Business Innovators Radio - The Inspired Impact Podcast with Judy Carlson-Interview with June Everett, Founder and President of Backpack Society

Episode Date: September 22, 2024

June Everett, a Colorado native, is the Founder and President of Backpack Society. Her compassionate nature and dedication to helping others developed from a young age. Growing up in a low-income family in Rocky Ford, CO, she learned the importance of generosity and community support. Both of her parents also grew up in low-income households, and hearing about their struggles with food insecurity motivated her to pursue the path she is on today.After her college years, June accumulated valuable operations management experience. Her transition to human resources reignited her passion for helping others. Following a successful 15-year career, she made a courageous decision. She left her role as an HR Director to establish Backpack Society, a non-profit organization aimed at making a positive impact on her community. Her bold step is a testament to her determination and the power of following one’s heart.Backpack Society was officially founded in September 2019 and received its 501(C)(3) status in December of the same year. This significant milestone was made possible by the unwavering support of June’s community, family, and friends. Their belief in her vision and their active participation in the cause have been instrumental in the organization’s success.Aside from her work, June loves genealogy and enjoys hiking, traveling, and spending time with her husband, two sons, and rescue dog, Ellie Mae.*************************************************************Judy is the CEO & Founder of the Judy Carlson Financial Group. She helps her clients design, build, and implement fully integrated and coordinated financial plans from today through life expectancy and legacy.She is an Independent Fiduciary and Comprehensive Financial Planner who specializes in Wealth Decumulation Strategies. Judy is a CPA, Investment Advisor Representative, Life and Health Insurance Licensed, and Long-Term Care Certified.Judy’s mission is to educate and empower her clients with an all-inclusive financial plan that encourages and motivates them to pursue their lifetime financial goals and dreams.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-june-everett-founder-and-president-of-backpack-society

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's guest has a very special place in my heart. And I'm thrilled to be here with June Everett. Welcome, June. Good morning.

Thank you so much. Yeah, so glad that you could join us today. We're just going to start by having you tell us a little bit about your journey, where you started, what inspired you to pursue the path you're on, which is a very heartwarming story that I get tearful of sometimes when you share it. and how it's brought you to where you are today. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it started, I grew up in a low-income community in southeastern Colorado.

And growing up, I knew we didn't have much, but we never went without. And, you know, you hear sometimes of parents or grandparents who had rough times growing up, they don't really share their stories because it was just too painful. they just want to look forward. But my parents weren't that way. They definitely shared their struggles. And I think they really wanted to instill in my sisters and I that we should be thankful for what we have. And even though we didn't have much, we were, you know, we had a good life. We always had a roof over our head, always had food on the table. But my dad specifically shared lots of stories of his growing up and how he struggled with food insecurity. And it was through those stories. that really shaped, I think, the person that I am today. Growing up, he was very poor. He had a single mother, and he recalled one story in particular was him coming home from school when he was about five and never seeing his mom cry before other than when a family member had passed away. She was a very strong independent woman and he did not know what to do when he said.

saw her crying and she told him that they didn't have any food. And so him sharing those stories with me really, really stuck with me. My dad was also a big, strong macho guy. And when he shared those stories, he would tear up. So I knew that it was much harder than he was explaining to me what they went through. And so those stories really stuck with me. But what stuck with me even more was his perseverance, I guess, through it all. He learned at an early age how to garden from a neighbor. And he learned how to barter. You know, if you give me the seeds for this garden, I'll grow it and I'll share some of my

crops with you. Or he would learn, he learned how to fish and hunt and be self-sufficient and, you know, just hearing those kind of happy endings to the struggles that he had really helped grow and shape who I became and always wanting to give back in some way, whether it was a smile to somebody having a bad day or, you know, a $5 bill to somebody who needed it. That kind of shaped who I became. And I went on, you know, to grow up and had a career in HR of all things. Because I, again, wanted to help people. I didn't start in HR. I started an operations management. I managed FedEx. Well, it was Kinko's at the time, but became FedEx office. And I had seven locations here in the Denver metro area. And I managed those. And when my husband and I started our family, that was too much. If you recall Kinko's back in the day used to be a 24-hour operation. And it was, It was just a lot.

And so I'm like, you know what? I think HR is more my role that I would really like to do. And it's more of a nine to five as well. And so went down that path. And I really enjoyed the work I was doing, you know, helping people develop and helping managers manage and learn how to develop their teams and, you know, how to talk to them properly and, you know, all the things that an HR department does. But it was toward the end of my career where I started hitting some barriers. And, you know, it was very, it was pretty

unfortunate. You know, I was doing investigations for, you know, different things, whether it be sexual harassment or, you know, workplace, you know, whatever the issue was. I was traveling all across the country for a restaurant company and doing investigations and I'd come back with my findings. And sometimes I would even go with outside counsel because the issues were so big. And I think what finally made me think this isn't, you know, I've had my fill, so to speak, was coming back to the CEO of the company with findings of sexual harassment. and him basically saying this director that was being accused is a high performer. He is turning out leaders.

He is profiting in his division. He is a high performer. And I think we need to remove the accuser, basically, is what he was saying. He didn't want to remove the director. Oh, wow. Even though there was proof that all these things. were happening. And as an HR director, the only thing I could do is to bring all of the evidence and everything that I had found and give my opinion of what my, you know, what the direction is.

And my guidance is to protect the company. That's the whole reason I'm there. And to hear that profits were more important than, you know, than somebody's workplace, you know, they're accusing their supervisor of sexual harassment. and we found it to be true and them looking the other way and it was a male director and a female accuser, I knew at that point it was done. I knew that no matter what I said, no matter the evidence, it's ultimately this CEO's decision. And it didn't fall in line with my own morals. And I was done.

And so I decided I wanted to help people in other ways that I had control to help them. and find the joy in helping others again. Yeah. Because I no longer felt that joy. And so I actually just left the corporate world. I didn't have a plan. I had a have a wonderful, wonderful husband who said, stay home for a while, figure it out, find your joy.

And I'm not one to sit still. And the other day, it was quite funny. One of our lead volunteers said, June, what do you do when you're bored? And I was like, you know, the last time I was bored, I started backpack Susveity. I'm not bored very often. So that kind of is what led me here to start backpack society. Wow. Such an amazing story of your journey, your family.

I mean, I love that your dad was open. to sharing those stories. And one thing you said was there was happy endings to his stories, learning how to garden from a neighbor, barter for seeds, fish, and hunt. I mean, you've got a heritage inside of you that's that person that you are today. Yes, I'm very lucky and, you know, very, very fortunate to have parents who are so willing to share their struggles instead of hide them, right? And show me the other side of what it could be like.

So I'm grateful for that. And it makes me very sad when I hear the stories and, you know, realize what they went through at such a young age, but so, so grateful. So you're at home now. You're finding your joy again. You've left the corporate world. What took place next in your life to bring you to? to starting backpack society?

Yeah, well, as I mentioned, I'm not one to sit still. So I, like, immediately threw myself into my local neighborhoods, H-O-A, became a board member, started community events, got even more involved with my sons who at the time were both in high school, got involved with their, more involved with their sports activities and any other thing that they were into and just kind of threw myself into everything that I could. And then I realized, you know, I'm spending a lot of energy and I like what I'm doing. I just don't feel like it's impactful. I don't feel like I'm making a difference. And so when I decided I wanted to give back in some way, I think that's partially why I started in the HOA event role that I took over because I wanted to give

back to the community. I wanted to be involved in the community. Community is something that's very important to me. And, but it wasn't, it didn't have the same feel, I guess. It didn't feel like I was helping enough. And so I went down this journey of what do I do? Where can I fit in to help? And so I thought, oh, well, I grew up in a low income community. Why don't I see if I can help there? but they're two and a half hours away. I was like logistically, it just doesn't make sense. Do they need the help? Yes.

But I live here. What about my immediate community? And it was my husband who pointed at the boys high school because we live right by their high school and said, I bet there's some kids in that school that need help. And me, like many other residents of Douglas County, said, really? You think that people need help here? Like, you know, we're one of the top wealthiest counties in the whole country. You think that people need help here? And so I started digging into the numbers.

I started pulling the Department of Education's numbers to look at the free and reduced numbers. Because, again, food insecurity was something that's always been close to my heart. And so I wanted to see, how do we compare? How does Douglas County compare to Aurora or anyone else? And I saw there was a need. And it was not nearly as high as Aurora or Denver. I think at the time when I looked at it in 2019, it was 11% district-wide that was free and reduced.

And when you break that down by school, it's pretty small. I think at that time as well, Thunder Ridge High School had like 117 kids that were on the free and reduced lunch program out of the 2,300 that attended. So the number was low and it was manageable. And I thought, you know, I could start there. I could make a difference in that 117 kids' lives if they wanted it, at least with food on the weekend. And that's how it started. Wow.

So, yeah, my son went to Thunder Ridge and he actually was on the free and reduced food program there. So, yep, when we moved here, we were still getting food from food pantries. And my son was on free and reduced food programs in high school. It's not something I've ever shared with someone, but there you go. There's the special place in my heart that you have, June. So you started there, but you're running backpack society. So tell me a little bit more about that transition. Of course, yeah.

So I was completely self-funding. And I am not somebody who kind of goes down a path without a plan. I typically have a plan. I know where this is coming from. I know how this is going to work. But with Backpack Society, I was kind of just flying by the seat of my pants. I just knew that I wanted to help kids on the weekend. And I approached the school, and I'm also not a patient person.

I approached the school and it took forever for them to get back to me. And in that meantime, I was applying for 501C3. I was filling out all the paperwork, doing that all myself. And things just started falling into place without a plan. And they said, yes, let's roll this out. Let's pilot it with some kids. And to do that, we're going to do a food drive for you to kick it off. And I'm like, oh, my gosh.

Like all these things are just falling into place. And it worked out. And they were the first school to pilot. But COVID hit right when we were going to roll it out. Just, I don't know if that was perfect timing or I feel like it was perfect timing because what it did is it made me instead of baby stepping and being so strategic in my step by step plan that I hadn't created. But the step by step plan, it made me take action because now these kids who I was going

to give food to for the weekend, now they're missing out on school meals because schools closed. And it took a while for the school district to figure out the meals and lunches because of COVID. But anyhow, that kind of is what kicked it off. And, you know, early on, I was cold calling schools. Like, would you like our assistants here? Here's what we do. And now we have schools calling us. In fact, we just, we just had Boulder County

School District reach out to me last week saying, hey, do you have a satellite program? We could really use your help over here. But right now we are in Douglas County School District, Littleton School District, and Englewood School District. We just started with Englewood. We are in 51 schools across those districts. And, you know, not only do we provide the weekend bag of food to the schools, but it's grown based on the necessity of how else can we reach children into, you know, three other programs. And so we're serving about 750 to 800 people a week at this point. Yeah. What strikes me is how your career background in HR and operations perfectly prepared you to run an operation like this,

because you manage just tons of people, volunteers who come in and pack the bags and drive the bags to the high schools and do all of the other operational things inside your facility. and your operation is so well set up. So tell me a little bit more about the scope of your responsibilities as the CEO and founder, June. Yeah, so right now, you know, I'm still very much into the day to day, but I'm not doing everything like I used to be doing. And the reason for that is I have such an amazing core group of volunteers.

Everyone here is still a volunteer. We don't have any paid staff. But I have found such an amazing core group of people that there is no way we could have expanded or be able to do the work we're doing without them. And so, you know, we have Laura Linville, who you mentioned before, who is our director of development, who kind of is our face out in the community. She's involved with everything, getting our name out there. We have a director of marketing. We have a director of operations. And then we have several lead volunteers.

And so when I say I'm involved in the day today, you know, I am, we do have leads who kind of run these groups of volunteers that come in. You know, but I'm always here to make sure if they have questions or, you know, anything that I can do to help and to thank our volunteers. You know, we could not do what we're doing without them. And so I tried to be here to be the face of Backpack Society and to thank them all for the, for the work that they are doing, you know, helping us help kids. And so I, so Judy, do your question.

I do everything. I, from scrubbing the bathrooms to paying the bills, I'm involved in every aspect of how this operation runs. So everybody's a volunteer. There's no payroll, but somehow food appears on the big shelves in your facility that then goes into the bags that get packed for the kids to take to the schools so they have food for the weekends. Where does all that food come from? How are you securing that, securing funding for your operations? Yeah. Um, You know, about 70% of the food that goes out of our door is donated. So as I mentioned early on, community is something that's very important to me.

And I feel like once the community heard about what we're doing, they've been our number one supporter. We have so many individual donors, whether that be monetary donors or food donors, that that's where we're getting our money and our food from or from individual donors. Without even thinking about how I designed the partnerships with schools, we have this built-in school community that if they do one food drive for us, you know, that helps tremendously. And so we ask our school partners to just do, you know, one event for us a year if they can. and that just helps give back to us to continue to run, but also helps feed the kids right here in our community. So, and the food stays right here in our community. So that's basically how we're doing it.

We are using, we do get some grants. We apply for some grants. Laura and I right now are tag teaming that grant writer position. And so we get some grants, which is fantastic. But again, a majority of the funding that we receive are from individual donors. And we do have some corporate sponsors. So we do have some businesses that sponsor us as well. Okay. Do you have any particular story of a situation, a family, a child that brought home that fulfillment of the joy in your life that you would like to share?

Yeah, I think that there are two that immediately pop into my mind. And one is about six months into our program partnering with schools. You know, I solicited feedback. And I got on Zoom calls with all of the principals because at that time I didn't have as many. I got on Zoom calls and I just asked for their feedback, what their thoughts were, how it was going. And one principal in particular, you know, started to tear up a little bit. And he said, I love knowing that I have you guys in my back pocket. If there's ever a family in need, I can call you guys.

And he said out of the children who are using our program, attendance went up, and behavior issues seemed to not completely disappear, but seemed to go down. So hearing that from an administrator of a school, knowing that our impact is helping the school as a whole, was fantastic. But another one that pops out is, you know, as a parent with the child, I started, we got a donation of like candy from like seize candy or something. And I remember thinking, what am I going to do with all this candy? And as parents were driving up to pick up their groceries, I said, I'm just going to hand it to the parent and tell them, thank you. But taking the extra time to do what you need to do to make sure your child is taken care of. of because sometimes, you know, that's your job as a parent.

Right. You're expected to do that. And so nobody's going to thank you for doing that. Right. You just need to do it. And so I remember specifically, I handed a box of candy to this mom and she was by herself. I don't know where her children were at the moment. But I said, hey, this is for you.

You know, thank you for doing what it takes to make sure your kiddo is taken care of. And I know that it's hard. It can be really, really hard. And she just started crying, you know. I know that if somebody's signing up for food with us, it's probably a lot more going on. And so I just wanted to bring that little bit of joy to her. And she said, you know, thank you very much. And she just proceeded to kind of tell me her story and open up a little bit.

And I knew at that moment, when that child comes home, wherever they may be, that household's going to be a little bit happier because mom's not stressing about where to get groceries from. And so even though I didn't get to see that child, I knew the impact that we were making. Right. Yeah. Wow, that's very powerful. June. I know I stood in line in freezing cold weather with my winter jacket. hat, scarf, mittens for an hour waiting to get a ham from a truck that pulled into a church

parking lot handing out hams to the people in line and talk about, you know, inspiring people to just keep going and provide for their children. There's hundreds of stories like that because of your mission and your vision and your passion for helping kids with food. and security. I am so blessed this morning speaking with you. I could go on and speaking with you, but before we wrap up, you mentioned several ways that the community can get involved, but I'd like you to just reiterate some of those ways so that people can, you know, participate in what your mission is. Absolutely. You know, the donation, of time is one of the biggest things that we could thank people for. So volunteering.

We know time is precious and we are thankful for all of those who do that. So we make our volunteering opportunities very, very easy. You just go to our website. You find a date and time that will work for you and you sign up. There's no commitment at all to continue that. You just find a spot that works for you. So volunteering is a big one. one, getting our bags to all of our partner schools is probably our biggest need for volunteering. So that would be picking up those bags and driving them to our schools. And I'll tell you, that's one of the funest jobs. And I get to do that every now and again to go see our schools. And they are just so thankful when we arrive. And it's just a great feeling. So volunteering,

you know, being a nonprofit cash donations are always great, our buying power when it comes to food, it goes a lot further because we partner with Food Bank of the Rockies. We're able to purchase food at a lower rate through them. And then, you know, also donating food is a big one. We have folks, and we're very open to thinking outside the box. You know, we will have like neighborhoods who will do little food drives or birthday boxes for us, which is another fun little thing that we give to our families who might be celebrating birthdays. But there are lots of ways, even just spreading the word about us, you know, letting people know that we're here and that we're here to help. But yeah, we love to see people come through our doors in the pantry and

volunteer. Yeah, it just struck me with your involvement in the HOA. Every listener to today's podcast is in an HOA, right? And how simple is that to go to a a board meeting and offer to run a drive in your little HOA area. It's maybe can be 30 to 50 homes. It's not a lot. You can put little flyers on the doorstep or a bag on the doorstep and have them fill in with food that has been in their pantry that has gone on eaten. So, I mean, the creativity that could come out of this is something else, June. Well, I am, like I said, this was going to be a heartfelt time with you, and it certainly was, and hopefully it will be for our listeners as well. So I just am so thankful for you and your passion for the community and how you're helping.

I was just thinking, too, about the student at school whose attendance has gone up and behavior has leveled out. That's not just impacting that student. that's every student and teacher around that student because now there's not so much chaos as a result. Yeah, that disruption in the classroom kind of goes away. Amazing. Well, I've had like six sets of goosebumps since speaking with you. So thank you so much for your time today.

And I look forward to how we're going to continue to serve together, June. Absolutely. Thank you, Judy. Thanks so much for joining us for the Inspired Impact Podcast. To listen to past episodes, please visit theinspiredimpactpodcast.com.