Goodman Community Center’s Thanksgiving Baskets require all hands on deck

By Amie Hoag, Eastside News

“Every year, when I see that first car get its Basket, I just cry because it’s just joy. It’s pure joy.”

If you’ve been a friend of the Goodman Community Center, you know exactly what Gloria Van Dixhorn, longtime volunteer at GCC, is talking about: the annual Thanksgiving Basket Drive.

For the last 37 years, Goodman has been providing families throughout Dane County with grocery bags filled with everything they need to make a traditional Thanksgiving meal at home. This is what is commonly referred to as a GCC Thanksgiving Basket. Many Eastside News readers already know that, but you might not know there’s a whole lot more than gravy and cranberry sauce in those bags. There’s the kindness of thousands of caring community members who for weeks and months leading up to that one joyful weekend pull together to ensure that families in need don’t go without a holiday meal.

So how does Goodman get to the smooth-as-a-buttered-roll weekend when thousands of cars visit the center to pick up their Basket? It takes a full year of preparation — work that starts shortly after the Thanksgiving table has been cleared.

Planning year-round

There’s a core group of Goodman staff in charge of making sure the Thanksgiving Basket Drive runs smoothly each year. Representatives from food services, communications, fundraising and volunteer teams may not exclusively be working on Thanksgiving 12 months out of the year, but it’s always in the back of their minds.

“I dream about Thanksgiving at Goodman, literally,” said Francesca Frisque, GCC’s director of food services. “It’s something we’re always thinking about, even when we’re not actively planning the event.”

In January, after the dust has settled on the Thanksgiving drive and all that goes into wrapping up the end of the year at a nonprofit, this group debriefs on the drive. What worked? What didn’t? What unexpected thing popped up? They make notes and plans for the following year.

Getting the word out

When it comes to the Thanksgiving Basket Drive, there are two things the community needs to know: how they can get a Basket if they need one or how they can get involved. There’s the website, emails and social media posts — hundreds of hours spent making sure the language is clear and engaging. That’s covered by Goodman’s communications team. But then there’s also lots of reaching out to the community in a more personalized way.

In addition to securing bulk orders of fresh foods for the drive, Frisque is the hub of the communications for getting people registered for Baskets. She works directly with social workers in the Madison school district to register families.

Another big effort for Frisque, who is in her sixth year managing the operations of the Thanksgiving Basket Drive, is working with community and cultural centers throughout the county to organize large group pickups the weekend of distribution.

“We have some incredible organizations that register people from their communities and then come pick up large quantities of Baskets to bring back to their corner of Dane County,” Frisque explained. “This helps our drive reach people who might not be able to make it over to the east side of Madison.”

On the other side of the community partnerships, Meghan Allyn Johnson, community partnerships and events manager at Goodman, starts working with businesses and groups that are interested in supporting the drive as early as April.

“We have a lot of groups who would like to donate huge quantities of a single item, which is amazing,” Johnson said. “And acquiring that much of anything can be a challenge, so I always encourage them to start early.”

Over the summer, Johnson reaches out to partners at UW athletics, WISC-TV Channel 3, and iHeart Media to get the ball rolling on the television and radio commercials featuring UW athletes and coaches that air throughout the fall. Those promos are usually filmed and recorded before the athletic seasons kick into gear.

Volunteers lead the way

“This drive really couldn’t happen without the incredible effort of hundreds of volunteers,” Frisque said.

There are the volunteers who show up for shifts during distribution weekend. Before that, there are volunteers manning the registration phone lines, helping sort and organize food, and a small group of lead volunteers who really drive the operational effort behind the smooth-running weekend.

Van Dixhorn and her husband Michael Lemberger have been volunteering with the Thanksgiving Basket Drive for 19 years. They are two on a team of about 10 lead volunteers who show up at Goodman a week before Thanksgiving and come back day after day until the final Basket is handed out.

Over the years, the pair — who will be back this year and whose daughter, Olive, has joined the lead volunteer team as well — have watched the drive grow from a few hundred Baskets handed out to recent years where upward of 4,000 families pick up Thanksgiving groceries.

“Every year, it seems like we get a little better,” Van Dixhorn said.

“And there become progressively fewer panic moments,” Lemberger added.

This group of lead volunteers meet with Frisque a few months before November each year. They talk about the previous year — what went well, what didn’t. The same routine the Goodman staff also went through to find ways to make the process smoother.

“At this point, because we’ve had so many volunteers that have come back each year, it really feels like you wind it up, let it go and it does its thing,” Lemberger said.

The lead volunteers are a big reason for this. They help every volunteer group that shows up for their shift know exactly what it is they’ll be doing. Jobs are given names that are explained up front. For example, when a volunteer is told they’ll be “running,” they know exactly what that means — volunteers push a shopping cart that gets filled up with bags in the gym, walk them out to the distribution stations and then circle back to the gym and do it all again.

“We have some of the most amazing volunteers that sign up for Thanksgiving,” Van Dixhorn said. “One year, one volunteer went through every onion bag (that’s 4,000 bags!) and pulled out by hand every rotten onion there was and rebagged the good ones. The people who volunteer understand the value of food.”

Community cares

Volunteer spots on distribution weekend are limited, which means not everyone gets to witness the magic happen firsthand. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the community isn’t contributing in a priceless way. It takes thousands of neighbors lending a hand in whatever way they can to make this event happen.

Corporate partners host drives and match donations to inspire their networks to give. Lauer Realty and Player’s Sports Bar have notably hosted their own drives and fundraisers for decades.

“What’s great about groups like Lauer and Player’s is they’re activating their communities,” Johnson said. “Not only fundraising but also helping spread awareness of this massive undertaking.”

And local businesses aren’t the only ones activating their communities. Each food drive and fundraiser hosted by individuals and small groups is doing the same. There are schools, church groups, neighborhoods and more across the county hosting drives like this, but you don’t have to organize a whole fundraiser to make a difference.

“There are so many individuals who collect food or make monetary donations throughout the drive,” Frisque said. “We often hear from them that what they’re doing ‘isn’t much,’ but it really does mean so much to the families getting a Basket.”