You get what you GIVE

It’s no secret that at Confetti Betti our primary objective is to CELEBRATE. We celebrate all the things…from little moments of friendship to big milestone events. The core of our mission is to make the power of the party, the magic of celebration, easier and more accessible for our customers. This holiday season, we’ve been thinking a lot about the intersection of celebration and gratitude. Betti has shown us that this sweet spot, where gratitude and celebration meet, is where the best kind of magic happens. With this Betti Says Blog entry, we wanted to share our gratitude with you and update you on where the Power of the Party has been especially poignant in Betti Land the past few months.

The Betti Effect

As you might know, giving back to our community has always been a priority for us. The reason for this is really two-fold. First, it’s just who we are. Both of us value people and relationships above all else. We love our community and want to make a difference in whatever way we can. The second reason is that we believe that to be successful in any venture, you have to think globally, but ACT locally. We believe that by paying it forward to real people and causes in our local community, we will reap benefits at a global level. In short, we believe that in life and business, you truly will get what you give.

With this in mind, we created the Betti Effect….which seeks to spread the Power of the Party to those in our community who need celebrating the most: at risk and vulnerable youth. Our signature program is called Square 1, but over the past few months we have also worked with a local foster agency on a Halloween give back and we just wrapped up an amazing program to support the Backpacks for Kids program at our local food bank. Since YOU: our family, friends, customers, and supporters have helped make all of these programs possible; we wanted to update you, express our gratitude, and CELEBRATE the recent success of each of these programs.

Trick or Treat Give Back

It’s no secret that Halloween is one of our very favorite Betti seasons. We love getting our Betti-Boo on and are truly HERE for all the tricks and treats! This Halloween was particularly special though. One of the celebration boxes we offered this year was a ‘Trick or Treat Box’ and it celebrated all the best parts of the Trick of Treat experience: a special bag for candy collection, a super fun treat, and glow sticks for being spooky! We loved seeing these boxes fly off the shelf and were excited to see our Betti bags hit the Trick or Treat circuit. But that got us thinking…how could we get these bags (and other goodies) in the hands of kids that might not be able to get them otherwise? We decided to donate some to a local foster agency and on a whim, asked our amazing customers to join us in gifting Trick or Treat boxes to kids in foster care. It only took a couple days for the Betti Effect to completely take over and we were able to gift these fun Halloween boxes to every child in the Kids Peace South Bend foster program. It was BOO-tiful and we couldn’t have done it without YOUR support!

The Giving Plate

As we have continued to expand our business into celebration gifts and goods, we wanted to offer a gift that really embodied the spirit of giving this holiday season. We had lots of ideas, but landed on a beautifully engraved acacia giving plate. The giving plate is meant to be shared. The idea is that you fill it up with a treat, pass it along to someone you love, and once they enjoy the bounty, they fill it back up and pass it on. The plate and its purpose are pretty awesome as is, but we wanted to up the giving and donate back to food insecure kids in our community. As such, we decided that 20% of all Giving Plate proceeds (or about 28 meals per plate) would go to our local food bank’s Backpacks for Kids program. The Backpacks for Kids program fills backpacks for kids dependent on school lunches to take home over the weekend. What could be a more beautiful fit for the Giving Plate?!?!

Friends…we’ll be honest, we thought we would sell a handful of plates to our friends and family locally and make a nice little donation to the Northern Indiana Food Bank. But…we weren’t dreaming big enough. Enter Instagram influencer and all-around amazing person, Laura Beverlin. Laura recently started a Sunday newsletter that features her followers and their small businesses. A friend of our’s recommended we check it out and reach out to her about Betti. We did, but with little expectation. Then, about a week later we noticed an order come through from Laura! She bought a bunch of Giving Plates! We were absolutely floored and also a little confused. It soon became clear though…Laura had chosen our Giving Plate as one of the items to feature in her Holiday Small Business Gift Guide. We were beside ourselves…like breathing into paper bags trying not to pass out excited.

Laura was amazing through the whole process and her followers came flooding to Confetti Betti and Giving Plate sales soared! With Laura’s help and all of YOUR support, we are so excited to share that Confetti Betti Giving Plates are now circulating all over the world and will provide nearly 8,000 meals for kids in need. This is absolutely the best gift we could ever give or receive this holiday season.

The Square 1 Program

Last but not least, we want to update you and express our gratitude for all of your support of the Square 1 program. This program gifts celebration journals to kids at the Juvenile Justice Center in South Bend. As part of the program, we volunteer there every few weeks. It is so amazing to see the kids pull out their journals and tell us all about what they are writing and drawing. Every Square 1 journal gifts one to a child in need of celebration and every donation at check out helps provide activities and treats for the kiddos and staff when we visit.

The arc of gratitude and celebration recently collided for us again when we started planning our Christmas visit to the Justice Center. We wanted to do something really special and memorable for the kids and staff, but needed help. We are fortunate to work with some of the most amazing woman-owned small businesses here in Michiana and wouldn’t you know it…they came through for us big time on this project! Our dear friend Erica from Graze donated empty charcuterie boards for us to make snack trays with all the kids favorite items (you know, childhood classics like donuts, pop tarts, etc) and also one of her beautiful signature charcuterie boards for the staff. And our baker extraordinaire, Ana, donated cookie kits for each pod of kids to decorate. We also had friends and family donate all the food items for their snack trays and stockings filled to the brim with Christmas treats.

We felt like Santa’s elves loading up all of these goodies and spent an entire Sunday morning celebrating each of these kids and the season. It was so incredible to see the light in their eyes as they unpacked the stockings or decorated a cookie. We also took Christmas cards for them to write to loved ones and again, through the generosity of our customers, we were able to mail all the cards for the kids on the spot. A cold cement room at a Juvenile Justice Center may not seem like a place where much joy could reside, but our hearts exploded with it as we watched celebration and gratitude collide in the most beautiful way.

Soooo...Betti says that this holiday season (and always really) it truly is better to give than to receive. We are so grateful for your support of our small business and especially how you have come out in droves to support the Betti Effect. We so look forward to CELEBRATING with you in 2022!