Nonprofit Participation

Apply for Thinksgiving 2024

To qualify for Thinksgiving in 2024, nonprofits must:

Be a “Real” Nonprofit

To qualify, nonprofits must have 501(c)(3) status, a defined mission, and established leadership.*

Serve the #STL

Because Thinksgiving is a local initiative, nonprofits must have their headquarters in the greater St. Louis region and/or serve the St. Louis area.

Do the Work

Nonprofits must be able to field a team of 3-5 individuals who can participate together in person for all of Thinksgiving Day.

* To maintain a productive atmosphere for participating Business Partner teams, we are unable to accept applications from Nonprofits that actively promote specific religious doctrines, have overt political affiliations, or take highly polarizing stances.

Why participate?

Beyond the obvious benefit of thought partnership with skilled, community-centered professionals focused on a challenge you’d love to solve, Thinksgiving is also a way for your nonprofit to:

Increase Your Visibility

You’ll educate others about your mission while also engaging with other business and nonprofit peers who might become future collaborators and thought partners.

Build Your Network

Thinksgiving is a unique way to meet and develop relationships with creative and civic-focused professionals employed by many of our region's leading companies. 

Upskill Your Team

Your team members will learn new skills, and you’ll get access to additional innovation-focused programming, training, and tools from Filament throughout the course of the year.

What Nonprofits Say

How Thinksgiving Works

You’ll Identify a Challenge You Want to Solve

The Filament team will help you identify a challenge you’d love to solve. Past challenges have focused on culture, strategy, marketing, volunteers, board engagement, workforce, and innovation. Most importantly, your nonprofit challenge can’t be about money (otherwise, it probably would).

Business Partners “Draft” a Nonprofit Challenge

Next, we gather the Business Partners for the Thinksgiving Draft, where each team selects one of the nonprofit challenges that aligns with their team’s expertise. They won’t know the identities of the nonprofits connected with each challenge until after all selections are made.

The Teams Pair on Thinksgiving Day

On November 7th, your Nonprofit and Business Partner teams will meet for a full day of strategic thinking and creative problem solving on Thinksgiving Day at Cortex. The day concludes with a party where everyone’s work is shared and celebrated.

Nonprofit FAQ’s

  • Thinksgiving works best when a variety of nonprofits participate. Each year we look for nonprofits from the following sectors:

    • Animal Welfare

    • Arts & Culture

    • Economic & Community Development

    • Education

    • Environmental Conservation

    • Health & Human Services

    • Social Justice & Equity

  • Nonprofit challenges can’t be about money (or they all would). Generally, they fall into the following categories:

    • Marketing & Branding

    • Scaling an Offering

    • Board Engagement

    • Team Culture & Alignment

    • Improving Internal Processes

    • Messaging & Storytelling

    • Building Partnerships

    • Finding Talent and/or Volunteers

    • Launching Something New

  • Filament teaches the Business Partners how to facilitate your Thinksgiving day together, but we’ll also share with you best practices and things you'll need to know to get the most from your experience.

  • Each Thinksgiving 4-5 person nonprofit team must have one executive leader and 3-4 others who might include a team member, volunteer, board member, and/or someone the nonprofit serves.

  • While Business Partners pay to participate, nonprofits participate in Thinksgiving for free.

  • Thinksgiving is currently not a nonprofit organization (although it may be in the future).

    Funds raised via sponsors and business partners are used to continue to grow Thinksgiving, cover costs for the event, and support the more than $500,000 worth of free programming Filament provides to the St. Louis community.

  • Thinksgiving is the brainchild of Filament. It is a labor of love and takes our entire team most of a year to build.