Robin Maynard

Photo couresty of Brad Stouffer

  • Hometown: Zimmerman, Minnesota
  • Number of bags delivered to kids: 150,000
  • Number of children living in poverty in Minnesota: 110,000
  • Number of books about Cheerful Givers: one
  • Number of publications that have written about Cheerful Givers: 11

In September 1993, Robin Maynard found herself staring at an empty shelf while visiting a friend who ran Trinity Mission, a food bank in St. Paul, Minnesota. Maynard's friend explained that the shelf was meant to stock ingredients for parents to make their children birthday cakes. But more often than not, the shelf held only cans of vegetables or boxes of cereal.

"Can you imagine, it's your own special day, a day that's just all yours, and your parent says, ‘Here's some Froot Loops,'" says Maynard.

So she went home that day and told her husband, Kevin, her plan - to buy a dozen bags, fill them with treats and deliver them to the mission. Maynard dropped off the stuffed "birthday bags" one evening, and by nine o'clock the next morning, she received a call telling her that all of them had been picked up by needy families.

From September 1993 to August 1994, the couple bought 1,000 bags and filled them with crayons, coloring books and toys. Despite their good intentions, the Maynards began to run out of money and could no longer carry the load themselves. In response, Robin started a nonprofit organization called Cheerful Givers. Today, large corporations donate bags and items such as stuffed animals, coloring books, balls, puzzles, whistles and candy. The organization is also aided throughout Minnesota by more than 3,000 volunteers who buy items themselves, fill the bags and deliver them to food banks and homeless shelters in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

And just as Maynard has always done, each bag is given anonymously. "It's important that the children think their parents are the ones giving them the gift," Maynard says. "Many work two or three jobs just to make ends meet, so they're the real heroes, not us."

Excerpted from Hometown Heroes. Copyright © 2007 by American Profile. Reprinted by permission of Harper San Francisco.