HUMBOLDT — The Humboldt and District Hospital Foundation received $15,635 from this year’s Tim Hortons Smile Cookie campaign— a record high for the company’s location.
Available in September for each year for a limited time, the Smile Cookie campaign is run by each location, which selects a local charity or organization and donates 100 per cent of the funds, before taxes, from the sale of “smile cookies.”
“It was the biggest, most fun, most stressful year we had yet,” said Dan Grywacheski, Humboldt Tim Hortons owner.
The previous record in Humboldt was a couple years ago, when the campaign raised about $12,000.
“We have a lot of awesome team members that came after hours and volunteered and we have former employees that came here in the evenings and helped decorate. If it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have been able to keep up.”
Grywacheski credited the high orders as a combination of people feeling more comfortable moving around the community at this point during the pandemic, as well as the efforts by the Lorrie Bunko, the Hospital Foundations executive director, to promote and deliver the cookies to communities surrounding Humboldt.
“She had a schedule from Monday to Friday, one day she is in LeRoy, one day she is in St. Brieux, one day she has gone to Muenster. The schools and businesses would order and then she would take an extra little bit by herself and sell them off. There were big numbers there.”
According to Bunko all funds will go towards replacing all the cardiac monitoring equipment at the hospital. They are now 60 per cent complete in raising the $350,000 needed.
“It needs to be updated and that’s something you don’t want to be fooling around with, you want to be able to always have reliable cardiac monitoring equipment,” Bunko said.
“So we were given the two year’s notice that this was coming up just because this is such a big price tag, $350,000 to replace that all.”
The Foundation hopes to finish the fundraising by April, 2022, but Bunko said they are prepared for it potentially taking longer.
Grywacheski said choosing the Hospital Foundation as their local non-profit was an “easy” decision.
“Everybody benefits from it, all of our guests at some point are a part of it, families are a part of it— it’s a great fundraiser. It’s easy to get everyone in on it and supporting.”
