Anyone who picks up the phone and dials 815-942-6389 these days will get a helpful hand from We Care of Grundy County.

But go back 50 years and call that number, and they’ll probably get the friendly voice of Shirley Kiss.

We Care of Grundy County was founded by Kiss and started in her kitchen. To this day, the phone number has never changed: 815-942-6389 was the phone number for the Kiss household.

Executive Director Eric Fisher said the organization started as a phone tree. It wasn’t until 1979 that Kiss incorporated it as a nonprofit charitable organization.

“Prior to that, it was a little more informal,” Fisher said. “There was a volunteer phone tree, which was how it worked. People would volunteer to be on phone duty a certain night of the week, and they would take whatever calls came in and try to figure out how to help.”

They helped however they could – giving rides to the hospital, babysitting for families with hospitalized loved ones, and providing meals.

Kiss wasn’t the founder, but she was the first one to take the reins and turn it into something official.

“She realized it needed money to operate properly and stay operating,” Fisher said.

Kiss reached out to the United Way, which immediately asked her whether she was a 501(c)(3), to which she replied, “Oops, I should start looking into that.”

She found an attorney who worked pro bono to file the paperwork and received funding from the United Way.

“Then she started walking around town to different places, to social clubs and businesses, presenting about what she was trying to do with We Care,” Fisher said.

Kiss did all this while running the organization out of her kitchen. It wasn’t until the late ’80s that it had its first location in a strip mall in town. It kept growing larger until it moved into the Coleman Hardware building.

Now it’s at 530 Bedford Road, with 18,000 square feet.

It uses every bit of that square footage, too.

“The needs have been growing, especially since the pandemic,” Fisher said. “Being in this building helped us handle the pandemic, receive the amount of food needed, and change our operations so we could do it safely and keep it going. We never stopped, all through the pandemic.”

He said We Care continued to operate its food assistance program and provided significant rent assistance during that time, as the need in the community doubled.

“We’re getting close to that again,” Fisher said.

In 2023, We Care of Grundy County provided 6,400 services in the food pantry. In 2025, it did 10,166.

Fisher said new families come in almost every day. It used to be that there were slow periods throughout the year. There aren’t really slow periods anymore.

“It’s just been [that] the cost of living is so much,” Fisher said. “The cost of rent, really, I think, is what’s driving our numbers up. People are having a hard time keeping a roof over their head.”

Fisher said rent has gone up 21% in the past two years, but wages haven’t kept up.

“Then you look at the price of gas, utilities and groceries, not to mention healthcare,” Fisher said. “We’ve got a lot of folks that are struggling, sometimes struggling to maybe not work because of medical issues.”

Fisher started as a volunteer while he was freelancing, doing graphic design work. He designed We Care’s logo and worked on video projects for them, including promotional materials for fundraising.

He said he realized how much he enjoyed the work by attending a financial skills class.

“I got talking to the clients taking the classes, and I thought, you know what? I really like this,” Fisher said. “I remember going home thinking it’s pretty neat. You actually get the real story. People want to do well in their lives, right? Just talking to them, you could tell they’re trying to make their life better. It’s a good feeling.”

He was recruited for the job by former director Denise Gaska. She thought he’d make a good director.

Fisher has now been in the role for 11 years.

He said the organization has over 30 people who are consistent, weekly volunteers, and organizations like Morris Hospital, Grundy Bank, LyondellBasell and church groups also come in to help whenever they can.

“We’ve had great support from the community,” Fisher said. “And people really care about helping each other out. That’s been one of the most profound things I’ve come to know about all of this. Going all the way back to Shirley Kiss, the community has always been involved and helpful in so many different ways.”

He said We Care of Grundy County is working with the Rotary Club of Morris on a school backpack program to ensure schoolchildren have food to take home on weekends. He said the program will feed almost 300 kids weekly.

There’s also the back-to-school program that it does with Operation St. Nick.

We Care of Grundy County also partners with the Salvation Army, and volunteers help ring bells around Christmas every year. Easter Seals has an office in its building, as does the Children’s Advocacy Center.

“It’s just neat how we all come together and work together to solve problems and help the community,” Fisher said. “Nonprofits are hard. It’s really, really hard. You’re always working with whatever budget you have to stretch every single dollar. When you work together, you can stretch each other’s mutual dollars that much further.”

We Care of Grundy County can’t solve every problem, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t trying.