Lippert team packs 33,000 donation boxes

GOSHEN — Six local nonprofits will receive needed donations thanks to the volunteer efforts of Lippert employees.

Each day this past week at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds, more than 1,200 Lippert team members from Elkhart and St. Joseph counties packed 33,000 boxes for six different nonprofits, totaling 107,000 items.

Lippert’s 90 locations across the country also participated, with thousands of volunteers nationwide joining in Lippert Components National Volunteer Week Packout event.

“We really wanted a way for our team members to connect not only with each other but also with the community,” said Michilah Grimes, Lippert director of Corporate & Community Impact. “Giving back, caring about our people, while also caring about the community, are two really important things to who Lippert is, as a company, and we learned that team members are passionate about giving back.”

The program began in 2020 when COVID-19 brought a halt to Lippert’s traditional 100,000-hour volunteer initiative programming, as nonprofits became unable to host volunteers. The company’s Lippert Cares Program encourages team members to volunteer at least 10 hours per year and helps to provide them with resources to make that happen.

“It brings our teams together close and it gives them opportunities to serve that they might not have been able to find on their own, and equally important is our hope that as our team members get involved, that they talk to their friends, they talk to their families, and help widen the impact through cascading the message out into the community,” said Andy Murray, Lippert chief sales officer.

Since 2017, when Lippert Cares began, Lippert’s 12,000 team members have donated more than 550,000 hours.

“It’s telling,” Grimes said. “They’re inspiring one another. They’re inspiring others to get involved and truly make a difference and they’re seeing the difference. They’re feeling the impact.”

The Center for the Homeless in South Bend is one of the six recipients for donation boxes for this year’s packout event. The boxes provide items such as granola bars, Chapstick, gloves, cough drops, tissues, canned veggies and fruit to the homeless shelter, which houses 200 people on any given night.

Some items will last many months, but others, like gloves, may only last six weeks.

“If we can get those then we don’t have to purchase them,” said Taya Groover, chief development officer at The Center for the Homeless. “A lot of people that are living on the streets are living with mental illness, addiction and they’ve lost that hope and really the mission is to break that cycle and give them hope. How many of us don’t want to admit that we need help?”

Still, Groover said, about 50% of her guests are employed but still in need of assistance.

Groover said Lippert’s team has helped the homeless shelter in other ways too, even teaching them to employ lean manufacturing techniques to their nonprofit organization.

“A huge thank you to Lippert,” she said. “They have created a wave of giving in our communities — Elkhart and St. Joe counties, to give back. It’s not just this one event that they do,” Groover said. “It’s not just these items. Their team members have come and volunteered their time sorting but also operating. It’s all year long that they do this and we’re really lucky to have them as a partner and we’ve been really blessed.”

Lippert has a plant just two miles from the shelter, but Groover says it doesn’t matter where they’re located.

“There’s no line,” she said. “When someone is experiencing homelessness, it’s getting them to the best place where they can get the help that they need. We’re all doing the same thing. We’re helping the same people.”

Murray says that’s what it’s all about.

“Ultimately, we feel we have a responsibility to pour back into the communities that we operate in as our way of being a good steward,” he said. “We encourage others in the community to come along and find ways to contribute.”