From using Volunteer Paid Time Off to donating dollars during our annual Power Your Purpose giving campaign, Xcel Energy employees are committed to showing up and connecting with their communities year after year. Every spring, employees participate in Xcel Energy’s Employee Choice Grants program, where they nominate and vote for their favorite nonprofit organizations to receive Xcel Energy Foundation grant funding. Since 2015, employees have directed nearly $450,000 toward the causes they care about most in the areas where they live and work.
This year, an employee panel sifted through 966 employee submissions and selected finalists that align Xcel Energy Foundation’s grant focus areas and our company values and business priorities. Employees voted for the six 2025 winners below:
Food for Thought Denver, a Colorado-based nonprofit, received a $20,000 grant. The organization aims to eliminate weekend hunger for students in the Denver area by packing and distributing “PowerSacks” throughout the school year. One PowerSack contains enough nonperishable food items to help feed a family of four over the weekend.
“The grant from Xcel Energy will help us deliver food to students in over 80 elementary schools and stock our 10 food pantries throughout the rest of the school year,” says Sandra Matt, Food for Thought Denver executive board member.
Minnesota employees voted for Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) to receive a $10,000 grant to support its efforts in transforming the lives of injured post-9/11 military veterans and their families. WWP provides free mental, physical and financial health programs and services, as well as long-term rehabilitative care.
The Xcel Energy grant will directly support the WWP Talk program, which offers veterans and their family members with free nonclinical telephone support. Program participants have weekly one-on-one calls with WWP Talk partners, empathetic listeners who act as an accountability partner, help with goal setting and provide resources for anger management, couples counseling, PTSD and more.
Every Meal, a Minnesota nonprofit fighting child hunger, received a $5,000 grant. Through its Weekend Meal program, a four-to-five-pound meal bag is sent home with students every Friday to combat the "weekend food gap," when they don’t have access to school meals. The program serves around 12,000 Minnesota students weekly.
“Our goal is to leverage school and community partnerships to distribute nutritious, delicious and relevant food to students who are going hungry over the weekends,” said Every Meal’s president and founder Rob Williams. “Xcel Energy's grant played a role in our ability to distribute approximately 1.49 million meals across 375 school partners in the 2024-2025 school year.”
The Food Bank of Eastern New Mexico received a $10,000 grant to support its mission to alleviate hunger across five counties throughout Eastern New Mexico. With many community members living in rural areas, the nonprofit offers both on-site and mobile food pantries as well as other programs to support at-risk students, seniors and local partner agencies.
“There are only 11 grocery stores across our service area, which means some people need to drive over an hour to get fresh produce,” says director of Food Bank of Eastern New Mexico Dianna Sprague. “We’re excited to use these grant dollars to purchase critical food sources for the families and individuals who rely on our programs.”
Texas nonprofit Amarillo Children’s Home received a $10,000 grant. Since 1924, the organization has worked to provide safe, loving and restorative care for children in the Texas Panhandle, particularly those facing the greatest challenges in the foster system.
“The grant we received from Xcel Energy will go directly toward care for kids in our Change the Ending program, which provides stable housing for children ages five and older,” says Emily Bell, director of development at Amarillo Children’s Home. “Through this program, we offer residential care for young children, transition housing for teens and supervised independent living for young adults aging out of foster care.”
Wisconsin nonprofit Superior Rivers Watershed Association received a $5,000 grant. Based in Ashland, Wisconsin, the organization promotes and protects the clean water resources of Wisconsin’s Lake Superior basin through water quality monitoring, watershed education, restoration and special projects.
“We are so excited to use the Xcel Energy Energizing the Future grant to continue connecting people, land and water in the Lake Superior region. These funds will help support our three-year project to remove 13 acres of invasive cattail and reseed five acres with manoomin, also known as wild rice,” says Alex Faber, executive director of Superior Rivers Watershed Association.
Learn more about how we strengthen and support the communities we serve.