ANOKA, Minn. – (Nov. 21, 2019) – It’s called the Breaking Bread Coalition. The group meets about three times each year, and its goal is to grow collaboration, awareness and advocacy among the non-profit community.
“It’s an opportunity to come together, and talk about how do we help each other out,” said Steve Griffith, executive director of Impact Services. “How can we work together for the community good and elevate each other?”
“It’s a great way for us to continue to share and grow together,” said Tess DeGeest, executive director of the Anoka-Hennepin Educational Foundation.
The members of the group come from different backgrounds, and the organization they represent have different missions and goals. There’s a women’s shelter, homeless shelter, food shelves, historical society, health care and more.
And while these organizations don’t all seem directly related, they have seen how helping one of them can help the other.
“The Spring Lake Park Lions started purchasing Achieve Services Achieve Clean laundry detergent and then donating it out to the homeless shelters in the community, so that their residents had access to detergent. That was a quadruple win. If we can continue to find ways to collaborate and support each other, it’s just going to help our community,” said DeGeest.
During the meetings, they might discuss fundraising ideas, or the best way to find board members, or even go over calendars together, so they can spread their fundraisers out. But, it’s all with the goal of helping everyone grow.
“All of us are not looking to get a bigger slice of the pie, we are trying to make the pie bigger,” said Griffith.
