South Lyon, Michigan’s Favorite Charity

Just 15 minutes from the University of Michigan lies South Lyon—a suburban retreat for many of Ann Arbor’s professionals. Unemployment is low, and home ownership is at 83%. Yet even here, there is what Blessings in a Backpack program coordinator Kimberly Swegles calls “hidden poverty.”  

The South Lyon Blessings in a Backpack program started feeding students in the fall of 2017. Swegles says fundraising and community engagement began a year earlier when she and other volunteers went about making the Blessings program “everyone’s favorite charity.” Attending community events, recruiting a diverse group of volunteers from throughout the area, and maintaining a vigorous social media presence have indeed made the Blessings program, which feeds 265 students each week, one of the leading recipients of the community’s generosity.  

South Lyon’s Blessings program holds an annual golf outing, raising $16,000 this year. Golfers come in crazy costumes; a local car dealership even offers a car as part of the hole-in-one contest.  

Witch’s Hat Brewing Company holds an annual silent auction for the Blessings program in South Lyon to kick off the school year each August. A physical training facility, Wildly Fit, runs a 5K program at Thanksgiving. These two events have generated almost $90,000 in the past six years.  

It takes a village—and there is no greater example than the Blessings program in South Lyon, Michigan. The little league team raises money, the area knitting club makes hats for Blessing’s recipients—and each fall, when the two high schools in town play their cross-town rivalry football game, everyone brings food donations for the favorite charity in town—Blessings in a Backpack.