out to some of our schools. Do you have like an assembly line?

And do you have specified times when people come in? Because I've, you know, I've done that at Backpack Society. but not sure how it transfers over to what you guys are doing. Yes, yeah, yeah. It's very much an assembly line kind of thing. We have five shifts a week dedicated just to food prepat. You know, maybe think about that. 2,250 kids means 2,250 bags every single week that need to be packed.

So, yeah. So it takes about five volunteer shifts to get all of that done. And then, you know, and then they're all delivered, and the whole thing starts over again the following. week. So do they go in bins by school, 33 schools? Are there 33 bins, one for each school, or how do you manage that? Great question. So we don't count the bags as they go in. We have these kind of big cages that are made to go directly onto the truck. We have a truck that's especially for this program and a driver that's especially for this program. Okay.

And so he delivers a couple of days a week. Okay. And we have a route set up for him. So he does one route on Tuesdays, one route on Wednesdays. And then we kind of leave Thursday open in case there's a snowstorm or something and we need to shift. Yeah. But yeah. So we kind of know approximately how many bags the truck can accommodate.

And he can only do so many, you know, per route, that sort of thing. But and then we have a couple of, you know, our more rural schools that we have some volunteers who will go out and deliver to. We have some schools to that are, you know, it's one or two students. You know, a school will call us and say, you know, hey, we got this kid. It's kind of the special circumstance. Is there any way that you can help us out? So our driver and our truck is kind of the bulk, the bulk of our schools, which is Aurora Public Schools and then the Cherry Creek School District as well. Okay. So Aurora and Cherry Creek are. Yeah, those are our two big school districts, but we are also in Douglas, Albert, and Elizabeth.

Okay. Let's see. What else would be helpful information to share about your organization, where it's headed in the future, new programs you might be interested in, growth potential, all of that kind of stuff, because it seems like it's growing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the need is certainly growing.

Right. Well, I guess that's the key, right? Yeah. It's growing. Then how do you accommodate that? Yeah. Yeah, you did mention when we were just chatting before, you know, there's aging people that are, you know, coming for services. And that population is growing.

Yeah, definitely. So, well, first off, you know, I'll say next year, 26 is going to be our 20th anniversary as an organization. Really, really, really excited. for us. You know, the last handful of years, we've had a lot of transition in our leadership and in our board. And we've had to do a lot to kind of grow up quickly, I'll say, as an organization, you know, really, really getting all of those kind of nonprofit best practices in order. That was a, that was kind of a big part of what we took on, you know, what I took on when I stepped into this role.

We started Seacore like many nonprofits in a church closet. And, you know, and then we've just kind of seen this exponential growth, especially over the last decade, but more specifically in that kind of pandemic to post-pandemic era, you know, our annual operating budget doubled in just a couple of years. And so we just saw this kind of exponential growth and we needed to kind of take a beat to catch up and get all of our, get all of our ducks in the road and all of that sort of stuff. So coming up on this 20th anniversary feels like a massive celebration for us. We're really excited. And I feel like we're really positioned well as an organization for that kind of growth that you're talking about.

I would say that, you know, the last two or three years, a lot of our focus has been on this migrant crisis that's hit the Denver metro area. You know, we have 26 languages that are spoken at C-Corps. Yeah. And we've always had paper, you know, we've also had all of our documentation in Spanish, and we have Spanish speakers here. But our third most spoken, you know, our languages go English, Spanish. Our third most spoken language is Russian. Our fourth most spoken language is Ukrainian. And it's not easy to find speakers of those languages.

And so, and like I said, you know, 26 languages in total. So we had to do a lot to start figuring out quickly, how do we communicate with people, you know, more so than just pointing at stuff, right? The whole organization is centered around this idea of dignity, and we want to give people dignity regardless of what language they speak. So we had to really get creative, you know, did a lot of learning to kind of figure that out. We realized really quickly that Google Translate is an insufficient translation device. We have a lot of folks coming from the Middle East that, you know, I said those top four languages.

Number five is kind of a three-way tie between some of the Middle Eastern. languages like Pashto and and um and Dari and you know that sort of stuff I'm probably saying these things. Um, but one of the things that we started realizing was we had some folks coming from the Middle East. Generally it was the women who were coming into shop. And a lot of those women didn't, you know, their, their education stopped at, let's say, you know, second or third grade. So even though we could get things translated into their written language, if they can't read their own language, then it doesn't matter. And tools like Google Translate for some of those languages, they only have the written component. They don't have the auditory component. Not all of

the languages do they have that auditory components. We had to figure out some translation devices that would have both, you know, in every language. So that was, that was. That was a kind of like our big challenge, getting all sorts of stuff translated and signage and all that sort of stuff. I'd say we're mostly through the woods on that. We've kind of, you know, I'm not going to say we got it figured out, but we've done the best that we could. And we're no longer kind of in crisis, crisis levels on that. Now we're sort of shifting our focus over to our aging population. Like you were saying that, you know, we know being here in Douglas County, our population is aging, rapidly. And we really want to start thinking about how we can kind of rise to the occasion.

So we, this last year, we launched senior shopping hours as one of our attempts at that, you know, our market is open to the general public Wednesday through Saturday. But on Tuesdays, we're open for what we call senior hours. And how our market typically works is we have 12 appointments every half an hour. Okay. So people kind of crank through. It can get a little busy, a little crazy. And then we also have, you know, volunteer stocky and stuff like that. During senior hours, we run at half capacity. So it's only six appointments every half an hour. And it's done, that's done very intentionally. The goal is to have a quieter, slower-paced shopping experience. You know, we have people who

have mobility issues. They have a physical impairment. And then we also have some folks who are who aren't, you know, an older adult, but they're, you know, they have a TBI or some veterans with PTSD or for whatever reason really benefit from that kind of slower, slower, slower, quieter shopping experience. So that's one of the things that we launched in the last year. It's almost everyone's favorite day here at Seacore. It's Tuesdays. You know, it's so fun. You know, you get a lot of the same folks coming through. The volunteers get to fight over who gets those shifts because it's just, you know, they love our seniors. And it's just, it's a really fun time. So that's been a really cool kind of initiative and attempt for us to just try and figure out

some creative solutions for those populations. We're currently piloting a program that we're going to call Seacore at your door, which is like a delivery service for some groceries. I don't know that that's going to be ever be a huge program just because it's really logistically challenging. And our service area is 56 zip codes, you know, Douglas Arapho, Elbert counties. It's 3,500 square miles. There's just no way that we could, you know, deliver to everybody who needs us across all three of those counties, unfortunately. But we're trying it out, just kind of seeing how it goes and sort of seeing, you know, what we could learn from it. Our high level kind of organizational strategy is typically, we don't ever want to

duplicate a resource, you know, it's not, it's not wise stewardship of the funds that our donors give to us, nor is a good stewardship of our own time and energy. So we're really big on building collaborative partnerships with other agencies in the area. And if there's someone out there who's doing, you know, they're meeting a need. They're, they're, you know, they have their niche. We would much rather have a robust relationship with them where we can do a warm handoff and good referral for one of our guests than just creating that, you know, recreating that program on our own, you know? I mean, like you know this in business, right? You can't do all things well. Right. Exactly. That's right. So, yeah. So, but we also allow that work. You know, we spend a lot of

time out in the community. We get agencies in Douglas County together every six weeks or so and just kind of talk through what everybody's experiencing. So highly, highly collaborative. But that also helps to illuminate where the gaps are. You know, like what are the needs that aren't being met? Or, you know, for us, sometimes there's an organization who maybe they're doing that in Douglas County, but they only serve Douglas County. And so our Arapahoe County folks are left out or vice versa or you know, whatever. So we we kind of use that to help us understand where the gaps are in service and then and then kind of find our way to step into those. So one of the things that we launched this last year in that vein is a digital literacy class. You know, we switched over to an

appointment system about two years ago when the need, you know, shot up. And we had a line wrapped around the building at the beginning of the day. You know, it was crazy. But we felt like, hey, that's not, that's not dignifying. You know, you don't have to wait outside for an hour to go grocery shopping. Why should these folks? So we moved to an appointment system to make things more efficient. But in doing so, that really highlighted the digital literacy gap for a lot of the folks

that we're serving, especially our older folks, people who English is not their first language. And we are incredibly blessed that our program manager, Debbie, is a former teacher, technology teacher. And so we have a program now where we have a volunteer who refurbishes laptops. So if anybody out there listening has a laptop that's sitting around collecting dust or even better if your company is doing an IT overhaul, you're getting rid of all of your devices, we will take them. Wow. So we have a volunteer that refurbishes computers and then Debbie, Debbie does a class where folks can go through. They hit a couple, they, I think they have to pass four of six modules or something like that. And once they complete the class, they get to take the device home and keep it.

Oh, wow. That's so cool. Yeah. And it's just been so awesome. You know, we've had stories of people who, you know, they, they, we have a guest who works up at the airport at DIA.A. And he was, working outside, slept in bags, hurting his back. And he just wanted a job inside, you know, but he didn't know how to use a computer. So he took the class. He attached the certificate he got when he submitted his application. And he got, he got a new job and he's indoors. He came in so excited and wanted to share that with us. But, you know, it's, that's not a huge leap in terms of moving the needle of self-sufficiency, but in quality of life, right? Right. Similarly, we have some scenes.

seniors who now, because they know how to use a computer, they can communicate with their grandkids on the other side of the world. And, you know, so some really awesome things have come out of that program. But that's just one of those things that we started kind of seeing a need and seeing that no one else is really stepping into this space. So, okay, let's figure out how to do it. You know, I think next on the horizon, we're looking at some financial literacy classes, some ESL classes, those sorts of things. But we really, we really try to hold things loosely. We try to let our guests help us decide where we should go next. You know, we have a guest advisory board who, you know, they serve as like an advisory council to us to help us steer the organizations, you know,

where we're going to go next and help us make those strategic decisions. And, And we just try stuff and see how it goes and see what's successful and we learn and we grow and we evolve. And yeah, and we just keep trying. So I don't know what the next 20 years at Seacor are going to look like. But I do feel confident that no matter what the need is, we're going to rise to meet it. Yeah. Man, your feelers are just going further and further out.

in all the different areas. It's great. I love to hear that. How did the name come about? Yeah. So like I said, we started out of a church. We started out of Southeast Christian Church here in Parker. The founder of Seacoror is actually the daughter, the adopted daughter of the founding pastor of that church.

So she, along with some other folks in her community, started realizing that, yes, even in an athlete, place like Douglas County, there are people who are struggling. And so they rallied around Christmas time. They got some toys and food for some families who are struggling. And then, you know, one thing led to another. As they say, Seacore became an official outreach of the church. And so the name stands for Southeast Community Outreach. So it was the outreach arm of the church. It was an official ministry of the church. And then in 2006, we became our own an independent 511C3. Okay.

Wow. Always interesting to hear all the story, the back story about names and stuff. Oh, totally, totally. And we saw people who founding, but we just had an open house event a couple months ago. And we had founding board members, you know, who wanted to come in and see it. And they just, they hadn't seen our new space. we've been in the building that we're in now since 2019. Okay.

And yeah, so there's still so many people who were around in those very early days, which is really fun. You know, our founder, unfortunately, that I'd gone. But a lot of the other folks who came around her and helped her get this thing off the ground are still here. And they'll be at your 20th anniversary celebration next year. Absolutely well. You know, they still give generously. and are still involved. And to me, that's one of the things that's really beautiful about Seekore is that we were really born out of the community.

And our support, all of those, you know, all the donations is almost exclusively from the community. You know, we're very much by the community for the community. And some of the, some of the guests that we help come back around and they become donors and supporters and volunteers. and, you know, in fact, you and I got connected to the 100 women who cared Douglas County giving circle. And, you know, I was sharing with you before we started recording that there was a woman in that group who, when I was touring everybody around, she spoke up and said, hey, I was, I was one of these people, you know? And now she, yeah, now she gets to be on the other side of it. So, I mean, we have staff that used to be guests. And so, yeah, it's just a really cool community-centric organization. Yeah, so fulfilling for sure.

So you mentioned the donations. Tell me about a little bit more about the donations and then we'll kind of wrap up here. But if someone's interested in getting more involved from that standpoint. Yeah, yeah. We accept all donations in any form. Okay. You know, we're like, we'll take food. You know, people do food drives for us all the time.

We're connected with an app called Fresh Food Connect that connects community gardeners with food pantries in their area. So we have people stopping by that way. But then, you know, of course, we run largely on financial support. Okay. And so we, you know, people can go onto our website, Seacorecares.com. And, you know, you can give directly there. We'll take one-time donations. We have a lot of monthly givers, but we can also do gifts of stock and things like that.

Sure. And then the financial donations sometimes must need to turn into purchasing food if there's not enough donation. Absolutely. Yeah. We have to purchase a lot of our food. We get a lot donated from our local grocery store. Food Bank of the Rocky, some of those places, but we just serve, frankly, way too many people to sustain ourselves on donated food alone. Our three core programs, Food for Thought,

the mobile market, and our free food pantry, our free food market, right now, in combination, we touch the lives of over 3,000 families in a given week. Wow. Yeah. So it's just a. insane amount of food. So we do have to purchase a lot of food just to keep the shelf stocked, you know, and keep folks fed. So I would also extend to your listeners. If anything ever wants to come in for a tour, I love to say that Seekore is best seen. You know, sometimes it's hard to conceptualize when I talk so much about dignity and why that's important to us.

that's that's kind of a hard thing to understand until you see that space until you walk in and go oh oh yeah this looks like a grocery store you know our our goal is you know for for moms who are bringing their kids in that those kids have no idea oh wow that they're at a food pantry you know and and and and we want everybody who walks in the door to be greeted with a smile to be welcomed and no shame, no stigma, no judgment. I mean, we're really big on, you know, life happens, things are hard. No one, no one, you know, when they were a little kid said, when I grew up, I want to be shopping in a food pantry.

That just doesn't happen, you know, and especially in an affluent place like Douglas County, there's so much shame, there's so much stigma. I can't tell you the number of times that people are like, I just, I can't believe I'm here. You know, I talked to a guest recently who was like, I used to volunteer at places like this. And so that's, that's another message that I just, I can't ever overemphasize is when we talk about places like Seacor, you know, we use this term suburban poverty a lot here. Because when people think of poverty, they often think of, you know, that like some sort of quintessential image of like a homeless person. on a bench or something like that, right?

You know, significant addiction or mental illness or tent cities or, you know, whatever kind of things you see in these urban areas. That's not, that's not who we're serving. I mean, we don't not serve those people. And we get some of that for sure. But the overwhelming majority of people that we serve are your neighbors. They are the people like you and me who just had no idea that life was going to go the way that it did.

And, you know, there's a, there's a HOA neighborhood across the street from Seacore. And in that same neighborhood, we have donors, we have volunteers, and we have guests. And they all live right next to each other. And none of them know the other exists. That's amazing. I mean, to me, that's suburban poverty. It's your, you know, it's the people that you just, you just didn't expect, you know, that you never envisioned at a food pantry.

So that's why to us that dignity component is so important. Because we know that when you walk in the door, it has taken every ounce of courage and bravery that you have to admit that you need to help and to walk in the door. And so we want to be a place that welcomes you that doesn't put any more barriers in your way. That's what I mean when I say dignity. So I would love to extend an invitation for anyone to come in and see our facility and get a better understanding of the work that we do and how that works. Yeah, that's beautiful, just beautiful. That makes a huge difference for sure. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Judy. Yeah, it's been good. Just what you were sharing there just brings up some memories of. the three of us and some of the days that we were dependent on free stores. And I always tell a funny story about going with my son who was, I don't know, six, two or six, three, and he's a big guy. And he was only 14 or 15 at the time. But he would push the grocery cart. And it's very

intimidating to not know that you go to the fresh and then you go to the canned goods and then you go to the you know the meats and that stuff but everybody everybody there is super super friendly and helpful and embracing us you know just and the funniest thing is I love taking him and I didn't have anything to do with this but the you know the person that's taking a pizza in the box frozen pizza or whatever off the shelf and handing it to us or putting it it in the cart, looks up at him and looks at me and looks up in him and grabs a couple more pizzas. I think you guys are going to need more than just one pizza. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, one time we were there, they said, I think I might have something in the back for you, and they came out with a ham and put it in our cart. Uh-huh, uh-huh. I mean, just because I guess he was six-two and a big kid and knew he knew he was a teenager, a big appetite. I don't know, but. Yeah. But it's those little things, right?

That, you know, just when you're in that place where you are, you know, stitching together jobs and you're just, you're in the chaos of that. And to have a place where even if it's just for a couple of moments, you feel like you can breathe a little bit, you can laugh, just and feel human again, you know? we um one of the things that we always have in our market that we're we're incredibly blessed to have because of our relationship with trader joes we almost always have flowers oh and you know I tell people this is not this is this is this is not about do you have enough calories right that's beautiful oh my gosh this is what can we give you that just makes you feel

special yeah it just makes you feel special that you know like can we can we not only make sure that you have enough food to feed your family but can we go beyond that and just give you some creature comforts back all of those things that you've now had to cut out of your budget right you know those those feel good kinds of things yeah flowers for most women in a vase on the counter make you feel very special no special occasion, just something nice in the home. That's beautiful. I love that. It's one of the things we get the most feedback about. I bet. That's great. Wow. Well, this has been a delightful conversation. Thank you so much for sharing so much. I'm excited for what's ahead for your organization and you at

the helm. They're fabulous director. So thanks for taking the time to share it all with us today and encourage people to check it out, visit, volunteer, help out in some way. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for having me and give me a platform to share about the coolest job in the entire world. That's right. You got it, girl. You got it. All right. Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us for the Inspired Impact Podcast. To listen to past episodes, please visit the Inspired Impact Podcast.com.