Our St. Cloud office, HatlingFlint, is in its 25th year! Our St. Cloud team is celebrating by giving their talents to 25 area organizations and events as part of our agency-wide Flint It Forward campaign, a venture they’re calling, Project Spark.
We’d like to share with you their first four gifts:
1. Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast: Spreading the word
The St. Cloud Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast has been held annually since 1978. The committee serves breakfast to hundreds of attendees while they enjoy a guest speaker. The Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast is a nonprofit project, and contributions from ticket sales and sponsors help fund the ministry of Christian Business Men’s Committee of St. Cloud.
The breakfast was held November 1, 2013, at River’s Edge Convention Center in St. Cloud. This year’s speaker was Mark Whitacre, who shared a story about hope, family commitment, redemption, second chances and overcoming extreme adversity against all odds.
Our HatlingFlint team created a variety of promotional materials for the event, including a billboard, newspaper ads, brochures and programs to spread the word about the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast.
2. Empty Bowls: Get serious about hunger
Empty Bowls is an annual St. Cloud-area soup supper to to raise awareness about hunger and homelessness in the area. All proceeds benefit Place of Hope Ministries in its mission to help the homeless and end hunger.
One special part of the Empty Bowls event is their collaboration with Art As You Like It, an art studio in St. Cloud. Art As You Like It provides plain white bowls that community members paint with their own designs. Each soup supper attendee takes home a hand-painted bowl as a reminder of all the empty bowls that still exist in our community.
The HatlingFlint team went to Art As You Like It and used their vast artistic capabilities (!) to each paint a bowl. Even though our painting styles were all different, we all left with the same humbled, thankful sense of community.
3. St. Cloud Rotary: All about service
HatlingFlint created a brochure and several banners for the St. Cloud Rotary. Our team also attended the Rotary’s “Summertime by George,” a weekly festival at Lake George Park featuring local artists, food vendors and local bands.
4. Kitty blankets: Cold noses, warm hearts
We are not afraid to get a little hairy. If it has four legs, it has our hearts. So when the temps started to cool and we heard about all of the cats and kittens waiting to be someone’s best friend at the Tri County Humane Society (TCHS), we wanted to keep them warm. HatlingFlint team members tied eight fleece “kitty blankets” and donated them to TCHS. There’s nothing like a cozy night’s (day’s?) sleep to refresh! And we rest easier knowing those furballs were comfortable and feeling loved.
What organization do you think we should give back to next? Suggest ideas and follow our Flint it Forward progress at the Project Sparks website!