Arizona Gives Day is Tuesday and helps a thousand organizations

Interfaith Community Services’ refrigerated van got vandalized recently and they need to get it fixed because they’ve been presented some challenges.

Their communications director Anne Thwaits said it is one of the vehicles they use during their grocery rescues, which takes in about a million pounds of food from the community.

During those rescues they go around to bakeries and restaurants and those places donate food to them.

However, not having a vehicle is presenting a challenge to ICS.

“That severely impacted our ability to go and get food that could make up as much as half of the food a family might receive,” Thwaits said.

Arizona Gives Day, which is on Tuesday April 2, is giving ICS an opportunity to get money from the community so they can fix the broken van, which Thwaits said doesn’t work at all.

They’re also going to use donations to fuel up their mobile food bank, which goes to 8 spots that they call “food deserts.”

“Places where people don’t have easy access to affordable food,” Thwaits described.

Every month with their mobile food truck they serve about 1,500 families.

Thwaits said during the early donation period, they already raised about $1,200. They have a goal of $10,000 which they also hit last year.

Sabrina Lobato Gonzales, the director of philanthropy for AZ Impact for Good, the organization putting on Arizona Gives Day, said this year they registered a thousand non-profits.

“Two thirds of those benefit Southern Arizona,” she said.

She said it’s a 24 hour campaign that has raised over $42 million since it started in 2013.

Arizona Gives Day is something Thwaits said makes people realize they’re not alone.

“Overwhelmingly people are so grateful that someone cares,” she said.