Giant forwards over $3200 to support rescue animals
Meet the owner of Giant’s dogs, Lilo and George
By Andrew Harris
Lynda Pruski, executive director of the SPCA Serving Allegany County called with some great news for the shelter and a big thank you to Giant Food Mart, staff, and customers: In just one month of their “round up” fundraiser, well over three thousand dollars was raised.
“We are very grateful to Giant, their patrons!! We’ve never had this kind of a fundraiser before and were very surprised at the success. The cashiers really made the effort to ask customers to chip in their change for the animals. Without them this would not have been as successful!”
This is the third major fundraiser that Giant has held for the SPCA since the Kusmierski family purchased the two stores in Wellsville and Cuba. We had to ask owner, Nick Kusmierski, a few questions about the donations and why the SPCA is clearly a operation they support.
WS: Since the family purchased Giant, it has been one SPCA benefit after another, raising thousands of dollars. Tell readers why you put such strong support toward animal rescue/shelters ?
Nick: We continued the tradition of the paw print fundraiser earlier in the year that Giant had been a part of for a few years. We were very happy to be a part of that and it was very successful! For the last couple of years in our Buffalo area stores, we had set aside a month to benefit animal rescues. We wanted to include Giant into that effort as well, and after the successful fundraiser earlier this year, we wanted to support the SPCA Serving Allegany County some more. Also, after meeting Lynda from the SPCA and getting a tour of the facility and learning a little bit more about the history of the SPCA Serving Allegany County, we were very impressed with the dedication of the staff and volunteers. The fact that they run these programs and facilities with donations, we wanted to continue to support them in any way we could.
WS: You must be animal folks, what kind of animals does your family have?
Nick: Yes, we are certainly animal people. Growing up, my family had 2 dogs, one of which we adopted from our local SPCA. Additionally, we had 2 cats (mother and her kitten), that we took in when the kitten was just born. My family currently has 2 dogs, both of which we adopted through local animal rescues. They are such a part of our family now, that we couldn’t imagine our lives without them. We adopted them about 2 years apart from each other and they are best friends and get along great. Just watching them play together and living a great life, knowing where they came from, just makes you feel good. My wife’s future goal is to be a dog foster mom and help out as many dogs as she can! Here is a picture of Lilo and George:
The cashiers were very diligent in asking everyone to “round up,” did you have any internal competition ? Any winners to announce ?
We just purchased and installed a new front end system at both Giant stores which allowed us the capability to run round-ups at the register. This was the first time we had tried it out, and it went great! The cashier’s are the reason these types of campaigns are so successful! Now that we have tested out the system and know how it works, we will look into starting some internal competitions when we do these sorts of fundraisers. We had this discussion with Lynda at the SPCA Serving Allegany County just this Friday and she acknowledged the tremendous efforts of the cashiers. We certainly want to look for ways to reward them for them helping out the community so much!
ICYMI: Read more about the new owners the Giant Food Mart stores and here is a sneak peak at the sales starting tomorrow(Sunday 9/11/22.) The Wellsville Sun publishes the full weekly sales flyer every Sunday morning.
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