During our bi-annual training day in February of this year, we heard from three deserving local nonprofits who are making great strides in our community. This is the second year in which we invited groups to come to our meeting, providing them with time to showcase their organization. Each group was provided ten minutes to talk about their mission. Share their greatest needs and any impactful stories they want to showcase. After training day, as a team, we voted and selected the Minot Matthew 25 Project as our organization to support and promote this year.
Throughout the summer, we operated three different ‘drives’ for them. “Each drive was carefully derived from conversations with their leadership about their greatest needs for their clients.” Stated Rianne Kuhn, Marketing Communications Coordinator. : By considering their greatest needs, we were able to do what we intended… make an impact.”
During the month of June, Aspire Credit Union kicked off the partnership by collecting bathroom items. Focused on furnishings for the bathroom, we collected things like towels, washcloths, shower curtains, hair dryers, and hair tools.
During July, we shifted to kitchen items, and the community showed up with quite a lot. Everything from small appliances like crock pots, toasters, blenders, mixers, or tea kettles to utensils, cutlery, dishes, and serving platters were brought to our lobby as a gift for their operation.
Our last month was all about the babies and the young members of our community with collections focused on toys, baby and toddler clothing, cribs, bedding, and baby engagement or entertainment items like rockers. In August, we saw many items, including a crib, countless new-with-tags items, and gently loved toys that could be passed along for another child to love and diapering materials.
Throughout our partnership, our team was impressed with how the community showed up to support the Minot Matthew 25 Project. But as a team, we still wanted to do more. After all, ‘Aspiring to More’ is kind of our thing! With a reach out to the organizational leadership at the Matthew 25 Project, Aspire asked for a Wishlist of items we could purchase to help make their organization a phenomenal resource for those needing a hand up in these tough economic times. We opted to do some shopping purchasing $1,000 worth of small appliances like microwaves, toasters, air fryers, coffee pots, and hand mixers. We also bought winter jackets for young boys and girls, in preparation for the winter months and paired those with hats and glove sets. During July our office also got an upgrade with new office and member chairs which we gladly passed along those items as well.
Kevin Vigested, President and CEO shared “Our partnership with the Matthew 25 Project has been truly rewarding. The team has enjoyed being able to share with the community about this awesome local nonprofit.”
