City, CCHC employees respond to food drive challenge

Challenge accepted.
Following the lead of Cloud County employees, the city of Concordia and Cloud County Health Center (CCHC) employees entered into a food drive challenge.
That challenge resulted in over 7,000 food items and $41.72 in cash being donated to the Cloud County Resource Center and Food Bank.
The city of Concordia employees donated more items than the CCHC employees, but the clear winners are those in need during the holiday season.
There were 35 of 55 city employees participating in the challenge, and they donated 3,363 items and $614 in cash.
The cash was converted into an additional 540 items, bringing the total to 3,903.
The goal for the city food drive was 20 items per employee. It ended up equating to 70.96 items per employee.
“Our staff embraced the suggestion of a food drive immediately. Donations began arriving within a couple of days and continued through the last day of the event,” Concordia city manager Amy Lange said, “We are so proud of our team. As public employees, we serve our community daily in a variety of ways. So having our employees give even more is certainly a testament to their desire to make a difference in the lives of our citizens.”
The city patterned its efforts after the Cloud County employee food drive by offering an incentive of personal leave hours for certain levels of participation.
For every 20 items or $20 donated, the employee earned four hours of personal leave.
Employees could earn a maximum of 24 hours of personal leave that must be used in 2019.
Through the incentives, employees earned a total of 792 hours of leave.
CCHC employees donated a total of 3,353 food items and $47.72 in cash.
Some of the total cash donated was used to purchase a pallet of canned goods from Rod's Food Store.
The city of Concordia and CCHC each delivered the food items collected to the Resource Center on Tuesday.
Thus far, Cloud County employees have donated mover than 4,200 food items and nearly $1,200 in cash to the Resource Center and Food Bank.
The county board of commissioners, in September, challenged the employees to collect 6,000 food items.
In return to meeting the goals established, county employees will receive a certain day off with pay.