Weekend Winners

05/05/2026

After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to suspend the Weekend Winners backpack program at this time. This change will not impact the current school year—bags have already been packed, and the school has them for distribution to students through May 22 (the final delivery of the year).

We are deeply grateful for the support this program has received over the years. In particular, we want to thank the dedicated volunteers who, especially in recent years, helped sustain the program while keeping administrative costs low.

At this time, we kindly ask that no additional donations be made to the program. We want to ensure we are not accepting contributions while the program is not actively operating.

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02/09/2026

Hello Weekend Winners friends!

We are looking for volunteers for two things coming up the last week of this month:

We need someone who can deliver totes from our Marshall office to the school in Tyler and then pick up empty totes to bring them back for the next packing.

We need a team of 2-3 to come and pack totes for the next delivery.

If you are interested or available for either of those, please send us a message! We have had great volunteers from multiple businesses so far this school year and it has been much appreciated! Every volunteer hour means more of the funds going directly to purchasing food for the program.

01/05/2026

Hello Weekend Winners friends and Happy New Year!

We have some volunteer opportunities coming up later this month we are looking to fill. If you are interested, please send us a message so we can get in contact with you.

Week of January 19th - volunteer to take 9 totes of food to RTR school from our office in Marshall as well as bring back all of the empty totes the school currently has (this could be split into two tasks as well!).

Week of January 26th - volunteers (teams of 2 or 3 work best!) to come to our office in Marshall and pack the next round of bags of food. It usually takes about 1.5 hours to pack the bags for 5 weeks. We are flexible with dates and times this week for packing.

Thank you!

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10/23/2025

Hello friends!

We are looking for a volunteer or volunteers who can deliver the next round of totes of food bags to the school next week (October 27-30). There are 9 totes (27 gal totes) total. They need to be delivered during school hours on or before the 30th.

Delivery is from our office in Marshall to the RTR school in Tyler. We are happy to help load the totes here in the office and the school does have a small cart to help get them into the school office. This volunteer opportunity will require some lifting as well as driving.

If you would be able to help deliver the totes but don't have enough room for all of them in a vehicle, we can break up the delivery to accommodate.

We would also appreciate the empty totes that are at the school being picked up and returned to our office.

Please reach out if you can help or share with someone you know who might be able to help! Thank you!

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10/15/2025

A huge thank you to Pipestone - Helping Farmers for their donations to the Weekend Winners backpack program! Their generous contribution is helping fight childhood hunger every weekend in the RTR school system.

09/05/2025

Hello Weekend Winners friends!

Last year was a big year of changes for the program as there were funding issues. Because of this, only RTR schools participated in the program. Again this year, we will be running the program for RTR schools.

We will be looking for volunteers to come pack bags and assist with delivering the totes of food to the RTR school. We are hoping to do this on a monthly basis for packing, and bi-weekly for delivery. If you have a small group that may be interested in coming to our office and packing a month's worth of bags for delivery, please message us! Or if you know how you can help facilitate delivery of the totes full of bags to the school, please message us!

Our office is now located in Marshall after we moved from Ivanhoe this spring. Anyone who commutes to Marshall to work from Tyler or the surrounding areas might be a great fit to volunteer to help deliver!

Our goal is to start delivering bags the first week of October, which means we will be looking for our first team to pack the end of this month.

04/22/2024

Hello Weekend Winners friends!

We didn't think we would get to make another update this year, but we have a good one for you.

A couple smaller donors as well as one very generous donor have stepped up and covered the cost of food for the rest of this school year!

This means we will still be delivering bags the rest of April and into May. The last bags for each school will be on their last Friday of school this year.

We are so, so thankful for these generous people and entities that stepped up so we could finish out this school year. We are still looking into if the program can be supported next school year and will give any updates or decisions when we can.

Send a message to learn more

04/03/2024

Hello Weekend Winners friends!

We were hoping to not have to make this post and to have made it through the entire school year serving the schools with our program, but unfortunately funding has run out. We thankfully received a recent grant award that will allow us to send bags home for this week and the two following weeks, but after that there will be no more food distributions from Weekend Winners this school year. The last food distribution to students will be April 19th.

We will be evaluating if the program is something that can be continued for future school years.

We appreciate all of your support over the last few years, all the local donations, our new volunteers, and those who help spread the word about Weekend Winners and what the program did in Lincoln County.

03/06/2024

Hello everyone!

We haven't updated for a little while as we have just been busy keeping weekend food bags heading to the schools each week.

We have been extremely thankful for some volunteers coming in to pack bags as well! We snapped a picture of them in action this week. Their volunteerism helps us stretch our donated dollars farther for purchasing food as it is keeping our administrative costs down. We love having this group of ladies come in each week!

We also wanted to give you an update on our fundraised total. We are currently at $31,440! This is awesome! We still have more money to raise to ensure we can continue purchasing food for the rest of the school year, and to make up for the deficit we went into last year. Your donated dollars still count and are very much needed. We have many ways to donate including cash, check, and Venmo! Or consider donating your time, we are still looking for people who would be willing to come pick up the totes at the office after they are packed and deliver them to the schools.

11/29/2023

Hello Weekend Winners followers!

We have a fundraising update for you - we are over $28,000 raised for this school year as of this week! This is very exciting, we are getting closer to our goal. Thanks to a recent, sizeable donation from Pipestone Holdings, LLC. through three of the schools in Lincoln County, we had a nice chunk to color on our goal thermometer.

So far, our food and other expenses have been about what we expected and aimed for this school year. Most of our cost comes directly from ordering the food and bags. We will need to reach our fundraising goal in order to be able to provide food for the entire school year, based on current and projected numbers. In order to do that, be on the lookout as we will be doing a bit of a donation contest coming up in December, as well as continuing to ask for your generous donations as the school year goes on.

We have also had a few volunteers come in to pack the bags which as been wonderful! We'll try to sneak a picture of them next time they are in - we're thankful for their help! 🙂