Employees from Sundt’s San Diego office recently gave some of their old shoes their marching orders by donating them to a campaign to benefit the American Soldier Network, a nonprofit organization that aids and advocates for members of the military. Seventy-one pairs of worn-but-still-wearable sneakers, sandals, boots and whatever else was hiding in the back of the employees’ closets were rounded up and delivered by the Sundt Foundation to a collection point in San Diego, along with thousands of other shoes donated by the community.
“Our original goal was to collect 25 pairs of shoes for the campaign, but we ended up almost tripling that number,” said Sundt Project Administrator Jacquelyn Hoppes. Jacquelyn couldn’t stop herself once she realized how fun and easy it is to get people to part with their worn-out wedges and wallabies. She assisted in getting more than 1,300 pairs of shoes donated to the campaign by the broader San Diego community.
The donated shoes will be cleaned, repaired and refabricated before being distributed free of charge to the underserved in communities in America and abroad. If 25,000 pairs of shoes are collected, the American Soldier Network will receive $10,000 from a business in San Diego that came up with the idea for the event. The money will be used for the organization’s 9th Annual Holiday Christmas Drive at San Diego Naval Medical Center.
The Sundt Foundation was established in 1999 by Sundt Construction, Inc., as a way for its employee-owners to give back to the communities in which they work. In addition to funding grants every quarter, the Foundation also sponsors volunteer activities to benefit nonprofit organizations. The grant money comes primarily from contributions made by Sundt employees, which are matched dollar-for-dollar by the company.
Since its inception the Foundation has made grants totaling more than $5 million to hundreds of worthy organizations. Approximately 75 percent of the money goes to help disadvantaged children, with the remaining 25 percent dedicated to community issues. Employees can also earmark their donations for charitable organizations that benefit members of the military and their families.