To our Food & Friends’ community:
After 35 years, Food & Friends is updating our logo and we are excited to share it with you!
Change is never easy. Our current logo has been our brand identity for more than three decades as we provided 27,730,180 home-delivered, medically tailored meals to 45,600 seriously or chronically ill individuals, dependents and caregivers with the help of our staff and tens of thousands of volunteers.
It carried Food & Friends through the AIDS epidemic and years of AIDS rides; the AVON Walk for Breast Cancer; our moves from Westminster Presbyterian Church to 58 L Street, SE and more than 20 years ago to our current home on Riggs Road NE; more than 30 Thanksgivings; and our eligibility expansions to cancer, diabetes, and other life challenging illnesses. In the years we’ve used this logo, we’ve built a supportive community of neighbors including healthcare providers, public officials, corporate and foundation partners, individual donors and volunteers.
While our current logo holds a special place in our hearts and history, it was time for an update to reflect the organization we are today and the tools we use to communicate our mission.
This has been a collaborative process since July 2021 when the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors gave approval for a logo refresh.
Working with Food & Friends’ Communications Committee, we hired Evelyn Powers of Design Powers. After several meetings throughout 2022, a tour of Food & Friends to see our work in action and the completion of a comprehensive Brand Journal, Evelyn presented several designs for consideration.
In February 2023, the Board of Directors selected the following design.
We hope you are as excited and in love with this new design as we are!
It was essential that the logo reflected both our history and who we are today, while embodying our values—not an easy task!
- Updating the bag design keeps the core of our mission—nutritious food—at the center.
- The rainbow inside the bag pays tribute to our historic roots in the LGBT community and represents both the healing properties and colorful variety of the meals we home-deliver to adults and children living with serious illnesses.
- The hand and heart symbolize three of our core values—compassion, community and dignity.
The freshness of the design suggests new beginnings while celebrating our past. It is more recognizable in evolving digital formats, which is how so much of our communication is done today. It’s more adaptive to changing technology, better meets the rapidly evolving requirements of new systems, appears more modern, distinguishes us from our competitors, and reflects our growing mission. Having no tagline as part of the logo is a best practice and allows us flexibility with digital icons.
Over the next two months we will be updating our letterhead, signage, website, and all other collateral with a goal to go “live” only using our new logo by June. We will be promoting our new logo through social media, a press release, and additional communications.
You are an important partner in our mission. We invite you to join us as a Brand Ambassador as we introduce our new logo to the community.
Thank you for your continued partnership and support. You make it possible for us to evolve and continue to respond to the needs of our neighbors living with a serious or chronic illness.
As always, please reach out to either of us with any questions.
With gratitude,
Jill Baldwin
Board President
Jill@foodandfriends.org
Carrie Stoltzfus
Executive Director
CStoltzfus@foodandfriends.org