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Charities thank Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce for 'incredible' donations before wedding day
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce celebrated their wedding week by donating millions to charity.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce praised for $1 million "love letter to New York" charity donation ahead of wedding
The couple, who are reportedly preparing for their wedding celebrations over the next few days, have been hailed for a generous wave of charitable donations, with $26m given to 20 organisations across the US in areas like New York, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri.
However, it is a specific $1 million donation to City Harvest, New York City’s largest food rescue organisation, that has drawn particularly emotional reactions.
City Harvest CEO Jilly Stephens said the contribution from the couple, who are expected to marry in New York City at Madison Square Garden, will have a significant impact on food insecurity across the city.
She said: “We are incredibly grateful for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's generous $1 million donation to City Harvest. This donation is a love letter to New York, and a bold commitment to our efforts to ensure that no New Yorker goes hungry.
“Their support comes at a critical time, with visits to New York City soup kitchens and food pantries near record highs and expected to increase further in response to federal funding cuts.”
City Harvest added that the funds will help provide food to more than 2.4 million New Yorkers this summer alone.
The donation has also been welcomed in Rhode Island, where Swift owns a coastal property and where another $1 million contribution was made to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank.
CEO Melissa Cherney told PEOPLE magazine the organisation was stunned by the scale of the gift.
She said: “As soon as we got the call, a couple of our staff had a moment of disbelief and we were speechless. We felt like we needed to pinch each other because it was sort of our wildest dreams come true if I could use a Taylor Swift song.
“It happened just yesterday. We got a call actually from Feeding America, the national organization, which is also a wonderful organization that got a donation, and they called us and said, ‘Boy, have we got some exciting news for you.’
“And they connected us with a member of Taylor's team, and really from there, the ball just started rolling and it's been really quick. It was sort of all hands on deck and we're just running on excitement and adrenaline because this is absolutely incredible."
Cherney admitted the donation is "certainly one of the largest gifts we have ever gotten", and it's come at "such a time of high need across the summer".
She added: “This $1,000,000 will be used to purchase food. That is our highest need, and right now, during the summer, we're serving over 90,000 Rhode Islanders. And we're serving a lot of kids, so we are serving meals right now to about 500 kids five days a week. This is gonna go to support all of them, to make sure that they've got food on their tables and that kids are going to bed with full bellies.”
Elsewhere, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank also confirmed it received a $1 million donation, with Chief Development Officer Roger Castle calling it a “fantastic Wednesday before the holiday weekend”.
He added staff were “super excited that this is the way Travis and Taylor are celebrating their love story”, noting the donation will provide approximately four million meals.
The couple’s wider $26 million philanthropic effort spans 20 charities and includes organisations connected to their personal lives, including Swift’s childhood in Tennessee and Kelce’s home state of Ohio, as well as Kansas City, Missouri, where he plays for the Kansas City Chiefs.
