From Sourdough to Scholarships…
It all started in the Fall of 2019 when two friends would get together every Wednesday to bake sourdough bread… Before we knew it sourdough took over us and we were making more bread than our families could consume. What do you do with extra bread fresh from the oven? We started sharing the rest with friends, mostly our Turkish- American community in San Diego. Seckin began using sourdough to bake traditional Turkish favorites like simit and pide . After many trials and errors, we perfected those recipes too.
Our friends insisted that we should charge them and the idea of SD Bakers came to life. We started with our small circle of friends in February 2020 and has been baking since then alternating between sourdough bread, challah, simit, pide and crackers. Our motto is to use only sourdough as yeast and to buy organic flour, and the best ingredients that we would feed our kids.
We knew we were going to incorporate BTF fundraising into this venture eventually. Unprecedented Covid outbreak led us to allocate part of our revenue to BTF for the Laptops4Kids project. Like other circles, San Diego has limited options to raise funds during the pandemic and we have quickly realized that it would not be sustainable to continuously ask for donations during these hard times.
We initiated “SD Bakers for BTF” program in September 2020 enlarging our customer base by announcing that we were going to donate part of our revenue to BTF. The support was amazing. People wanted to pay more than the cost of bread as they knew it was going to be utilized for a great cause. Our first donation in October was for the Laptops4Kids project. Since then, we have been steadily donating to BTF scholarships program and with the company matching we are able to support 10 college girls.
While providing good quality bread, or a piece of Turkey at every bite of simit, we are also able to continue BTF scholarships as a community effort that makes charity sustainable and meaningful. In SD Circle, other volunteers started their own fundraising projects too. One of our friends makes Noah’s pudding every year during Fall and she sells them to the community providing enough scholarships for three university students. Another friend decided to make humus with the same purpose right before Thanksgiving all on her own.
These kind of fundraising efforts are much more effective as the donors receive something tangible besides feeling good in the exchange. It is sustainable as we do not ask for donations but provide a meaningful service.
Bridge to Türkiye Fund (BTF) is a US based, volunteer run, charitable non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization. Contributions made to BTF are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by IRS. BTF’s tax identification number is 58–678580.
