About Shop for Goodness
We feed hungry school children in our local community by leveraging online shopping and social programs to drive awareness and financial support. We enable our supporters to make a difference by creating shopping links through iGive.com, where our supporters simply shop online with national retailers and a % of each sale goes to support our cause. We are partnered with Middletown United Methodist Church in Middletown, NJ and have committed to provide weekend meals for 50 elementary school children who depend on free school lunches during the week. We call this program Goodness Now, and 100% of every dollar and food donation goes directly to providing meals to these children. Every Thursday we deliver anonymous packs of food to the school and teachers discretely place them into the students’ backpacks. Each backpack contains 6 meals, (2 dinners, 2 lunches & 2 breakfasts) and feedback shows that on average 3.8 member of the household benefit from the program. Our budget is $7.00 per backpack each week and we provide 300 meals each weekend. To date we have delivered over 10,000 meals through the program, and have expanded the number of students each year.
Why It Matters
20+ million public school students receive free or reduced meals, however many go hungry on non-school days and weekends. In the state of NJ over 400,000 children depend on these meals and in our local county (Monmouth) over 7500 students qualify for the program. We have adopted a local elementary school where 104 of the 300 total students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Goodness Now provides 300 meals every weekend to support 50 children and their families in the program. Currently the program operates for 40 weeks per year and has provided over 10,000 meals in our first 18 months. Studies show that when children come to school nourished they have improved attendance and get better grades.
About Our Founders, Maddy Denton & Andrew Denton
As 18 &16 year old NJ high school students we started ShopForGoodness.com as a way to help others by fundraising through online shopping and social sharing. With more and more people shopping online, it seemed like a good way to have a positive impact on our community by creating a site where people could make a difference by doing things they normally do.
In partnership with our local church and youth group at Middletown United Methodist Church, we started a program called Goodness Now. Goodness Now provides 300 weekend meals to 50 elementary school children in our local community who depend on free school lunches during the week. Proceeds from this site go directly to support Goodness Now, and 100% of every dollar goes towards purchasing food for the program.
Shopping and finding great deals is fun, but our motivation is to help others. We created Shop For Goodness as a way for anyone to help out, it’s easy, convenient and allows you do to do some “goodness” with your shopping.
From an early age we’ve had the opportunity to get involved in helping others, we spent weekends working with disabled youth at basketball camps, we collect supplies for the ASPCA, and we have run multiple book drives for at risk youth, it’s always been important to help make a difference for those who are in need.
We hope you enjoy the site, and find great deals. Thanks again for shopping here, and thanks to our partners at iGive. Please don’t forget to tell your friends because all of that shopping drives Goodness Now. If you want to get involved with Goodness Now, or help with a food drive, packing or a fund raiser, please don’t hesitate to email us @ maddygoodnessnow@gmail.com or andrewgoodnessnow@gmail.com
Best,
Maddy & Andrew