Helping Bring Food to the Park

While she’s at work, Kate Burggraff talks about what’s for dinner—just like most people do. But unlike most people, Burggraff talks about what other people and their families will have for dinner.

That’s because Burggraff works as the food shelf manager and volunteer coordinator at the (STEP).

“We talk about food a lot at STEP,” Burggraff said.

The nonprofit organization, started in 1975, provides basic needs like food and clothing to St. Louis Park residents, serving about 1,600 people each month, according to the group’s website.

Before being hired at STEP, Burggraff worked at a homeless shelter in the Fargo-Moorhead area and also had experience working at a food shelf. Those things, combined with what she called the “small-town values” she learned growing up in International Falls, MN, led her to seek out a job where she could continue to make others’ lives better.

She was pleasantly surprised to find just such a job in St. Louis Park, thinking that the “tight-knit community” for which she was searching would be hard to find in a bigger city.

Yet seven years ago, she was hired by STEP, and her perspective changed.

“The St. Louis Park community and the STEP community are truly something wonderful,” Burggraff said. “STEP is an organization that’s fortunate to have a lot of strong community involvement in it.”

Burggraff sees the genesis of much of that involvement in her role as volunteer coordinator, recruiting and screening the volunteers who do things like sort food and clothing, serve as receptionists and enter donations into the computer.

STEP averages about 250 volunteers per month, Burggraff said. About half of those are regular volunteers and the other half are one-time volunteers.

For Burggraff, the mixture of people who work and volunteer at STEP make it an exciting place to work.

“STEP is even its own community,” she said. “All of that leads to a lot of fun and a lot of interaction. Everyone brings their own unique quality to STEP.”

When asked about a typical day at work, Burggraff started thinking, tilted her head to the side, and then broke out a big smile, making it clear that there is no such thing as a “typical” day for her at STEP.

“A typical day at STEP is bustling,” she finally said with a laugh.

For her, that could mean organizing volunteers, meeting with co-workers, meeting with outside groups about donations, and of course, talking about food.

Even with the recession and the increase in food prices, Burggraff makes sure the shelves are stocked with such staples as cereal, canned fruits, rice, beans and pasta.

“STEP definitely puts its money where its mission is,” Burggraff said, noting that if she needed to go to a food shelf, she wouldn’t want to find it empty.

Burggraff knows that with one accident, one illness or one emergency, she could go from food shelf manager to food shelf client herself, and that motivates her at work each day.

“We never know when we might be in a situation, as staff or volunteers, where we could be on the other end of it,” she said.

For more information on STEP, including details on its services and information on donating, go to the organization's website.