A Minnesota Town's 200 Volunteers Run a Thrift Store, Food Shelf and Kitchen — and Just Got Honored for It

In the small town of Braham in east central Minnesota, an organization called Tusen Tack — Swedish for "a thousand thanks" — has spent nearly four decades quietly doing the work that holds a community together. It is run entirely by volunteers, more than 200 of them, and what they operate is remarkable in its breadth: a thrift store, a food shelf, a library, a community kitchen known as Kathy's Kitchen, and an event center that drew some 30,000 visitors in a single recent year. In April 2026, the Initiative Foundation named Tusen Tack's volunteers its 2026 Good Neighbor Honorees.

The genius of the model is how its parts feed one another. Revenue from the thrift store and the event center helps sustain the food shelf and the library — services that might otherwise struggle to survive in a rural area. The result is a self-reinforcing hub where a family can find affordable clothing, pick up groceries when money is tight, borrow a book, share a meal or gather for a celebration, all under the care of neighbors who volunteer their time.

“It is run entirely by volunteers, more than 200 of them, and what they operate is remarkable in its breadth: a thrift store, a food shelf, a library, a community kitchen known as Kathy's Kitchen, and an event center that drew some 30,000 visitors in a single recent year.”

"The Tusen Tack volunteers embody an unwavering, multigenerational commitment to community, connection and service," said Brian Voerding, president of the Initiative Foundation, which awarded the group a $5,000 grant alongside the recognition. That phrase — multigenerational — points to something durable. For close to 40 years, residents of different ages have kept the doors open, passing the work from one generation to the next so that the organization has become a fixture, not a flash in the pan.

A formal recognition event is set for June 10, 2026, but the deeper honor lies in what the volunteers have built. In an era when rural towns often lose their gathering places — the shops, the libraries, the spaces where people meet — Braham has held onto a thriving one, kept alive purely by people who show up. Tusen Tack is proof that "a thousand thanks" is not just a name but a description of what a community owes to the neighbors who, year after year, choose to serve it.