BELDEN BRICK & SUPPLY COMPANY
ARCHITECTURAL AND MASONRY SCHOLARSHIPS
The practice of holiday gift-giving within our industry has traditionally entailed presenting our clients and associates with modest tokens of appreciation for helping to support our business throughout the year.
But the holiday season of 1997 saw this practice raised to new and excessively lavish heights. Belden Brick & Supply wondered if perhaps as an industry we had not lost sight of the essential holiday spirit. So the following year, instead of contributing to yet another round of expensive corporate gift-giving, we applied our resources toward not only upholding the values of the season, but meaningfully investing in the future of our business community. We started a scholarship program.
The Belden Brick & Supply Company Architectural and Masonry Scholarship program, which for the past 10 years has benefited the children and grandchildren of our associates in the brick industry, affirms our commitment to our trade and its people. Today the program has established endowments at Aquinas College and Calvin College, both of Grand Rapids, aiding numerous students with scholarship awards of up to $1,500 annually. A third endowment is presently being funded through annual gifts to Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, to which Belden Brick & Supply intends to contribute each holiday season until the endowment is fully funded and self-sustaining.
And we're not stopping there. Hope College in Holland, Michigan, will be the next recipient of Belden scholarship funds, and long-term plans include gifts to other area colleges and universities as well.
Our annual contributions to the Architectural and Masonry Scholarship program means more to us, and to our colleagues in the industry, than simply another exercise in token corporate gift giving. And we also think it's a pretty good way to uphold the values of the season.
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