... ... ... Community, Service, and Gratitude: A Printer's Tale of Thanksgiving 2024

Community, Service, and Gratitude: A Printer’s Tale of Thanksgiving 2024

Community, Service, and Gratitude: A Printer’s Tale of Thanksgiving 2024

As a small, family-owned business, we take great pride in being deeply rooted in our local community. While we do serve national—and occasionally international—clients, the heart of our work lies in collaborating closely with local organizations, a natural fit for most print and communication firms.

The holiday season is a busy one for many of our clients and certainly for us. Our presses run nearly around the clock for weeks from the start of October through the New Year with direct mailers, publications, posters and wall installations, packaging … pretty much anything and everything needed for an amazing Q4. To say it’s an excitingly hectic quarter around our shop would be an understatement!

Yet, we’re never too busy to help another local organization service the community.

Sunday Breakfast Mission (SBM) is a local charity organization here in Wilmington, DE that provides shelter and meals for families in need. They support the community year-round, however, Thanksgiving is one of their busiest times of year.

Their annual food drive is vital to their mission of providing holiday meals for Delaware residents in need. Thousands of donation bags are circulated throughout the area in local newspapers, circulars, and identified donation areas. A hundred thousand bags to be exact. Without these bags making their way into the hands of donors, Sunday Breakfast Mission wouldn’t be able to work the holiday magic that it does.

This is where we enter the story.

Dear Ai,

I am writing today on behalf of the Sunday Breakfast Mission, Wilmington Delaware to formally thank Associates International for your company's immense support, flexibility, and follow through. As a Faith Based Organization, we truly believe that God placed one of your representative's, Karly Keenan, in our path during a local business expo not even a week prior to Identifying a major catastrophe that would later befall our organization.

To shed better light, the Sunday Breakfast Mission launches a Great Thanksgiving Food Drive each fall soliciting and collecting over 50 tons of food across the great state of Delaware. Each year we procure Paper Food Bags that are printed with the specifics of our food drive than later inserted into News Papers for distribution across the state.

This year, we opted to try a new vendor in effort to garner a stronger better bag for collecting and transporting product. When our order was received and delivered to the local newspapers for distribution, it was immediately identified that the bags had not been folded as was necessary for insertion into the newspapers prior to distribution. This was a very unexpected problem and huge disaster for us as we had very tight deadlines for turnaround.

Upon the realization of the potential disaster we were facing, Sunday Breakfast Mission started exploring local printing companies we could reach out to that might have the commercial folding equipment needed to fold the bags. This is where Associates International stepped in! SBM had just recently attended a local Business Expo in Wilmington the prior week and met a representative of Associates International by the name of Karly Keenan. We had really liked her upon our first meeting but never did we ever fathom how integral she and Associates International would become in saving our Thanksgiving Food Drive.

We called Karly concerning our huge dilemma and she asked if she could come get some of the bags to see if their equipment could fold them for us. She responded so quickly that she was at our site in under an hour to meet with us and get the samples to test. Upon test folding, it was determined by Al that all 100,000 paper bags would need to be unpacked, individually hand separated, than machine folded and repackaged prior to eventual delivery back to the newspapers for final distribution to the public.

Upon learning this unsetting news our hearts dropped to our needs as our problem had just become even more insurmountable. Karly however, was not dissuaded at all!

She responded to the problem saying we can do this If we work together as organizations. And with that we mobilized a joint operation whereby SBM opened and sorted all 1OOK bags at our location using staff. volunteers and even program participants and then shipped them over to Associates International for folding.

Over the two weeks that followed SBM staff worked closely with Karly and numerous staff of Associates International to logistically move, stage, and deliver the folded product to the papers. Our timelines had to be readjusted for distribution into the papers but because of the flexibility and teamwork of Associates International we were able to get the bags distributed in enough time to save our holiday drive.

To summarize our experience with Associates International as exceptional doesn't even express fully our appreciation of their company, staff and the culture we experienced working side by side with them during our ordeal. Most companies would have looked at the issues and obstacles that we were faced with and turned a blind eye. But Ai did not do that instead they stepped up to the plate for us and dug their heels in.

Because of the willingness of Associates International to work with us, we are optimistic that many families across the State of Delaware will enjoy a Thanksgiving Holiday meal together on the efforts and accommodation to Sunday Breakfast Mission. We look forward to building an even stronger relationship with them in the future.

God Bless,
Andrew Swenson,
Director of Projects & Development
Along w/ the leadership and Staff Sunday Breakfast Mission Wilmington Delaware

The gratitude flows in both directions!

Back in the fall, we shared a few snapshots across our social media channels highlighting our work with SBM. Initially, that was where we planned to leave the story—a celebratory image of the final bag being folded and a post capturing our volunteer day at the SBM facility.

Cathy and Tommy packing food boxes at SBM
Jeff packing boxes at SBM
Dave holding the last folded bag of 100K
Karly and Mark at SBM

If SBM hadn’t taken the time to write and mail us this incredible Thank-You letter, we probably wouldn’t have shared the full story. Not because it isn’t worth telling, but because finding creative solutions for client projects, supporting local organizations, and tackling work that others might shy away from—due to tighter profit margins—is simply what we do when we can. Call us humble, call us modest, but stories like this feel easier to be told in conversation than to be blogged.  

We are incredibly grateful to work with this amazing local organization, and we’re thankful we were able to find a solution to their problem. Here’s to continued partnership and amazing things yet to come throughout 2025.

Here’s to community, service, and gratitude.

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