In South Orange County, California, Family Assistance Ministries (FAM) annually serves 11,000 unique clients dealing with matters of hunger and homelessness. Of their 11,000 clients, 46% are children, 15% are senior citizens, and an average of 390 encounters each month are with homeless individuals. FAM provides resources such as food, shelter, and personalized supportive counsel and aid in order to help clients bridge the gap from dependency to self-sufficiency.
As a non-profit organization serving the community, FAM tries to ensure that the majority of their funding and donations go directly towards helping the community. In fact, FAM is very proud that only 6% of their donations are used to cover administrative expenses, while the remaining 94% go directly towards services helping their clients in Orange County.
Starfish Serves as a Community Partner
In order to maximize spending on their services rather than administrative costs, non-profit organizations often rely on community partners to help cover additional expenses. Therefore, when FAM needed to replace their failing trucks, they sought community support to help them raise funds to purchase newer used trucks, and they turned to Starfish Signs & Graphics to provide the vehicle graphics that would identify their trucks out in the community.
“Because of the type of work we do, it’s really difficult for us to justify spending money on things other than directly on the people,” explains Mary Gary Perdue, Executive Director of FAM. “And while this is — the trucks are directly helping people — to be able to find community partners like Starfish, who will come along side and help means more of the money that gets donated goes out to clients.”
How the FAM Trucks Serve the Community
FAM serves 10 communities within southern Orange County. Among their services, they provide free food so their clients can redirect their limited income towards things like expensive prescriptions or missed medical bills from extensive cancer treatments.
The FAM trucks drive all over the community performing fresh rescues, stopping at local grocery stores to collect food that they can no longer sell. They also collect food from Second Harvest Food Bank, from Orange County Rescue Mission, and from a local packing house that donates fresh vegetables on a regular basis. Once the FAM trucks collect all of this food, FAM then redistributes the food immediately to their clients, expanding their access to healthy foods while also minimizing the amount of money they have to spend on food.
When FAM acquired the replacement trucks, Starfish Signs was able to assist them by subsidizing the vehicle graphics. In exchange, FAM allowed Starfish Signs to also place their logo on the trucks as a supporter of FAM. FAM provides an incredibly valuable service to the community, and Starfish Signs is proud to be able to contribute in this small way to FAM’s mission.
