49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick Gives $25,000 To Urban Farm In Minneapolis

But Kaepernick has also pledged to give away a million dollars – $100,000 per month – to a variety of smaller organizations dedicated to helping oppressed communities. Some of these organizations don’t have the national presence of, say, Planned Parenthood or the ACLU, but they’re taking on the same problems at a smaller scale.

Most recently, Kaepernick donated $25,000 to a cause we’ve written about before, an urban farming and food-education nonprofit in Minneapolis called Appetite for Change. (You might recall an unexpectedly catchy song called “Grow Food” that Appetite for Change released last year.) Appetite for Change is a multi-layered organization; its goals are to encourage healthy eating and community growth in North Minneapolis, an area so bereft of decent food options that it’s classified as a “food desert.”

The organization maintains large plots of farmland, as well as education and activities for locals, right in the city, in addition to various other efforts in advocacy and outreach. In addition to doing great work, Appetite for Change is media-savvy, but it’s still a small, regional effort, which can make it hard to attract major donors.

“We were thinking about our capital campaign and who we can reach out to, and as we were pooling our resources, a few of us were saying who we knew, and we knew a few football players and football players’ agents,” says Princess Titus, the director of education and training for Appetite for Change. “I was on vacation, and when I came back, they were like, Colin Kaepernick said yes, he’s giving us $25,000.”

Kaepernick, says Titus, was very knowledgeable about Appetite for Change, what the organization does and what it needs, and wanted to make sure his donation would be used in the right ways. “Our goals were to find more garden space and expand our gardens so they can really be farms,” says Titus. “We need composting on them, we need rain barrels, we have to pay for the water from the city of Minneapolis, we have to run hoses underground down the block to the fire hydrants, and that’s a big financial burden.”

Luckily, Kaepernick seemed to know just what to give. “The things that he actually offered the dollars for were things that we really needed,” says Titus. His donations will go to purchasing a new plot of land – currently, Appetite for Change either rents or borrows land, rather than owning – as well as organizational stuff like increasing staff and developing new programs.

The press (oh, hello) that comes from a celebrity donation like this one is also valuable beyond merely the dollar amount; more people will become aware of Appetite for Change, and what they do, than if anyone else had made the same donation. It’s a gift that, Titus hopes, will keep on giving.

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