The Humane Society of the Palouse will be hosting its annual Soup and Pie fundraiser on Feb. 19, placing it on President’s Day for the first time.

Lauren Green, Humane Society of the Palouse public relations manager, said the fundraiser mostly consists of a lunch of soup and pie with all proceeds benefiting local pets in need.

“It’s a pretty straightforward fundraiser and this year we have our raffle again,” Green said. “I’ve been leading the event since 2022 and we’ve grown the event quite a bit in the two years. Reintroducing the raffle last year in 2023 was a really great thing for our organization.”

Green said this is the first year they have hosted the fundraiser on President’s Day. While usually this is not the case, she hopes hosting it on the day off will encourage people to attend.

The fundraiser started about 20 years ago, Green said. They took a break for a few years but started again in 2018. She usually reaches out to those planning to donate soup in December.

“All of our soup donations come from local restaurants in the community,” she said. “Almost all of our pie donations are homemade, hand baked pies that are donated by local community members and this year we’re expecting at least 65 pies to be at the event coming from dozens of different households and many of these bakers have donated for several years in a row at this point … The public is welcome to attend the event but if they want to get involved in a more up close way they’re definitely welcome to donate pie and we also have plenty of community members who donated raffle items as well this year.”

Green said they are expecting aroudn 250 people to attend the event. The location is the 1912 Center Great room at 412 East 3rd St. in Moscow.

Those who are interested in bringing a pie can do so up to the day of the event if they would like, she said. Those who do bring a pie must also bring a list of ingredients so they can know about any food allergies.

Sierah Beeler, Humane Society of the Palouse shelter director, said the event is special because it does not tailor to any specific type of supporter of the shelter.

“It’s not specific to dogs or cats like our 5k’s specific to running,” Beeler said. “This one really kind of encompasses our whole community for everyone to come out for a good cause to support our humane society.”

Beeler said her role in the event is mostly to just volunteer and assist wherever needed, while Green is responsible for the majority of it. Expenses when organizing the event are generally minimal.

“One hundred percent of the proceeds that are going to come from this event are going directly back into our organization,” Beeler said. “Generally we’re not over about $300-400 in expenses for putting on this event. Everybody is donating really the majority of what it takes to put this event on.”

Green said planning the event can be a bit difficult considering the need to keep in mind how many people to plan for, as well as dealing with when things do not go according to plan the day of. 

“We have planned for this many people as best we can but anything can change overnight and we might have a much smaller audience than we’re expecting or even a much larger audience,” Green said. “Last year we nearly ran out of soup with how busy we were.”

Green said she wanted to thank the soup donors for the event for giving them a lot of money’s worth of products from their restaurants. Some of these include Moscow Alehouse, who have donated clam chowder for several years in a row, Mikey’s Gyros here, who are donating vegetarian chili and the Moscow Food Co-Op, who is donating chunky vegetable soup.

“The Breakfast Club is donating cheddar broccoli soup,” she said. “One of the nicest restaurants in town, Lodgepole, is donating some elk chili. Then we have Italian wedding soup from Paradise Grill and Cafe.”

Beeler said one of the biggest highlights of putting together the event is working with the local businesses that donate soup. A positive of that is those who enjoyed the soup can go find it at a local restaurant.

“One of the best highlights is it’s really bringing our whole community together in support of the humane society and all of the expenses that are going into it are being funneled through sponsors and donors,” she said.