This past weekend, the St. Louis Area Foodbank’s Young Professionals Board (YPB) partnered with Moulin Events & Meetings on their sixth annual Centennial Beer Festival.
Members of the YPB, along with Foodbank staff, were there to help direct crowd traffic and promote hunger awareness. The event organizer, Jason Arnold, is a former Foodbank Board member and current partner at Moulin and its sister establishments – Vin de Set and PW Pizza.
The festival was a great introduction to events for our newly-formed and growing YPB.
In addition to a minimum contribution from the organizers, they offered a raffle in which attendees could win $500 worth of the more than 200 different festival beers on hand.
Going in, I assumed selling chancesto win beer to folks attending a beer festival wouldn’t be too tough a task. My assumption was right on – we raised more than $2,000 – but I’ll admit I was surprised at how many of the 1,400 attendees already knew about the Foodbank and how many were interested in what we do.
Hundreds stopped by the Foodbank table my wife and I staffed on Saturday and nearly everyone asked about our food supply or added some anecdotal history they had with the Foodbank.
I was also touched that so many took a pass on the raffle and just simply made a contribution to our cause. The teaming with Jason and the Centennial Beer Festival was certainly a success and one that we look forward to growing in years to come.
Everything we do as an organization has a direct goal of providing food to someone in need and this event was no exception. The $2,000 raised will help us bring in nearly $18,000 worth of food to the area.
In addition to the funds raised, this event served another purpose. The YPB has recently launched a “Friends of the Foodbank” initiative to attract those interested in small networking events that engage people in hunger relief.
Our kick-off event for the Friends group will be held at the Foodbank on Thursday, March 6, 2014.
For more information, or to attend, please visit www.stlfoodbank.org/get-involved/friends.
Cheers!
By Matt Dace
Senior Vice President at the St. Louis Area Foodbank
