A New Look for an Old Message

St. Vincent de Paul is celebrating our 75^th anniversary! This may not be news since we’ve been talking about it for a few weeks now. Even our Struttin’ Our Stuff event on Sept 10 highlighted this milestone. But let’s be honest: 75 years is a long time. A 75^th wedding anniversary is called Diamond (or maybe Platinum). And 75 years is about the average lifespan of an American. A lot can change over 75 years!

Little seems to be known of our origins in the Indianapolis Archdiocese in 1946. The first written history we have starts in the early 1970s. Even then, we were a small organization with a focus on food, clothing and a bit of furniture. Converted buildings and dirt floors were common back then for SVdP. My how far we have come!

To honor these 75 years of service and to embody our expanding focus on our neighbors in need, we have developed a unique logo for SVdP Indy. You see it in the Front Line e-newsletter, our mailings and website. This new logo includes three elements close to our hearts:

1. A heart in a hand—symbolic of reaching out to those in need, who have the heart of Christ
2. The tagline of “Serving Central and Southern Indiana,” calling out that we serve beyond Indianapolis
3. Secondary tagline: “Loving Our Neighbors for 75 Years”

This last element, Loving Our Neighbor, is part of our overall organizational branding. We’ve used it with the Love Your Neighbor 5K event for the past few years. We know we must feed our neighbor and clothe our neighbor, but the Gospel commands us to also love our neighbor. So now it is part of our brand.

We are still part of the national St. Vincent de Paul, of course. Nothing has changed there. But here in the Indianapolis and Southern Indiana area, we have a special calling to serve our neighbors in need. As part of our 75^th Anniversary, the staff at SVdP has developed a list of 75 Ways to Support SVdP. I encourage you to use this list as a way to honor the mission of St. Vincent de Paul and the work of all who have gotten us to this important milestone.

There is so much to do. Thank you for being part of the solution.