The Power of a Flower

Jennifer Polanz

Sunflower images are popping up everywhere as a mark of solidarity and strength with the war-torn people of Ukraine (it’s their national flower). A March story in The Washington Post highlighted a U.K. florist who sold sunflower bouquets and contributed the proceeds to the British Red Cross to help rescue efforts Ukraine.

This spring, if you’re so inclined, there are several great organizations raising funds to help the Ukrainian people. One, as Ellen Wells mentioned in her buZZ! Newsletter, is World Central Kitchen (wck.org), which has people on the ground in Ukraine and border areas to feed refugees. The online plant company Plant Addicts, meanwhile, announced it’s donating all proceeds from sunflower sales to the Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund. Run by Global Giving (a highly rated nonprofit), the fund had already raised nearly $5 million at the beginning of March. You can find more information here: www.globalgiving.org/projects/ ukraine-crisis-relief-fund.

In the March issue of GrowerTalks, we ran a story on why cause marketing is important and how to get started, in case you’d like ideas for how to tie in sunflower sales (or any other sales) to a donation. GP