St. Bonaventure University is just two weeks away from #GivingTuesdayatBonas, a 24-hour fundraising event on Dec. 2 that benefits the outreach ministries of the university’s Franciscan Center for Social Concern (FCSC).

Please join in helping to raise $75,000 in support of the FCSC mission. Every gift, no matter the size, will help ensure that the many programs and stories of success continue. 

To learn more about the FCSC, and to be part of the story by donating, visit https://bonniesgive.sbu.edu/giving-tuesday-at-bonas  or call (716) 375-2328. 

Elizabeth Egan, a graduate of SBU’s Jandoli School of Communication, reflects on the significance of her time working at the Warming House and the profound impact the programs of the Franciscan Center for Social Concern (FCSC) have on Bonaventure students.

By Elizabeth Egan, Class of 2023

The first time I recall feeling like I truly belonged at St. Bonaventure University was on a chilly Tuesday evening in the fall of my first year.

As a quiet first-year student adjusting to college life in the midst of a pandemic, I was wary of committing to any activity without my roommate. The exception was every Tuesday. I would muster the courage to head over to the ministry building by myself to meet the other volunteers and coordinators for a shift at the Warming House, the university’s student-run soup kitchen.

I had volunteered a few times before and would quietly tuck myself away washing dishes or peeling vegetables. But on this particular day, one of the coordinators mentioned they didn’t have the sauce needed for the day’s meal. I offered to make tomato sauce from scratch, and the coordinators were impressed that I knew how to make it without a recipe. I remember feeling so confident and relaxed that day as I worked on my sauce and talked with the other students. For the first time since arriving at school, I felt like I knew exactly what I was doing.

The next semester, I got a job as a coordinator, and the two days a week I worked at the Warming House became my favorite days of the week. It remained that way until the day I graduated.

During my second and third years at Bonaventure, I had the opportunity to work with the FCSC on the social media team and to help write press releases for Giving Tuesday.

As a Journalism major, I was excited for any opportunity that involved storytelling. Working on the Giving Tuesday campaigns and telling the stories of different stakeholders in a way that both authentically described their experiences while supporting the needs of the FCSC set me on a path to seek out a similar full-time role after graduation.

Helping to support the FCSC through Giving Tuesday — whether through a social media post featuring heartwarming dog photos from the SPCA or a story about a volunteer connecting with a student over Legos in Bona Buddies — became one of my proudest accomplishments of my college career. The experience inspired me to pursue communication roles in higher education, and the many anecdotes I shared from my time working with the FCSC carried me through the interview for my current position.

Currently, I’m working on a project creating a YouTube series featuring faculty and staff playing with rescue dogs while answering questions about various admissions-related topics. It’s funny to think that when I went to the Cattaraugus County SPCA to photograph volunteers playing with rescue dogs for SBU Giving Tuesday social media content, I never expected that experience to lead to a similar opportunity — creating social media content with rescue animals while working for a university four years later.

An unexpected lesson I took away from my time at the Warming House was a newfound sense of calm and confidence in my ability to accomplish the task at hand, even in the most chaotic circumstances. Through broken ovens, missing ingredients, scheduling oversights and an incident involving shrimp that provided me with an anecdote for every job interview that asks about a time I made a mistake and learned from it, somehow there wasn’t a single day when a hot meal didn’t make it out to the guests by 4 p.m.

On top of gaining practical experience, my work with the FCSC gave me the opportunity to meet some of my favorite people on campus. In my second year at the Warming House, while speaking with one of my co-coordinators, I got the impression he might have a bit of a crush on my roommate, Accounting alumna Victoria Byrne (BBA ’23, MBA ’24). I approached him one day while he was grabbing canned peaches from the Warming House basement and asked if he’d be interested in being set up on a date. In May, I’ll be returning to campus to be in the bridal party for their wedding in Doyle Chapel.

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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure is a community committed to transforming the lives of its students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a commitment to academic excellence and lifelong civic engagement. Out of 167 regional universities in the North, St. Bonaventure was ranked #8 for value and #19 overall by U.S. News and World Report (2025).