When a company does something dumb, insensitive, or illegal, we all hear about it. If it’s not on the local or national news, it’s spreading on Facebook, Reddit, or NextDoor. When a company does something good, however, it often goes unnoticed. So let’s do more to celebrate those small acts of generosity and kindness that make a difference.
Let’s start with 35,000 labels that helped to collect nearly 40,000 pounds of food for people in need.
On May 9, 2026, mail carriers in Minnetonka, Minn. (a suburb just west of Minneapolis) collected nearly 40,000 pounds of food donated by residents as part of the USPS's annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive, the largest single-day food drive in the nation.
What made it possible? A lot of coordination. Community volunteers. Churches and schools. And, in the beleaguered Minneapolis area, the commitment of one retired American Solutions for Businessrep, Martha Mitchell, and 35,000 food donation bag labels donated by Alpharetta, Ga.-headquartered trade printer, Wise.
The Labels That Have to Work
The USPS Stamp Out Hunger drive happens every second Saturday in May. Residents leave bags of nonperishable food beside their mailboxes. USPS carriers pick them up during their regular routes and drop them at satellite collection points such as schools, churches, grocery store parking lots, staffed by volunteers. When the connection point crates fill up, local food banks come to pick them up.
But how do residents know to set out the food on that day? Because someone prints the 4 x 4-in. labels (in this case, Wise) that are applied (in this case, by school students) to bags left in residents’ mailboxes several days in advance. The labels on those donation bags are the link between residents and the food bank's distribution system.
Mitchell, who has been coordinating the Minneapolis effort with local partner ICA Foodshelf since the mid-2000s, worked with Wise to supply the labels for the fourth year in a row. “The labels are what coordinates it all,” she says. “They must stick permanently to the bags yet be easy for the volunteers to remove from the backing and apply. Plus, the information must be easy to read no matter how many times the bags are handled, jammed with food, and subjected to the weather.”
Wise produced 35,000 rounded-edge, permanent adhesive labels at its Anderson, S.C., facility. Student volunteers at Groves Academy applied them to the donation bags ahead of the May 9 event.
What Happened Next
“It was a great event, as usual,” Mitchell wrote afterward. “And the school kids obviously had no problem getting the labels off the backers and where they needed to go!”
Nearly 40,000 pounds of food in a single Saturday, for a community food bank that, according to Mitchell, “has experienced a large increase in requests for food assistance.” The timing could not have been better.
Randy Albertson, Wise’s regional sales manager for the Midwest territory, says this kind of project reflects what the company is about. “When Martha first reached out to us years ago, it was an easy ‘yes.’ What she does every year to coordinate this drive is remarkable, and we’re glad our labels play even a small role in making it happen.”
Since Stamp Out Hunger launched nationwide in 1993, the drive has collected nearly 2 billion pounds of food. The Minneapolis result is one small part of that number. It’s also what happens when every piece of the infrastructure (including a 4 x 4-in. label) actually does its job.
