Small Town, Big Impact: The Yooper Do-Gooders Story

The mission is basically neighbors helping neighbors.

I grew up in the seventies and eighties and I grew up in a small town that,

Everybody knew everybody's name.

Today you can go live your whole life next to your neighbor

and not even know his name.

I wanted to get back to them roots where people are helping

people and generally are good.

People generally are good.

But you just gotta give 'em an outlet to be able to show that goodness.

Hello everyone.

Welcome back to Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things.

I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois.

Today is gonna be a little bit of a departure from our normal guest.

And we're definitely gonna be talking with a nonprofit today.

But this individual had a moment of inspiration that has literally allowed him

to be able to impact thousands of people.

And when I heard his story I was like, I gotta get him onto the show.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me bring to you the founder of Yooper Do-Gooders.

And that would be Dean O'Brien.

Dean, how are you?

I am doing well, Cliff.

Thank you.

So Dean, tell us a little bit about where you're from and where you grew up.

I grew up in a little town called Wyandot, south of Detroit.

And I moved to the UP 22 years ago.

And I make my home there.

It was my mother's childhood home.

It's been in my family over a hundred years.

Now, did your mother move down to south of Detroit and that's where you

originally born, or how did that work?

Yep.

She, uh, married my father.

And my father was from the Detroit area.

He worked for Ford Motor Company.

And my mom went to St.

Ignace schools.

And went up to the Sault St.

He was stationed after the Korean War at the Soo Locks.

When you said that you moved up there about 22 years ago, what is it about

the up that's keeping you there?

It was always a second home to me, and I raised my three boys there.

And I just wanted to get 'em out of, the Detroit area.

And we brought, I just brought 'em up here and we raised 'em.

They all graduated from St.

Ignace schools and they're all doing very well in life.

Now, after high school is over, what did you do from there?

Construction and maintenance.

That's pretty much been my whole life.

Construction and maintenance.

Is there something in particular about construction and maintenance

that attracted you to that field?

Yeah.

Something different every day.

That is absolutely true.

100%.

Okay, so you've been doing construction for a number of years now.

What I wanna do is I wanna start to talk to you about the Yooper Do-gooders.

So talk to us about how the idea first came about.

A couple years back, and this is one of the miracles you asked me about, a

couple days ago, but about about five years ago, two years before Yooper

Do gooders started, I was praying to the Lord about helping people.

I wanted to help people.

I didn't know how to go about doing it.

But I wanted to help people.

So I went down to the Evergreen Living Center, which is a senior home.

And I filled out an application, a background check and stuff like that

to go and help play cards, do whatever.

Just spend an hour a week.

I was just looking at an hour a week to go there and just play cards

with the elderly and just hang out and, sp share some time with them.

And I was denied because I have a little bit of a background.

I played hockey my whole life and I was a fighter in hockey,

so carried over into real life.

So I got in a little trouble long time ago.

And it stuck with me.

And so they told me, I, they, that they couldn't accept my application

and that, because of my background, they were really wouldn't let me in.

So I said, okay.

been praying for two years about this.

Woke up on that Sunday morning.

It was a Sunday, and literally within 10 minutes the Facebook page was made.

All the rules were on it.

It was that quick.

And it took off so fast that I had, I think I had a thousand

members within two months.

Okay, so let's go back a little bit and start to unpack some of these things.

So you were talking about this, basically this two year journey of yours.

Now, first off, why did you feel this need to try to help other people?

I, I just think it's instilled from my mother and father.

My mother, father, my mother and father were both that way.

They both were people that helped other people.

My mother majorly.

And my dad too.

My dad was a member of the moose and bought kids bikes every year.

And he just, it was just something that that was, that, they both did and

I think it just carried over into me.

Now you talk about creating this Facebook group, and the name of the

Facebook group is the Yooper Do Gooders.

So when you get the idea for this Facebook page, you signed up for all

these Facebook marketing classes, these Facebook groups, management classes

Yes.

you did.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

I signed up for all that stuff and, to help me to go through

and do the things that I'm doing.

And we're unique because we do everything.

We don't, we don't concentrate on gas cards, we don't concentrate on food.

We don't concentrate on fixing people's homes.

I do it all.

Every bit of it.

Now when you talk about creating your Facebook group and then

within a span of two months, you already have a thousand members.

How did you initially start to get the word out about this Facebook group?

Just my friends in general, my friends that are on my Facebook page.

I literally just invited every single one of my friends.

I have friends in both places.

I have friends in St Ignace and down in Wyandott.

So it spread rather quickly because of them.

Now, why don't you talk to us about the mission of Yooper Do-gooders.

The mission is basically neighbors helping neighbors.

I grew up in the seventies and eighties and I grew up in a small

town that, it didn't go, it wasn't unheard of to, for your neighbor.

Everybody knew everybody's name.

Today you can go live your whole life next to your neighbor

and not even know his name.

I wanted to get back to them roots where people are helping

people and generally are good.

People generally are good.

But you just gotta give 'em an outlet to be able to show that goodness.

And this has given people an outlet to feel secure about helping somebody

without the thought of getting ripped off or being taken advantage

of or any of that kind of stuff.

One of the things that really attracted me to your story was when I first got

accepted into the Yooper DO-gooders group, and someone had posted on there that they

had this specific kind of baby formula for babies with sensitive stomachs.

And you could just have it.

You just have to come pick it up and all these people down below

were saying, oh, I need this.

Is it still available?

I was blown away by that because usually when I'm thinking of

something for to help people.

It's oh, do you know of a, a job that I could apply for whatever

it is, but this is actually people making contact with each other.

This is people looking for couches and, for food.

I saw somebody this morning was asking, Hey, could, does somebody have

a dozen eggs that I can use to feed my boys for the rest of the month?

This is real stuff.

Oh, it totally is.

And that is the part of it that I love the most is when I, I don't

always see everything on the Facebook page cuz I work a normal job too.

But there's times where I'll go on there and I'll see somebody ask for

something and I look down and their, 25, 30 comments and all of 'em are

just trying to help the person.

And whether it's, it's pointing them in the right direction to get the help.

Or helping them themselves.

And that to me is just, I don't know, it just warms my heart that

it's brought in so many people out to be the neighborly, person or

neighborly way of going about doing it.

What I'd like to do is I would like to explore a little bit, cuz you mentioned

before about, signing up for these Facebook group classes or whatever it is.

What is some of the, what are some of the lessons that you've learned

that you feel really helped you to get this launched and start to see

all this real success real fast.

I can tell you the, probably the one thing that I've, in the last

three years of my life, what I've become good at is whether to find out

whether somebody's scamming us or not.

That didn't come from Facebook.

That came from the d h s ladies, d h S ladies.

They're the ones that kind of walked me through that and said,

since you're gonna be doing this and we're gonna be helping you.

Cause I've even helped them.

They've called me in the middle of the night and said, Hey,

we need food for some lady.

We can't get into the office.

We, will you hook her up.

I hook her up with some food.

But anyhow, To be able to ask the questions without actually upsetting

somebody and finding out whether they're actually telling the truth or

not is probably one of the highlights of the things I do believe it.

All right.

So walk us a little bit through what that looks like.

First of all, whatever their problem is, then you just start asking little,

small, simple questions like you're trying to find out information about it.

And then they stumble on themselves.

It's pretty easy actually.

I'm really surprised that I hooked onto that that quick because some

of my administrators will send me a, Hey, this girl's asking for

this, and then I go on and I'll.

they'll send it to me and I'll just start talking to her and, just the

conversation alone, I can figure out whether they're for real or not.

And don't let me, don't let me make it sound like there's a lot of that.

Because to be honest, that doesn't happen often in this group.

This group is pretty wholesome people.

Even the people ask for help and the people helping.

very wholesome group.

I don't run into a lot of people scamming at all.

Now, when you first launched the Facebook group, was it just

you that was moderating it?

Yes, I ran it for the first two years by myself,

Oh, that is incredible.

So you said you made it

not really by myself, because the members are the core of the group.

They are really the ones that run it.

The Lord is the one that really runs it.

Let me be honest there.

But he's the one that brings me all the people that I need and

puts the people on my path to advance and to continue to grow.

And I imagine too, that also your members can help with some

of the policing that's going on

And they do.

Yes, they do.

They, they'll, if they think somebody's doing something wrong, they'll

contact me in a private message.

And that's another thing.

We don't allow people to attack other people on the page.

We watch that very carefully.

We would rather you contact us and let us handle the situation than

having a bunch of bickering, like half the other Facebook groups and

all the bickering goes on in that.

And we don't allow swearing.

We don't allow any of that kind of stuff on our page.

Well, kudos to you for the policing part because I can imagine for

some people it's hard enough to ask for help, let alone ask for help.

You genuinely need it, and all of a sudden you have 50 people

that are passing judgment on you.

saying things like, oh, you should, just get a job or get a better job, or,

And we have that sometimes, but we get right on it right away and I just,

I'll, I, the first time I'll just private message him and say, Hey, look,

that's not what this page is about.

If you don't have anything nice to say or are helpful, then please don't comment.

Just scroll past it.

Because I think a lot of people forget that we don't

know who that other person is.

We haven't walked in their shoes.

We don't understand their situation.

So for them just to reach out and say, Hey, I need baby formula.

this lady said, Hey, I just need a dozen eggs to help feed my

kids for the rest of the month.

We don't know her situation.

We don't know what she's struggling.

No.

We do not.

And that's what I want these people to feel safe and have a safe

haven to go to, to ask for help.

Because it is hard asking for help.

There was a guy, a veteran out in Trout Lake who I had heard needed food.

And I went out there and was talking to him and he's rushed a real nice guy.

But he was eating toast every day.

That's it.

Toast every day.

Cuz that's all he could afford.

So every once a month or so, I go bring them a little bit of food, but it's

sad to know that there's, even one of our veterans is eating toast every day.

I just, I that, I can't fathom that.

Yeah, that, that right there breaks my heart.

Yeah, mine too.

With the group, you get it started.

You've got it launched.

You made it up to a thousand people.

I guess my next question for you is, at what point did you think to yourself,

holy cow, this is really taking off.

I think it was the programs.

All the different programs we ran.

And I, it's I don't believe that I'm this smart of a guy, so I know it was the Lord.

And the programs we run are so cool.

Like May's coming up.

That's teacher Appreciation month.

We buy all the area teachers pizza for lunch.

They always get the kids something.

But nobody ever does anything for the teachers.

And I don't even have kids in school anymore.

But yet I make sure that every May we make sure that we have pizzas

for all the teachers in the area.

So that's a real blessing right there.

So what do you do?

Do you go on to the Facebook group and say, Hey, if you want

to donate to pizzas for teachers?

Yep.

Then it's for the teachers.

And then, and it, and the summer is pretty laid back for our group.

But then we jump right back into Thanksgiving.

We fed 42 families with Thanksgiving dinner last year.

We did.

we do our Christmas programs.

We have three different Christmas programs.

We do, a stocking for the elderly.

We do adopt a family.

92 families were adopted last year by other, by our, my members.

And then we do, Shop with a Cop.

I did 14 kids this year with Shop With A Cop.

And what I do is I put a hundred dollars away, pretty much every

week or every other week to, offset the, the Shop with a Cop.

And each child was allowed to spend $200 and we did 14 kids.

This is incredible.

I'm totally loving this story.

For our audience, we're gonna take a quick break to thank our sponsors.

when we come back, we're gonna explore some of the more of these

programs, with Dean and talk about the explosive growth that his group is

seeing, cuz it really is phenomenal.

We'll see you after the break.

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Hello everyone and welcome back to Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things.

I'm talking to Dean O'Brien, founder of Yooper Do-Gooders.

And I am loving this conversation.

Now, Dean, before the break, you were talking about some of the

programs that you got going on.

And what I wanna do is I want to go back and I wanna hit on one cause that kind of

perked, peaked my interest a little bit.

Shop with a Cop.

Talk to us about this program.

Shop With a Cop.

It's actually called the London Casey Shop with a Cop, and London

Casey was an eight year old girl that lost her life to cancer.

And we dedicated that to her.

I had helped out with the situation with her and a couple other people too.

Anyhow, the Shop with the COP is something that I came up with a couple years back

that I would like to be involved in.

And the best way I knew how to be involved with it is just to save money and then go

to the local police departments and ask 'em if they'd go shopping with the kids.

And they were all for it.

So I actually go to several different precincts.

I actually do the tribe.

They send a police officer, the sheriffs, the Mackinac County

Sheriffs and the city St.

Ignace city police.

And then I had some state troopers from, Sault St.

Marie that also went.

And we go to Walmart, usually two weeks before Christmas.

And each child is allowed to spend $200.

The children are picked from the area teachers.

I contact the teachers and they get together and they're the ones that

tell me which child needs it the most.

They see it every day.

They see the per the kids every day.

And they know more than I would for me to just pick some kids out.

And they're the ones that knows that needs it.

And to see these kids go in there and be able to shop for $200 and

their only requirement is that they gotta buy their parents something.

Oh, that's cute.

I love that.

All right, so you've gotten the Facebook group started.

You've made it to a thousand members.

Now you're just you're cooking.

At what point in time did you say to yourself, man, I better

wrap this up into a nonprofit?

Or did you always have a nonprofit and you just put the Facebook group in it?

No, I've never, I didn't know anything about a nonprofit to tell you the truth.

And I have a really dear friend of mine that lives in St Ignace

here with me, and he's a good guy.

should do this, you should do this.

And he was on me about it for two years straight.

Now, what was the tipping point to becoming a nonprofit?

It's a lot of paperwork.

You gotta go through a lot of rigor roll.

So what's, why did you ultimately decide to do it?

Because we got so big and then, I, 90% of the money comes outta my own pocket.

My kids are all grown and gone.

So I don't really have a lot to spend my money on.

So I just started putting it towards people.

Like yesterday I built a ramp for some lady, you know, after I got off

work, I went out and finished this ramp for a lady that broke her leg.

I.

And, that come right outta my own pocket.

I paid for that.

it's just, I just have to do this.

I, You can't tell the Lord no or somebody else will handle it, Lord.

You've gotta go out and do it.

So I'm out there doing it.

And basically I w I, we've gotta start filling out grants.

And we're doing grants now.

So that's gonna help me a lot because I won't have to pull outta my own

pocket once we start getting grants.

So it was more of the grant thing.

Okay.

What I would like to do now is talk, you mentioned this briefly before

we took a break, You've mentioned that you've gotten phone calls in

the middle of the night from D H S.

Yeah.

About, Hey, do you've got some food?

Or could you put the word out to, to help this lady?

Or whatever it is.

At what point did you know either other organizations start reaching out to you or

was this some kind of a campaign for you?

Reach out to them because it seems like there's a lot of synergy between

other organizations that are out there and the Yooper do gooders.

I think that it was more them reaching out to me because they

had seen how well it was going.

I really didn't reach out to anybody really.

I just was doing this all on my own and just winging a prayer as you say.

And, yeah, just she ran into a problem.

I know her personally, and she just ran into a problem and

she said, Hey, I'm at home.

I can't get into the office.

And I, girl, got a girl that needs some food.

Can you help her out?

And now it's happened a couple of times now too.

So I think that's cool that it was, that they were relying

on me to help them out too.

And I just, I don't know that really struck me as, the

Lord really doing his work.

And it also seems to me too, that one of the big things with the Yooper do gooders

is because you can take action so quickly.

It's not like you have to go through a bureaucracy or anything else

like that literally, because you're bringing together people who wanna

help and people who need help.

And they can literally ju make something happen within 30 minutes.

Yeah, no red tape.

Yeah.

None.

which is absolutely beautiful.

At what point in time did you say to yourself, sweet

Moses, I need help with this?

Because, cuz obviously you're not alone.

You've got people who, other people who monitor the group and you've got,

I've seen some posts on your page about bringing on a treasurer for the nonprofit.

So at what point did you say to yourself, man, I need help.

I started getting interviews when I, after I became a nonprofit.

I started getting interviews, through Tim was the very first

one to interview me actually.

And I had a friend and I asked him to be my vice president.

And he said yes.

And so he went with me to the interview and then it just branched off from there.

I knew I was gonna have to have a treasurer.

Especially if we were getting grants.

and then the treasurer informed me that we need a secretary.

So we got a secretary.

And then I got advocates, which they're all part of my board too.

And my advocates are people that are spaced out, like one in the Soo one in

Newberry, one in Cheboygan, and one in St.

Ignace here.

And what they are is they organize things.

Like the Easter basket thing for the elderly.

We do the Easter baskets for elderly.

And we did over 300 this year.

And for me to do the senior homes up in the Sioux or in Newberry or in Rudger

and, Pickford area or Cedarville area, it's too hard for me to do it all.

So I take care of the St.

Ignace one.

And then my advocates take care of their area.

If you would share with us, a, a couple of stories, a couple instances

where the Yooper do-gooders, has really helped out some people.

I was talking about this when I, it was a miracle.

This is actually a miracle and I look at it as a miracle.

You can find miracles in every day.

And when I first started, I was, like I said to you, I, I went two

years before I started it to see if I could help out at the senior home.

And they told me no.

And then that some, that year that I started all this,

We know in March.

Beginning of April, we got hit with Covid.

So all the senior homes were locked up and closed up and you couldn't go

in and they, they couldn't come out.

And they couldn't see their families or do anything like that.

So I organized a band, a single guy, he was just a a guitar player.

And I set it up to where we could sit in the courtyard.

And he set up his, amp and his guitar and he sang.

And we did that every Thursday night through the whole summer

And we were walking out one night and the lady that actually denied me from coming

in and helping out the seniors was walking us out and locking up after, locking

the courtyard up after we were done.

And, I looked at her and I said, do you see how my Lord works?

And she goes, what do you mean?

I said, two years ago you told me I couldn't come in here and

help and look where I'm at now.

And she goes, oh my gosh, Dean.

And she gave me a big hug.

Cause it, it, it's it, my Lord says, no, this is gonna happen.

And it happens.

And then, we've had, we had, we've given, actually given away two cars on our, site.

I didn't give away.

Just one, one lady contacted me and her mother had passed

away and they had her car.

And they said that We love your page so much, we'd like to donate the car.

Could you find us a good family for it?

And I ended up finding a good family of a girl that had two kids and no, no

access to vehicle or anything like that.

So we gave her a car.

Another girl, was the same thing.

She came on and was looking for a car.

And within, I swear within four hours, somebody was giving her a car.

So two cars have been given away on my page.

that's incredible.

That's incredible.

I'm not even sure what to say

about that.

Yeah.

I, it's just, it's just one of the many stories that, that,

that have just been miracles.

People helping people.

I just, it's so heartwarming to know that these people still

do these things, you know?

Speaking of miracles, how many people are on your page today?

7,600 and some.

Yes.

and that right there alone is beautiful.

And I saw the other day, I think I was on my phone when I looked

at the Yooper Do-gooder group, and it's, you guys are growing.

it's 50 to 60 new members a week.

Yes, yes, it is.

it really is.

I, there're, it's just grown and grown and that's why I had to get to

nonprofit because I can't keep up.

Where do you see this going?

it, the Lord's got this.

So it's gonna continue to grow.

the next thing we're going for is the homeless, shelter in the Soo.

They've actually told me if the homeless shelter runs smoothly for three years,

that they want me to open another one.

I could see that part growing.

I wanted to continue after I'm even gone from this world.

So when you talk about the homeless shelter, is this something you started?

Yes, I, when I first started Yooper do gooders, that was in my radar.

It was in my mind.

It was in my heart.

And Yooper Do gooders was going so.

Getting so big so fast that I put it on the back burner.

And about six months ago, the Lord put it on my heart again.

And so now it's come to fruition.

Not only did he put it on my heart, but he put in my mind all the

different programs I wanna run.

I just don't look at myself as being this smart to come up with all these

ideas, so I know it's the Lord.

No, and it's wonderful the work that you're doing, it's absolutely incredible.

The, so you start the homeless shelter.

Is there any crossover between the homeless shelter and Yooper do gooders?

Oh, yes.

We're going to, we're gonna actually, and every member will

be a part of the homeless shelter.

When we need things, we'll be getting on the Facebook page and asking for things,

shampoos, lotions, towels, what, whatever we need at the homeless shelter, I'm

gonna reach out to my members and they're gonna be a part of the homeless shelter.

I want that every.

7,600 members.

I want them all to be a part of this homeless shelter.

Wow, this is incredible.

I'm loving the story more and more.

This is beautiful.

Now, when you think about Yooper Do-Gooders, what comes to mind?

Neighbors helping neighbors.

That's a beautiful tagline.

Yep.

And then I guess the question I got for you is, Now is that, cuz you, we've

talked before about reaching out and working with other organizations that

are in the area and sometimes it's other nonprofits or state agencies.

Talk to us a little bit about some of the relationships that you

have formed with like for-profit businesses that are in the area.

How are they donating to what it is that you're doing?

Every September I do a city appreciation luncheon for all of the city workers,

which is about 70 or 80 city workers.

I've teamed up with McDonald's and they donate free lunches.

They gimme the lunch cards there that you just, and then I drop them off to

the head guy down at the city building.

And he hands 'em out and they all get a free lunch out of the deal.

I.

Um, that's just one.

most of all the businesses in the area really support me and our,

like our local grocery store.

It's huge.

I go up there and I get my turkeys from them at Thanksgiving.

They're always there to lend a hand if I'm going there to like most people how I shop

is I'll invite them to family fair and.

and they just go shop.

And I tell 'em they got a hundred hours of spend and they go and shop.

And then I just stand at the front and pay for it.

And the people at Family Fair, which is our local grocery store, they've

been really helpful with that.

So yeah, a lot of the businesses are very active in it.

When you start, working with them, did you reach out to them and

say, Hey, I'm doing this thing.

Would you like to be a part of it?

Were they reaching out to you?

Some reached out to me and some I reached out to them.

a lot of 'em, a lot of it, I did my homework and reached

out to them, most of them.

But some have reached out to me and you don't want to help.

Dean, if somebody's listening to this and they want to get involved with what's

going on, check out your Facebook group.

Maybe they've got some stuff that they also would like to donate.

What would be the best way for them to do that?

Just go on Facebook.

If you're on Facebook and type in, Yooper do gooders and look for us.

It'll have a picture of the up with hearts on it.

And it says, in changing One Heart at a time.

and just to answer the rules and regulations of the group and join.

We'll get you right on and you can sit and watch what goes on or you can join in.

Dean, thank you so much for taking time outta your schedule today to talk to us.

I really do appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Cliff.

And for our audience, you can always go to total michigan.com.

Click on Dean's interview and get all the links that he mentioned above.

We'll catch you next week with another amazing story.

See you then.