nior’s and Swinging Bridge Brewery.

The awards that were given during the ceremony included nonprofit of the year, small business of the year, large business of the year, citizen of the year and the chamber champion of the year.

The first award given during the event was nonprofit of the year, this award was presented by the previous winner Shelly Smith from Our Neighbors Place and she listed off the finalists: Treasures from the Heart, River Falls Food Pantry and River Falls Public Library. Each of these nonprofit organizations in River Falls stood out in ways of adapting to the global pandemic.

The winner for this award was the River Falls Food Pantry, Candice Anderson accepted the award and outlined the new implementations they created in their space to accommodate COVID-19.

Food insecurity was a more pressing issue during the pandemic and Anderson talked about the ways they made sure that the River Falls community was still able to utilize the food pantry easily. By introducing curbside pickup and other forms of shopping, the food pantry was able to successfully do that.

The next award was small business of the year and again this was presented by the previous winner, Tami Duran from Mariachi Loco. The award finalists included River Falls Ace Hardware, Rush River Brewing Company and Smokey Treats BBQ.

This was awarded to Smokey Treats and the award was accepted by Matt Beranek. He emotionally accepted the award and gave thanks to the many members of the community that helped the small business through a hard year due to the pandemic. “I just want to thank everyone in the community, this certainly wouldn’t have happened without you guys,” he said.

Large business of the year was the next award to be featured and the finalists included Allina Health Clinic of River Falls, UW-River Falls and Family Fresh Market. The award was given to UW-River Falls due to the work the university did in making an effort to make the city of River Falls a safe place during the pandemic. The university offered testing spaces for the community and this was a tremendous help in keeping the community safe and accessible. Chancellor Connie Foster accepted the award, “I just want to say thank you and what an honor this is…when your community has problems, we jump in to help figure it out,” she said.

The next award was citizen of the year and this was given to Todd Gilbertson from Gilby’s Street Department. He said, “I just want to say thanks to everybody, it’s an honor to get this award I appreciate everyone voting for me,” as he accepted the award and the virtual ceremony featured many community members words of affirmation about Gilbertson.

The last award given during the ceremony was the 2020 Chamber Champion. This award recognized AZ Snyder, Pierce County health director as their chamber champion for her efforts in combatting COVID-19 and helping to keep the community informed and safe. She said, “Thank you so much to Russ and the City of River Falls Chamber, this is absolutely wonderful and a great validation of the work the Pierce County Health Department has done over the past year.”

Korpela wrapped up the event by thanking everyone for their hard work during the year of 2020 and talked about how River Falls has persevered in a time of doubt during the pandemic. The virtual ceremony featured some fun bloopers at the end as well.