Community Goes ‘Nuts’ For Salvation Army’s Women’s Auxiliary Fundraiser
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Over four tons of nuts were being boxed and bagged by the Salvation Army’s Women’s Auxiliary (SAWA) and other volunteers Wednesday for the annual fruit and nut sale.
The sale has been a tradition for over 50 years and benefits many of the local Salvation Army’s programs.
“So, we have pre-sale orders ... and they’re all 1-pound packages - cashews, deluxe mix - you won’t find a better product. Everything is really great,” said Kim Hart, co-chair of the SAWA nut committee, on Wednesday at the Home & Family Arts Building, 1400 E. Smith St., Warsaw, at the Kosciusko County Fairgrounds.
“Our orders came in for over four tons of nuts we’re dealing with today. We’re bagging and boxing the orders for distribution,” she said, estimating that over 50 volunteers were working to sort orders Wednesday.
“We always order extras so we’ll have some tables set up tomorrow (Thursday, Nov. 10) and Friday (Nov. 11) with the extras out so people can stop by and buy if they missed ordering,” Hart said.
Whatever remains after this week will be sold beginning Nov. 22 at T’s Styling Studio, 223 W. Winona Ave., Warsaw.
Salvation Army Envoy Ken Locke said the annual sale is very important to the Salvation Army.
“All the money that is raised from this goes to direct assistance to people, so school shoes, work clothing, Angel Tree. It helps to support all those different programs that we do throughout the year, so it’s very important,” he said.
The pre-sale orders started at the end of August, just in time for the holidays and at a time when people’s need for assistance is up in Kosciusko County.
“We’re up. The amount of requests this year is up for different things. We’re seeing quite an increase in food pantry right now. With the way prices are, it’s not surprising,” Locke said.
Orders this year still remain about the same as last year, Hart estimated. “Our pre-sale is down, but our online store has really jumped.”
The SAWA’s online store can be found at www.sawarsawnuts.org where people can buy the nuts and more all year round, Hart said. As long as a person spends at least $30, shipping is free. There are more products available at the online store than what can be bought in-person, Locke said.
He said people who used to live in Warsaw now order on the online store. This is about the fourth year the online store has been available.
“It’s really starting to take off now,” Locke said.
Hart said people will order the nuts online for family members who used to live in Kosciusko County. “They buy them, they pay to ship them, and so you can now go online, order them and have them ship them,” she said.
“A lot of people give them for gifts,” Locke said, later adding that second and third generations of families buy them now because their parents did.
The online store has been a “game changer,” he said.
Hart said the online store has affected the in-person pre-sale orders some because they don’t accept credit cards for pre-sale orders but the online store does.
“We were turning down orders because we didn’t accept credit cards and we didn’t want that liability, and there’s an expense to it. We would have had to raise the price for everybody to be able to do that, so the online (store), that’s a game changer there because they handle all that credit card stuff,” she said.
The day may come where they’ll have to take credit cards for pre-orders, but so far they’re not, just cash and checks.
“We help the entire county - Mentone to Pierceton, Silver Lake to Syracuse. This goes for a lot of different things. The Auxiliary supports the pantry, they support camp, we support work shoes,” Hart said.
She thanked everyone for their support of the annual fruit and nut sale over the years.
“It’s a huge fundraiser,” Hart said.
She also gave a big shoutout to Creighton Brothers “because they go and deliver eggs up in Wisconsin, and then they pick up our order and deliver it to us when we want it, so we get a discount on our pricing because our order is picked up.”
Hart and Locke said Creighton Brothers has been doing that for as long as they can remember. They delivered the four tons of nuts Wednesday around 7:15 a.m. About 12 women met the truck at the fairgrounds to get everything where it needed to be, and then the rest of the volunteers began showing up around 9 a.m.
Kroger’s and Martin’s let the Auxiliary borrow grocery carts for filling orders, which Hart said was very helpful.
The SAWA was founded in 1968. A couple years after that, Locke said, the annual fruit and nut sale began and it was the Auxiliary’s first big fundraiser.
“It wasn’t a whole lot, but it just kept growing from there to this,” Locke said.
“We want to thank everyone in the community for their continued support,” Hart said.
