Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

NATCHEZ — Tim Morrissey, vice president and general manager at Magnolia Bluffs Casino, announced two donations of $20,000 each Tuesday afternoon at a reception at the casino here.

The Natchez Stewpot, which prepares, serves and delivers more than 300 meals a day, seven days a week, to those in need here, received $20,000, as did the Natchez-Adams County Humane Society.

Marcus Archer, director of The Stewpot, called the donation “massive,” and said it will be used in several ways.

“We will feed people, reinvest in our people and the needs of The Stewpot,” he said.

Morrissey praised the “great volunteers” at The Stewpot and their hard work and effort, as did Archer.

“We have never closed, even one day, even during the ice storms,” Archer said.

Morrissey also heaped praise on the Humane Society.

“They do a great job caring for our four-legged friends with very little funding,” he said. “They have to go out all the time and raise money. Less than 20 percent of the Humane Society’s budget comes from public funding. They are constantly at capacity and are in constant need of things like food, blankets, volunteers and money.”

Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson said, “These donations are a big deal. You, Tim, and Magnolia Bluffs Casino and Saratoga have supported this community in untold ways in this short year and a couple of months you have been here.”

Gibson said he was happy to see the community as a whole stepping up and doing more for the Humane Society.

“And it will be getting another $50,000 soon to go to renovate a building on site to provide more room for animals taken in,” he said.

Gibson said the $50,000 the city’s board of aldermen has approved to renovate the building will come from the city’s community development fund, which is funded by proceeds from the casino, part of the casino’s operation agreement with the city.