Northmarq’s St. Louis office presents Epic Empowerment and Room at the Inn with 2020 Community Grants

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA (December 1, 2020) — NorthMarq’s St. Louis office presented 2020 Community Involvement Grants to two local St. Louis-based non-profits Epic Empowerment and Room at the Inn.

Epic Empowerment, an organization whose mission is to end the cycle of poverty for children and families through its pillars of Housing, Food, Education and Employment, was nominated by David Garfinkel, senior vice president/managing director- St. Louis, to receive one of NorthMarq’s Community Involvement grants.

Epic Empowerment’s grant will support the organization’s emphasis to help children who are experiencing homelessness and poverty via Epic Empowerment’s chapter, Safe Kids MO. The chapter addresses the needs of the more than 4,000 children living in unstable conditions outside the home in Franklin County by providing emergency housing, food and nutritional assistance, and employment. During its existence, Safe Kids MO has delivered more than 260,000 meals to families in need.

“What attracted me to this organization is that they trying to end the cycle of homelessness, poverty, and hunger for children. Todays’ kids are tomorrow’s future and we need to do all we can to help kids, whenever possible,” said Garfinkel.

The St. Louis office’s second grant was presented to Room at the Inn. The non-profit organization provides immediate, temporary shelter to homeless women and families in the St. Louis region. In addition, the non-profit works with clients to create an individualized plan to return to self-sufficiency, which includes monitoring and referrals to other human services agencies.

“We are very grateful for the donation we received today from NorthMarq,” said David S. Weber, executive director. “Our goal is to place our clients into permanent housing within 45-60 days. Our shelter model is very unique in that we partner with 50+ interfaith congregations who house our clients each night at their facility. Our clients have a safe and clean place to sleep, are served dinner and breakfast, and then brought back to our shelter for programming until 5 pm when the process begins again…365 nights per year.”

In the third year of NorthMarq’s Community Involvement Grant program, the company has awarded grants to 18 non-profits in 16 cities. The program solicits nominations from each local office, and had an increase of 20 percent from 2019, with a total of 18 non-profits focused on affordable housing and reducing homelessness receiving these grants in 2020.