Additional Information
A Nation of Giving
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans representatives are committed
to finding financial solutions for their members. But their commitment
doesn’t stop there.
In 2004, financial representatives in the 32 regional financial
offices of Thrivent Financial across the nation were challenged
to join their colleagues, families and others to make a difference
in their communities. From sponsoring a night at the ballpark
to building a playground for children to supporting an air show,
the events were as varied as the causes they supported. Following
are short stories on seven of the events that took place.
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From the Air
Involvement in the Indianapolis Air Show isn’t a new experience
for the Indiana
Region of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and its volunteers.
They’ve been a regular corporate sponsor the past few years, supporting
through volunteer work and funding the effort that annually raises
thousands of dollars for the Riley Hospital for Children.
But in 2004, they upped the ante—becoming the lead volunteer
organization for the whole show, which featured the U.S. Air Force
Thunderbirds.
“As a Fortune 500 organization, we have unique opportunities
to foster meaningful volunteer activities and make a difference
in the communities we serve,” says Dale Oelker, manager of Lutheran
community services for the Indiana Region. “This is one of Riley
Hospital’s biggest fund-raising efforts, and it gives us a great
opportunity to make a difference.”
More than 900 Thrivent Financial volunteers, including 35 financial
representatives and staff from the Indiana Region, contributed
more than 6,000 volunteer hours to the event. And Thrivent Financial
contributed $125,000, a large part of the more than $220,000 raised
at the annual air show for the Riley Hospital for Children.
“A group of financial representatives in Northwest Indiana organized
a chartered bus that included more than 50 volunteers making a
three-hour drive to assist with the event,” Oelker says.
As lead volunteer organization, the Indiana Region of Thrivent
Financial was primarily responsible for providing volunteers to
organize and staff admission gates, traffic flow and parking,
as well as support the flight-line chalets and corporate tents.
In return, Thrivent Financial received greater visibility, including
mentions in TV and radio advertisements and airing of Thrivent
Financial commercials on two jumbo video screens along the flight-line.
To find volunteers, Oelker used some of the already existing
channels, such as financial representatives and congregational
coordinators. “We also hosted a couple of pre-event rallies where
people were invited to come and learn more about what we were
going to be doing,” Oelker says. “We held the events at the hangar
and provided them the info to take back to their churches.”
A volunteer link on the region’s Web site enabled volunteers
to sign up to help at the date and time of their choosing. “I’d
say 98 percent of the people we recruited to volunteer came in
through the Web site,” Oelker says.
Volunteers, including Thrivent Financial representatives, came
from throughout Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. “We knew we were on
to something when the managing partner of the Indiana Region was
out parking cars at 7 a.m.,” Oelker says with a laugh.
Planning already is under way for the 2005 Indianapolis Air Show,
which will be held Aug. 26-28 featuring the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels.
“Riley Hospital for Children serves every county in Indiana,”
Oelker says. “It’s just an outstanding volunteer experience, combining
the thrills and excitement of one of the country’s best air shows
with an opportunity to help needy children.”
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Playing Around
A new playground in the Kansas City Blue Valley neighborhood quickly
has become a magnet for neighborhood children. “People have told
me there are so many kids playing there that you can’t see the
equipment,” laughs Fred Hollich, manager of Lutheran community
services in the Kansas
and Missouri Region of Thrivent Financial.
The playground is the work of a group of dedicated volunteers
led by the Thrivent Financial regional office, Kansas City Chiefs’
Dante Hall and his X-Factor Foundation, the Kansas City Parks
and Recreation Department, and Ka-BOOM!
“We were challenged to be creative in trying new projects to
engage our members in volunteer activities,” Hollich says of the
impetus for the project. “We wanted to include a large number
of volunteers, make a strong community impact and draw some media
attention.”
If those were the goals, this project went three-for-three.
On the volunteer side, more than 30 financial representatives
from the Kansas and Missouri Region joined with nearly 175 Thrivent
Financial members and 50 neighborhood residents to build the playground.
“We actually had so many volunteers that we finished early—we
were on our way home by 2:30 and it was supposed to run until
5 p.m.,” Hollich says.
As for media attention, Hall’s volunteer work was the focus of
the ESPN Monday Night Football pre-game show segment Nov. 22.
Hall, wearing a Thrivent Financial visor, talked about his role
in building the Thrivent Financial-sponsored playground for inner
city youth.
And as for community impact, the neighborhood involvement in
building the playground, as well as its use since, are strong
indicators of the significant difference this playground is making
in the Blue Valley neighborhood.
The playground was one of several projects the Kansas City Chiefs
had offered up when Hollich originally called them to see if they
could help. The Ka-BOOM! playground project almost immediately
jumped to the top of the list.
“Dante had expressed a strong interest in serving inner-city
children in the area because of his own background,” Hollich says.
“He’s committed to helping kids.”
But this wasn’t just a bunch of adults trying to come up with
the perfect playground. While the Kansas City Parks and Recreation
Department helped with site location, it was the neighboring children
who came up with the plan.
“We had a design day which brought Dante, Ka-BOOM! representatives
and about 40 to 50 children from the PAL (Police Athletic League)
program together to talk about what they wanted in the park,”
Hollich says. “It really provided some real life lessons for the
volunteers to learn what’s on the minds of small inner city kids.”
For example, the youth were asked to help set the rules for the
park. “One little girl raised her hand and said ‘no graffitti,’”
Hollich says. “The next little girl says ‘no guns.’ That’s a real
life lesson.”
The children had the opportunity to individually draw their dream
playgrounds, and Hall brought each child forward to discuss his
or her drawing with him. “One girl wanted an elevator to the top
of the slide and a wading pool at the bottom,” Hollich says. “Unfortunately,
we didn’t have the budget for that!”
The children designed and created the ribbons for the ribbon
cutting, and they participated in an essay contest, with the winner
serving as the kid speaker at the ribbon cutting. They also planted
1,000 tulip bulbs at the park. “The kids were in this all the
way,” Hollich says.
Local police and fire departments provided assistance the day
of the build, and local churches and businesses provided food
and beverages for the day.
“There were a lot of highlights to this event,” Hollich says.
“Many people were just excited about doing a volunteer project.
For many, meeting a sports star was a big deal. But the real impact
was when the kids came over after school and saw what was going
on. Seeing their faces was the best part.”
It’s made such an impact in Kansas City that Hollich says plans
already are under way for another Ka-BOOM! build in 2005. “We’re
looking for a site.”
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Viewing ‘Luther’
Financial representatives in the Pacific Southwest Region of
Thrivent Financial—an area that includes Southern California,
Arizona, Hawaii, New Mexico and Clark and Nye counties in Nevada—turned
what could have been a simple movie night into so much more.
When Stacy Swanson, the region’s manager of Lutheran community
services, began looking for ideas for an event that could include
financial representatives and members from throughout the region,
she initially didn’t think she’d find any.
“Our region is so big and spread out over multiple states that
I wasn’t sure we could pull something together,” Swanson says.
“We decided to do a hands-on work project at our region’s retreat.”
Lutheran Braille Workers came in with supplies, and 89 members
of the Pacific Southwest Regional Financial Office spent an evening
binding braille materials. “It allowed us to help and gave some
exposure to the work being done by Lutheran Braille Workers,”
Swanson says.
But the region still wanted to something more with a bigger splash.
That’s when one of the financial representatives suggested setting
up viewings of “Luther” in several communities. It was after the
regular run of the movie in theaters but before it became available
on DVD and video.
Financial representatives began to coordinate viewing times and
locations with chapter leaders. Eleven locations—nine in California
and two in Hawaii—were designated.
“We also requested that when doing their planning, they should
somehow incorporate a fund-raiser for an organization they would
designate,” Swanson says. “They could do an appeal, a collection
or charge for tickets, whatever they chose. And each one was different.
Some chose local homeless shelters, while another supported a
Lutheran high school.”
On top of that, each location added a hands-on service component—collecting
food for local food pantries. Some of the sites invited a local
pastor or Lutheran college professor to come in and do a question-and-answer
period after the movie.
When all was said and done, more than $88,000 was raised and
truckloads of food were delivered to nine food pantries—all the
result of groups of Lutherans wanting to get together and make
a difference. “Everyone just loved the events,” Swanson says.
“For some this was a real opportunity for fellowship. And they
learned a lot, too.”
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The ol’ ballgame
A June night at the ballpark with fellow Lutherans turned into
an opportunity to provide a playground for impoverished children
in the Texas
Region of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.
Lutheran Night at the Ballpark has a rich history in Arlington,
Texas. For many years, Lutherans would gather to cheer on their
favorite team and enjoy the fellowship of other Lutherans, says
Dee Terry, manager of Lutheran community services for the Texas
Region. Then, when priorities shifted to start up the new chapter
system in 2002, the event was dropped…but not for long.
In 2004, under the leadership of longtime Rangers fan Michael
Cuda, the event was revived. But for Cuda, who also serves the
Dallas-Tarrant Chapter as community service team director, it
was more than an opportunity to see the Rangers play; it was a
chance to raise some money and make a difference.
“We had heard about an early childhood development center being
built on the north side of Fort Worth in a 90 percent Hispanic
community, and we wanted to support them,” says Cuda.
The center was the Open Arms Childhood Development Center at
Christo Rompio Las Cadeneas Lutheran Church. The center, established
by the Lutheran Inner-City Network Coalition, was being built
to serve 70 low-income children in a high-quality Christian environment.
At the time, more than 800 families were on waiting lists for
early childhood development centers in Fort Worth.
Cuda worked with the Texas Rangers to establish $8 ticket prices
for the June 12 game against the St. Louis Cardinals—$7 was the
price of admission and $1 of every ticket sold by the group would
help build a playground for the children at Open Arms.
Thrivent Financial representatives from the Texas Region led
the way in selling tickets for the event, which was attended by
2,000 Lutherans. With the $2,000 from ticket sales, and donations
from the Texas Region and Thrivent chapters throughout the state,
more than $30,000 was raised. “It was more than enough to build
a complete playground,” Cuda says.
More than 200 volunteers participated in the playground construction,
which took place over a couple of days in September—the same time
Lutheran volunteers were hard at work building four Habitat for
Humanity homes in Fort Worth. Both projects were an investment
by Thrivent Financial and Lutheran churches across North Texas
to help people on the Fort Worth’s north side.
For Cuda, the best part of the two-pronged approach to making
a difference was seeing the faces of the children for whom the
playground was being built.
“Some of the children and families who were using the center
were there working on the project side-by-side with us. When we’d
get done with a section, we’d tell the kids to try it out. Seeing
their faces light up was worth it all.”
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Feed Ohio
Thanksgiving came early in Ohio in 2004. On Nov. 11 to be exact.
That was the day that more than 100 volunteers from the Ohio
Region of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and the Hunger
Network of Greater Cleveland gathered to help the hungry of Cleveland
by distributing more than 1,200 turkeys.
And that was only the beginning. The Ohio Region of Thrivent
Financial actually purchased 4,244 turkeys from Perdue Farms,
at a cost of $42,000, for holiday hunger relief throughout Ohio.
The effort, called Feed Ohio, fed more than 50,000 people last
Thanksgiving.
“Feed Ohio is a way for Thrivent Financial for Lutherans volunteers
of all ages across Ohio to show their care for others,” says Bob
Felt, manager of Lutheran community services for the Ohio Region.
“This focused directly on our organization’s mission to improve
the quality of life of its members, their families and their communities,
and to care for others.”
Felt first got the idea for Feed Ohio from a Thanksgiving Day
2003 segment on NBC’s “Today.” The show featured the Turkeys 4
America project founded by brother and sister Dan and Betsy Nally
in Boston in 1996.
“I was so impressed with them and what they were trying to do
that I thought we should try it, too,” Felt said. He contacted
a representative of Turkeys 4 America, spoke with his Thrivent
Financial leadership team, and the project was under way.
Felt and his team worked with a number of different food banks
to determine the need, starting with the Hunger Network of Greater
Cleveland. The Cleveland area has seen the demand for emergency
food increase by 27 percent over the past three years, an all-time
high.
“We wanted to ensure that the turkeys would get to the people
really in need, and they had a list of people,” Felt says. They
also worked with the Akron-Canton Food Bank, Second Harvest of
the Mahoning Valley, Lutheran Social Services of Central Ohio,
and four food pantries in the Dayton area to provide for needs
in those areas.
More than 230 volunteers from throughout the state, including
nearly 50 volunteers from the Ohio Regional Financial Office of
Thrivent Financial, turned out to help deliver the turkeys to
four major locations in Cleveland, Akron/Canton, Columbus and
Mahoning Valley. At each location, a produce truck carrying from
844 to 1,700 turkeys needed to be unloaded for distribution to
regional food banks.
“It was a beehive of activity,” Felt recalls with volunteers
lined up to unload turkeys into waiting vehicles.
In Cleveland, radio stations were broadcasting live from the
scene, resulting in one person dropping off a turkey of their
own and additional listeners stopping by with cash donations.
The Ohio Region of Thrivent Financial provided $30,000 for the
turkeys and the remaining $12,000 was raised through separate
activities.
“It was a simply amazing day,” Felt says. And plans already are
under way for an even bigger event in 2005.
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A home run for
the homeless
Pam Moksnes didn’t have any proof, but she was confident that
the 11th Annual Lutheran Night at the Twins could generate $100,000
to help Minnesota’s 2,800 homeless youth. At least she was going
to try.
“Lutheran Night at the Twins has a long, successful history,”
says Moksnes, a senior financial consultant in the Twin Cities
Region of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. “I was sure it could
provide the momentum we’d need to do something big.”
And with a lot of help from her colleagues, Lutheran Social Service
of Minnesota (LSS) and a large number of Minnesota Twins fans,
she hit a home run when the Minnesota Twins took on the Anaheim
Angels at the Minneapolis Metrodome Aug. 4. The event raised more
than $125,000.
Early on, the decision was made that all funds raised through
the annual event would benefit LSS programs benefiting homeless
youth, including street outreach, an emergency short-term shelter
and several transitional living programs, among others. “It is
a need we really wanted to impact,” Moksnes says.
A lead gift of more than $35,000 from the Twin Cities Region
got the ball rolling. Then the Twin Cities financial representatives
and the regional staff literally hit the pavement—selling tickets
to the game, encouraging Thrivent chapters to raise funds and
seeking donations from corporate sponsors. The event was promoted
in Lutheran congregations across the greater metro area.
“We gave everyone goals to reach and really pulled out all the
stops,” says Moksnes.
The night of the game, more than 200 volunteers manned collection
boxes at the gates and throughout the Metrodome. Eleven buses,
rented by Thrivent Financial representatives, pulled into the
parking lot filled with Thrivent Financial members and baseball
fans. At least three suites were rented by supporting businesses
to encourage donations.
“I had the opportunity to go into the executive suites and club
boxes to pick up checks from donors,” Moksnes says. “And after
the game, we had lots of people still calling financial representatives
to find out where they could send their checks. They were dropping
off checks for a month after.”
During the seventh inning stretch, the managing partners of the
Twin Cities Region, Bill Reichwald and Tim Schmidt, along with
Mark Peterson, LSS president, sang the traditional “Take Me Out
to the Ballgame” and encouraged the 28,000 fans in attendance
to hit a home run for the homeless youth of Minnesota.
LSS hopes to raise $400,000 to help keep its current programs
benefiting homeless youth open over the long term. Due to previous
state budget cuts, LSS was not able to fully fund youth programs
for at-risk youth.
“We hit a home run in our initial at bat, but until every Minnesota
youth has a life of safety, stability and hope, we all have much
more work to do,” Moksnes says.
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Sweet music
With three “gigs” under their belts and nearly $30,000 raised
for disaster relief, eight financial representatives in the Southeast
Region of Thrivent Financial know they have truly found a
way to combine their passion for music with their passion for
helping others.
The band had its start last spring when Ed Blanton, managing
partner of the Southeast Region, and Ginny Hultquist, manager
of Lutheran community services for the region, were looking for
a new, creative way for he and his teammates to serve their communities.
“I knew we had several musicians in the group,” says Blanton,
a guitar player and vocalist himself from Mount Pleasant, South
Carolina. “And when I came to them with the specific request to
help, they almost universally said yes.”
The band, which has members from North and South Carolina as
well as Georgia, primarily plays the rock and roll sounds of the
1960s and 1970s as well as South Carolina’s official music—beach
music. Some of their pieces include: “Old Time Rock ’n Roll,”
“Sweet Home Alabama,” “My Girl” and “Margaritaville.”
“Most of us have been playing so long we’ve been practicing these
songs since they were new,” laughs Blanton.
Joining Blanton in the band is:
- James Beauston, financial associate from Mount Pleasant, South
Carolina, bass guitar and vocals
- Craig Bruno, financial consultant from Pooler, Georgia, guitar
and vocals
- David Calloway, financial consultant from Cary, North Carolina,
drums
- Kenneth Keisler Sr., regional support associate from Irmo,
South Carolina, guitar and vocals
- Stephen Kerekes, financial associate from Charlotte, North
Carolina, guitar
- Gregory Simmons, financial associate from Hickory, North Carolina,
percussion and backup vocal
- Bubba Willis, financial associate from Columbia, South Carolina,
keyboard and vocals.
While playing together is always fun, it’s not always easy. “The
logistics are challenging,” Willis says, citing the fact that
the eight musicians live in seven cities in three states. “Generally
we try to get together several hours before a performance to rehearse.
And we do a lot of rehearsing on our own.”
That means they have to have good communication channels through
phone and e-mail to make those important decisions such as who’s
playing which part and in what key, says Blanton. And a couple
of the band members continue to play with other bands on the weekend
as a hobby.
Distance aside, all has gone well for the group. In 2004, they
raised $17,000 for Lutheran Newberry College in Newberry, South
Carolina; $10,000 for rebuilding hurricane-damaged Camp Linn Haven,
a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod camp in Linville, North Carolina;
and $2,400 at the Charleston County Chapter fund-raiser for Hurricane
Ivan relief.
And they already have a couple of requests for this year.
“I’ve been most impressed by the dedication of these individuals
and that they are willing to donate their time to do this,” Blanton
says. “This has given us many new opportunities and has been a
wonderful experience.”