ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with Lisa Downing from In-Dey-Go Fundraising. What is In-Dey-Go?

LISA DOWNING: We provide fundraising products to schools and groups across Canada and our main product that we have is cookie dough. We’re a born and bred Canmore business.

RM: I think a lot of people are familiar with the cookie dough fundraisers. I didn’t even know you were a local organization. That’s cool!

LD: Yeah. We’re a little incognito.

RM: You’re getting your name out there right now as part of this Harvest Bundle fundraiser for some local food banks. What’s going on?

LD: Times are tough, right? We saw the article in the paper about the Stoney Nakoda food bank trying to figure out how they can raise money and this is exactly what we do, so we just want to be able to help out where we can. With the Harvest Bundle fundraiser we’ve partnered with an Alberta grower north of Edmonton. Great family and beautiful products.

RM: What exactly is in the Harvest Bundle? And how does the fundraising aspect of it work?

LD: There are a few different products. There’s the Farmhouse Bundle, which has potatoes, carrots, and beets, and then the Rainbow Bundle, which has rainbow coloured mixed carrots, fingerling potatoes, and mixed beets. We have some add-ons like cabbage, parsnips, carrots, and mixed onions. Then we have the Food Bank Bundle that consists of four pounds of potatoes and two pounds of carrots for $10. All the profits from any of those products sold is going to go to the food banks, and with the Food Bank Bundles we’ll take all that fresh produce in bulk and deliver it to the Stoney Nakoda and Bow Valley food banks. We’ll be driving skids of produce into the food banks because they need fresh veggies. It’s a win, win, win for sure.

RM: How did you get into this line of work?

LD: I moved to Canmore 25 years ago. I was previously coaching skiing and that came to an end, so I needed to figure out what to do here and I knew I had to be my own boss. So I created In-dey-go and started mixing cookie dough in the kitchen. Fundraising was the market that made the most sense and sold the best.

RM: How can people find out more about the Harvest Bundle fundraiser? How can people order it

LD: They can go to our website. We’d like to raise $8,000 to be able to donate to the food banks along with this food bank bundle. It’s a lofty goal, but I think this community can do it.

Filed under: Canmore, Food bank