Mandy Cloninger

If someone were to serve you your favorite meal, what would it be?

All Southern all the way: fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, macaroni and cheese and collard greens with peach cobbler and Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla.

Mandy Cloninger serves as the Executive Director for Trinity Cafe where humanity begins with a meal. Mandy joined Trinity Cafe in May 2015 as its first Executive Director. She is an accomplished fund raiser, a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE), and nonprofit leader with more than a decade of experience in higher education, health care and community-based nonprofits. She is passionate about mission work, both internationally and at home.

Mandy is an active member of Hyde Park United Methodist Church where she currently serves on the finance committee and has previously served as lay leader for missions. She is an international mission team volunteer and leader for United Methodists Volunteers in Mission (UMVIM). She has served in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba and led an international mission team to South Africa. She also facilitates and leads classes and discussions about best practices in local and international mission work. After her first international mission trip where she discovered a heart for service globally, she wanted to get more involved locally in mission work as well so she began volunteering at Metropolitan Ministries. Mandy combined her personal passion with her professional expertise when she joined the Metropolitan Ministries’ team as the Director of Advancement in September 2011. She most recently served as Senior Director of Advancement. Her career started in higher education fund raising with the University of Florida and the University of South Florida, and she also gained experience in health care fund raising with Tampa General Hospital.

“Sharing Trinity Cafe’s mission with those in the community and advancing the organization is a passion! More than 200,000 people struggle in Tampa and do not know where their next meal is coming from, and 1 in 4 are children. No child, woman or man should go hungry in our backyard. We cannot solve hunger alone. It takes a community working together to make this happen. Trinity Cafe is well positioned to help address hunger in this area and model for others how to serve with dignity. Our second location helped us double our impact on hunger, and in 2018, we look forward to opening a third location to further impact hunger in our community,” said Mandy.

Mandy has a Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations from Texas Tech University and a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from the University of Florida. She has also served as a Big since 2013 to her Little Alyssa, through Big Brothers Big Sisters, and became a certified foster parent and guardian for Alyssa in 2017. She serves on the board of directors for the Tampa Rotary Club. She has previously served as secretary for the Tampa Rotary Club, sponsorship committee chair for Leadership Tampa Alumni, and is a Class of 2011 graduate of Leadership Tampa.