Volunteers complete 30 projects in Head of the Lakes Day of Caring

About 200 volunteers knocked out 30 projects for nonprofit partners during the Head of the Lakes United Way’s Summer Day of Caring, a one-day burst of labor that cleared away jobs many small agencies do not have staff to handle on their own. The work landed in a region where food shelves, shelters and social service organizations across St. Louis County and the wider six-county area often operate on tight budgets and thin margins.

The event was held Wednesday, June 10, and Head of the Lakes United Way describes Day of Caring as a community-wide effort in which teams of volunteers complete projects for local nonprofit agencies. In practice, that meant fast, coordinated help for groups that need hands for cleaning, repairs, organizing and outreach work that can fall behind when agencies are stretched. Jaci Christiansen and the organization’s volunteer network have built a system that can move people into projects quickly when needs are clearly defined.

That larger volunteer infrastructure helps explain how the event scaled. The Head of the Lakes United Way volunteer center says it connects people with opportunities across Northeastern Minnesota and Douglas County, Wisconsin, and its system lists more than 200 volunteer positions at 85 different nonprofit agencies. For agencies in Duluth, Superior, Ashland and Bayfield County, that kind of pipeline matters because it can turn a small pool of available volunteers into immediate help for maintenance, service and distribution tasks.

The Day of Caring also fit into a broader local response to food insecurity. A companion Stamp Out Hunger food drive collected more than 52,000 pounds of food for food shelves across the six-county region. Head of the Lakes United Way said letter carriers across the region made the drive possible, extending the reach of a campaign that moves donated food from porches and mail routes into shelves that serve families all year.

The National Association of Letter Carriers says Stamp Out Hunger is the nation’s largest all-volunteer one-day food collection effort, held each year on the second Saturday in May. United States Postal Service marks May 9, 2026, as the 34th anniversary of the drive, underscoring how long local mail carriers have helped sustain the effort.

Wild Rivers Habitat for Humanity also promoted a 2026 Summer Day of Caring effort called 100 Projects in One Day, aimed at helping seniors, veterans and families through small jobs with outsized impact. Together, the projects and the food drive showed how much of the region’s safety net still depends on volunteers doing the work agencies cannot always cover themselves.