WORDS: Shannon Evans
PHOTOS: Wendy Dewhurst
Every community has a pulse, and one of Bradenton’s strongest beats comes from a small building on 14th Street West. Here, an entirely volunteer-run organization called Stillpoint Mission has been meeting practical needs for twenty-seven years.
The mission’s work is humble yet relentless. It feeds families, helps with utility bills, and gives away diapers, shoes, and clothes. There are no fees, no paperwork beyond the bare minimum. Volunteers don’t ask questions that might make someone hesitate at the door. Need is enough.
“We turn no one away,” says Gary Scott, a volunteer and Stillpoint’s board president for the past two years. “If someone’s hungry, we feed them. That’s it.”
A Franciscan nun named Sister Nora Brick started Stillpoint in 1998. She was a woman so devoted to the poor that locals began calling her the “Mother Teresa of Bradenton.” She’d already started Project Light, a literacy program for migrant workers, when she envisioned a second outreach that would help people with their basic needs. Now in her nineties, Sister Nora lives in New Jersey, but her spirit seems to linger in the place she built.
One longtime volunteer, Michael John, knew her from earlier years. “She lived out what St. Francis taught,” he said. “She made people feel at home and gave everything from the heart.”
Amazingly, her mission still runs entirely on that volunteer energy, with no paid staff and no government funding or advertising—just forty people on rotation who keep showing up.
The Rhythm of Giving
The building hums with activity three days a week.
On Tuesdays, clients can come for utility assistance. They bring a bill and a photo ID, and Stillpoint gives them $80 towards an electric or water bill once every 3 months. In another room set up like a small Goodwill, shelves overflow with clothes and home goods. Clients have ten minutes to go in and take what they want.
Wednesdays are all about diapers. Parents line up in the narrow hallway, balancing car seats or holding the hands of sleepy toddlers. Each family receives a week’s supply of diapers and wipes.
On Fridays, the Food Bank truck arrives with extras like fresh produce and frozen meat to add to the non-perishables that volunteers collected the day before, and the distribution begins. The line outside often stretches around the block.
It’s hard work; through all the sorting and packing, the volunteers say it’s the people who give their work meaning.
“When you meet a mom in tears because she doesn’t have diapers, you remember why you’re here,” says Vice President and Board Member Marge Slepica.
In 2024, Stillpoint served more than 25,700 clients, a 40% jump from the year before. Volunteers distributed over 410,000 pounds of food and nearly 350,000 diapers, and the mission paid $163,000 in utility bills. The scale of the work is staggering for an organization with no paid staff and one modest building whose parking lot sits inconveniently across the street—which actually points to the mission’s own need.
“We’re looking for a bigger space, somewhere with a parking lot on the same side of the road as the building,” Gary says. “It’s just safer that way. If anyone has any buildings for sale or rent in the nearby area, please get in touch!”
One Friday, a woman came in with her children and explained her husband had lost his job, and they were running out of food. Gary remembers how it felt to see the kids standing there, watching their mother in distress. The volunteers packed their bags with extra groceries. A month later, she returned to say her husband had found work. Gary describes moments like that as the reason volunteers keep coming back to serve, despite the hard work in the Florida heat.
Marge admits there are days when the work feels heavy, but then she thinks of the mothers desperate for diapers, or the homeless man she once saw sitting on the curb, eating cold soup from a can. Those are the images that stick with her.
The mission’s kindness shows up in the seemingly small ways, too. Gary keeps bottles of bubbles behind the counter for kids who come in upset. If they start crying, he hands them a bubble wand, and their faces will brighten into smiles. (It’s hard to cry when bubbles are around!)
A Community at Work
Stillpoint’s strength comes from its volunteers, but also from the community around it. Local churches, civic clubs, and businesses organize food drives or give grants. The Food Bank of Manatee keeps the shelves stocked. At the beginning of the school year, Stillpoint runs a Back-to-School Backpack Program which distributes new backpacks filled with school supplies for students, from preschool through to high school. This past July, the mission gave out over 800 backpacks! They also give out $35 Bealls gift cards for new shoes and clothes for children, which Bealls gives to Stillpoint at a discount. The Notre Dame Club of Sarasota donates blankets every December for the Warm Wishes event, and the Knights of Columbus from St. Thomas More, Incarnation, and St. Patrick’s Catholic churches supply new jackets for kids.
There are plenty of quiet helpers, too, who pull up with trunks full of food and clothes. Seasonal residents often return with donations from their churches up north.
Manatee County keeps growing, and so does the line outside the mission’s door. Rising rent and food costs have made life harder for working families.
“We serve a lot of Latino and Haitian families,” Marge explains. “Some send money home. Some work full-time and still can’t make ends meet. It’s just expensive to live here.”
Volunteers hope that one day they can expand what they offer, like formula for babies or other supplies families can’t afford. But for now, they work with what they have. And after twenty-seven years, Stillpoint Mission is still what Sister Nora Brick intended it to be: a place where compassion meets community.
Gary often thinks about Sister Nora and what she’d say if she walked through the door today. “She’d recognize it right away,” he says. “Every person who comes in is treated with respect. That’s what she started, and that’s what we will continue doing.”
Stillpoint is always looking for more volunteers. If you can give two and a half hours a week, the mission will find something for you to do!
For more information or to donate to Stillpoint Mission, visit www.stillpointmission.org or stop by 1608 14th Street West, Bradenton.
The Still Point
S. Eliot wrote about”the still point of the turning world,” a place where movement and calm meet. For a Franciscan nun like Sister Nora, the name likely spoke to both the contemplative heart of faith and the practical mercy of serving the poor. Perhaps this was the idea she had in mind when she named Stillpoint Mission. The world rushes on outside its doors, but inside, there is steadiness. Volunteers pack food and give diapers, but they also listen to discover a client’s needs. Sometimes mercy requires stillness. Service does not always look like motion; sometimes it looks like presence. For twenty-seven years, Stillpoint has been that quiet center in Bradenton, a small space where kindness finds its footing.
