Home Depot helps volunteers finish Topeka St. Jude Dream Home landscaping

Home Depot support helped volunteers finish the landscaping at the St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway in Topeka, giving the charity house its final curb appeal and putting store-level labor into a highly visible local project. The raffle carries Kansas charitable license #RAF000020.

For Home Depot associates and store leaders, work like this is less about branding than presence. It shows up where customers, contractors and neighbors can see it, on a house that is meant to draw attention, donations and local pride. In a market built around projects and finish work, landscaping is the kind of last-mile detail that turns a construction site into a home people want to buy a ticket for.

St. Jude says the Dream Home Giveaway supports its mission of finding cures for childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. The organization runs more than 40 Dream Home giveaways across the United States and describes the program as one of its largest single-event fundraisers. Those numbers explain why local volunteer help matters beyond the lawn itself.

Topeka has been part of that fundraising model for years. In 2019, the city’s second annual Dream Home giveaway offered tickets for $100 apiece, with 7,500 tickets available, for a house valued at nearly $500,000. The home sat in Lauren’s Bay Estates in southwest Topeka, giving the raffle a specific neighborhood footprint and a built-in local audience.

That kind of project depends on more than a glossy announcement. It relies on hands-on work, practical know-how and enough local support to finish the job cleanly. For a retailer whose associates spend their days helping customers choose the right materials for their own yards, porches and renovation jobs, showing up on a charity build reinforces the same skills in a community setting.

The Topeka Dream Home is part of a broader St. Jude effort that reaches beyond any one city, but the landscaping finish in Topeka made the local role plain. Home Depot’s contribution placed store support directly on the ground in a project that blends fundraising, neighborhood visibility and the kind of community work that can leave a mark long after the raffle ends.