Steve Hildebrand effectively waged war on the payday lenders in 2015 and 2016 with Initiated Measure 21, the 36% rate cap on payday loans. Now he’s turning his attention full-time to his fight against poverty. After seven years making coffee and treats in downtown Sioux Falls, Hildebrand and his partner Mike Pierce are selling their Josiah’s Coffeehouse, and Hildebrand plans to focus on helping children in need in Sioux Falls:
Over the years, Hildebrand has researched poverty rates in the schools. According to the Sioux Falls School District, almost 50 percent of elementary students qualify for free and reduced lunch. At some schools, including Lowell Elementary, 100-percent of students qualify for that assistance.
“There’s a lot of people struggling in Sioux Falls and across the state and across the country and we’ve got to do some things to help them,” Hildebrand said [Brady Mallory, “Business Owner Starting Non-Profit to Help Students Living in Poverty,” KELO-TV, 2019.10.21].
Hildebrand is raising money for a donor-advised fund to be used by the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation:
Over the next few months, Hildebrand and a team of volunteers will meet with principals at Lowell Elementary, Terry Redlin Elementary, Hawthorne Elementary, Horace Mann Elementary, Laura B. Anderson Elementary, Hayward Elementary, George McGovern Middle School, Garfield Elementary, Cleveland Elementary, Anne Sullivan Elementary, Whittier Middle School, Rosa Parks Elementary, Laura Wilder Elementary and Susan B. Anthony Elementary.
“Many of these schools don’t have PTAs, so we’ll be asking principals to visit with their teachers and staff to develop a list of items that we can either fund (through the Promising Futures Fund) or get for them,” Hildebrand said.
Distributions from the Promising Futures Fund will support ideas and endeavors intended to increase a child’s educational experience; increase outside experiences, such as field trips, tours, events, speakers, etc.; and provide inspiration and hope so students can see themselves in a world outside of poverty.
“We need this community to open their eyes wide to the extreme poverty affecting these great kids,” he wrote. “No one asks to be born poor. It wasn’t a choice. That’s why we have no choice but to help ensure these kids have a chance to catch up, to compete and to excel in life. If we succeed, it means a child succeeds. For our community, that means a citizen moved out of poverty, (kept out of) trouble and added to our workforce” [Kelly Sprecher, “Community Advocate Partners with Foundation to Help Create Promising Futures for Local Kids,” Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation, 2019.11.19].
Hildebrand got David and Christine Billion to plunk a million bucks into his cause, with $600K going to the Sioux Falls School District to support reading, $250K going to preschool scholarships, and $150K to the Promising Futures Fund. Expect Hildebrand to effectively shake down more of his coffee acquaintances over the coming months…. and expect his sincere efforts to help his community to have more lasting power than any of the window dressing payday lender Chuck Brennan used to pretend to be anything other than a social predator.
Philanthropy benefits billionaires, probably millionaires too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H32z45o0WxA
This is a genuinely decent human being with a good heart. ❤❤❤❤❤
(First, to my knowledge, Steve Hildebrand is not rich. I’m willing to be corrected.)
Here’s the thing. When rich people like the Billions plunk down a mil, they’re preserving the system that enabled them to get their greedy hands on the $.
To be clear, until the system is fixed, people doing things like Steve is truly make lives better or even save them. But in the meantime, the greedy rich bastards like Bezos, Gates, Zuck and others are giving away an amount of $ that either does not dent their total absurd wealth, or the difference is negligible. In the meantime, giving that $ away SUPPORTS the twisted system that keeps the poor, well, poor, while the GRBs get richer.
The one thing they Will Not do, is reform the screwed up economic system that leads directly to the suffering they throw their spare change at.
If the GRBs quit tossing a pittance at various charities, would desperation force people rise up in revolt? If the elderly were dying in the streets, if emaciated children roamed the alleys dumpster diving and fighting each other for scraps, if desperate parents resorted to selling children to someone who could feed them like they did during the Great Depression of the 1930s–would that be the tipping point to a rebellion in the USA? The GRBs don’t want to know, so they throw out their scraps, assuaging their consciences, if they have one, and protecting their $.
It’s ugly. “Radical” Democrats want to end this ugly system.
Well, Debbo, you may be being a little rough on the somewhat unfortunately named Billion family. I don’t know how greedy they are.
But I think it’s nice when rich people spread out their wealth by giving to deserving causes.
But (there’s always a butt, just as we all have elbows) I agree that we have a really f***8d-up system, wherein people who control large amounts of capital send themselves unwarranted amounts of it while doling out spoonsful to those who actually do the work to create it.
Yes, company heads are due rewards for making wise decisions. On the other hand, I don’t think they are due rewards in the ratio of more than, say 100:1 for their decisions versus what the bees who make the honey are paid.
I once made a million $ a year doing illegal stuff. I now net $35k for spending 100 nights a year in sh*thole motels assuring corporate oligarchs that their miserable gas stations are flying the corporate colors in a manner befitting the corporate gods.
How can a person make a million$ a year and then fall to making $35k? One decides that one will probably go to jail if one continues. It happens often. Many of the rest go to jail. I was lucky.
This is the burden of a corporate narc, Bob. But you do sleep more soundly knowing you are considered, by most, as an upstanding fellow with a really swell hat.
You grossed or netted a mil a year? Impressive either way, though.
The demon weed, dispensed through small baggies out of the trunk of a sedan, was a popular thing back in the day. That’s a lot of dimes, no matter how you hauled them around.
One year I grossed a mil. I was close a coupla other years. My expenses were high.
Hildebrand would fit right in next door.
“This year, Minnesota was deemed the most charitable state in the U.S. by personal finance website WalletHub, which ranked 19 traits — from the volunteer rate to the percentage of people donating money. It follows fundraising website GoFundMe, which declared Minnesota the ninth most generous state based on the number of donations per capita to its site in 2019.
“I’m not surprised we’re at the top of the charts; we have a long legacy of having a very generous state,” said Kris Kewitsch, executive director of the Charities Review Council in St. Paul. “We’re living up to that legacy.”
Across Minnesota, the nonprofit sector is booming. The state has the highest number of nonprofit employees in its history — 385,000 workers, or 13.3% of the state’s total workforce, according to a report released last month by the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. Nonprofit employee wages have been on pace with government wages the past two years.
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Much of the work of the nonprofits is possible because the state taxes and governs in such a way as to assist them. In return, nonprofits are good for the state’s economy.
Hey SDGOP! Take a lesson from Hildebrand and Minnesota! Generosity pays!