Sue Baron Activates the Metro with Golden Drive’s Homeless Kids Mission, Starting with Just a Crayon

Conrad Fargo sits down with Sue Baron, founder of Golden Drive, a volunteer-run nonprofit supporting homeless children in the Fargo–Moorhead metro. Sue breaks down Golden Drive’s model in plain language: no salaries, no big building, no holding product “just because,” and no complicated gatekeeping. Donations come in and go right back out through schools, shelters, and resource rooms, helping kids with essentials that are easy to overlook until you need them immediately, hygiene items, socks, underwear, sweats, snack bags, and non-perishables.Sue shares how the entire mission started in the most unglamorous way possible: saving restaurant crayons that were headed for the trash. That one habit turned into boots-on-the-ground outreach, business-to-business asking, “Do you want to help our homeless kids?” and eventually into a decade-plus community engine. She talks through partnerships and supporters like Culver’s, Gateway Chevrolet, YouthWorks, the West Fargo Rural Fire Department, the West Fargo Police Department, and the UPS location on 13th Avenue in Fargo, plus a long list of local businesses, schools, churches, students, and volunteers who keep showing up.The conversation gets real about scale and momentum: Giving Hearts Day, filling resource rooms year-round, events like “Fill the Fire Boot” with Jay Thomas, and the sock drive that has reached 46,215 pairs. Sue’s message is simple and stubborn: start with what you have, connect people to helping, and “stay golden.”