User:Mcgratcm/Empty Stocking Fund

Empty Stocking Fund
The Gazette-El Pomar Foundation Empty Stocking Fund benefits 14 local health and human service agencies on the front lines of helping people in need and assisting others in achieving self-sufficiency.

History
In November 1984, E. Roy Smith, publisher of the Colorado Springs daily newspaper - then known as the Gazette Telegraph later to be know as just The Gazette (Colorado Springs) - walked into the office of his marketing director with an idea. He borrowed the idea from a sister newspaper in the Freedom Newspapers chain, and it had already started to take shape and grow in his mind. He wanted to start a holiday drive to collect goods and money for needy families.

Marketing director Diane Wengler went to work on it, got together with an advertising staff artist, and they came up with a logo and a name: The Empty Stocking Fund. Smith asked the editor, Tom Mullen, if he would have his staff write stories about needy people in the community. Little did they know how the project would explode.