How We’re Giving Back to Our Community During COVID-19
Community outreach is a key part of our culture, and we’ve missed being able to get together to volunteer. So, we’re finding ways to give back while staying safe.
Every Wednesday, you’ll find Spoor Bunch Franz staff members popping open jars of Skippy peanut butter and Smuckers to make PB&J sandwiches. They’re not resorting to childhood comfort food as a coping mechanism during the pandemic — they’re giving back to our community.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn have affected most everyone in our community, but it’s been especially hard on families who have lost jobs or who face high medical bills. Many in our community need help putting food on the table, and we are grateful to be in a position to help. Working through a staff member’s church, those of us who are choosing to be in the office are making PB&Js for Metropolitan Ministries to hand out in their drive-thru food pantry.
Being part of our community and helping those in need is core to Spoor Bunch Franz. This year, we had to skip our annual “Day of Impact,” which the last two summer involved shutting down the office for a day and heading to Academy Prep of St. Pete and the local Police Athletic League (PAL) program to paint classrooms, pressure-wash sidewalks, clean lockers, and repair playground equipment. We miss being able to get the whole staff together to work on a project or volunteer at nonprofits like the St. Pete Free Clinic, because those moments not only allow us to give back, they let us come together as a team in a different way.
Even though we can’t get together for a big volunteer day this year, we can still give back in other ways. The husband of an SBF staff member is about to deploy to the Middle East. We recently packed 50 care packages for him to share with the rest of his squadron, the 50th Air Refueling Squadron. The packages included Halloween tote bags full of goodies and essentials, board games, a giant Jenga game, and, (of course, during COVID!) toilet paper.
We have a few community outreach activities planned for the remainder of 2020, because it’s important to our team to keep the community support going, even while remaining safe and distanced. Usually, we have a competition between departments to see who can donate the most cereal to Metropolitan Ministries for their food drive, but since most of us aren’t in the office every day, we’ll think of ways to be creative as we aim to meet our firm-wide goal.
