Relationship Building, Team Building, Community Support

September 25, 2010 from 10-2 PM at 4343 78st Crescent, Red Deer

Right now we are getting close to our 2nd annual fundraiser and I am very excited about it. You see it’s always been part of our business plan to get involved in the community and find our own little way to make a notable contribution. (This should be in your plan too.)

The organization we decided to support is the Food Bank. Last year in particular the Food Bank took quite a hit with the onset of economic recession. So we did what you would expect and designated a day for free services in exchange for donations, nothing fancy there. Additionally we organized what we called the Client Revenge Trainer Challenge, where all of our trainers squared off against each other in a fitness challenge and our clients got to watch, holler, ridicule, count (terribly like we do) and generally enjoy the shoe on the other foot so to speak.

We were pleased, in just over three weeks we raised over 800lbs of food for the Food Bank and a few thousand dollars. We never expected the additional rewards that came unknowingly with something like this.

There is no doubt that it feels great to give back to the community what had never occurred to us was how incredible this event would become in terms of team building and the relationship with our customers. That enhanced relationship has produced dozens of new prospects and referrals. In all, this effort to say thank you to our community and lend a helping hand also turned out to be one of the most efficient and cost effective marketing campaigns we’ve ever ran. It also built a stronger bond amongst our team members than any other activity to date.

To organize your own winning charitable activity there is only one major ingredient or hurdle you need to tackle. Create a closed loop fundraiser, meaning one that can’t fail. The key ingredient to the success of last year’s event was relieving the “what if it doesn’t work?” early. All we did was specify that if people didn’t donate on the services by donation day we would simply donate a portion of the regular fees associated to their sessions that day and for the trainer challenge each person participated simply contributed 10 items, so there was no way the event could fail. Those couple little things were all it took for us to pull the trigger with peace of mind and the rest is history.

This year a new idea has made it even bigger, we’re now inviting others to prepare teams for a community fitness challenge against the Fire Department, we’ve moved it offsite we’re attracting many businesses and local media. We’ve made it clear that we don’t need any special acknowledgment or recognition as much as we just need people to take the idea and make it their own and come out. I have no doubt that the event will be a success and the potential for it to rapidly grow to a recognizable annual event is tremendous. From a purely marketing standpoint we don’t need special recognition for the event because it will simply happen regardless if people like the event and the lack of pressure or focus for any specific result will continue to make it the best company culture development tool you could ever hope to accidentally plan.

 If you’d like to join us you too are more than welcome, you will find all the details here: Fitness vs Fire Event Page