Philanthropy has always been an avenue that helps give small businesses a sense of purpose. Not only does it help increase employee productivity and job satisfaction, but it also has been shown to have an impact on the bottom line for businesses. Most importantly however, it is important for small business to give back to their local communities to the causes that are important to them.
Monkey Bizness prides itself on working with organizations, schools, and non-profits in our local communities. Every year as the holiday season approaches, we debate on whether we should do something special because we know that this is a busy time for most families. This year our team wanted to come up with a way that we could partner with our customers to give back to the community. From this, A Wish for the Season was born (funny side note…..our team literally came up with the name after discussing Hallmark Christmas movies).
With A Wish for the Season our customers could nominate one family that had fallen on tough times to receive a free party and one year of unlimited free open play. This was the first time we had done anything like this so we were unsure of what the response would be. Our franchisees jumped on board immediately and loved the idea. We ended up giving away 4 different prizes so that customers of each store would have a chance to nominate a winner.
The results from A Wish for the Season were overwhelming. In just the two weeks which our nominations were opened, we received over 650 entries. We received multiple emails and calls from customers inquiring about the event and thanking us for doing something like this. Further, we had other local partners in our community offer to throw in additional prizes for our eventual winners. In short, the response was AMAZING!
I would be remiss if I didn’t at least touch on some of the business success of this story. Perhaps the most successful was our Colorado Springs franchisee who ended up having a story published in the front page of the business section of the local paper. While this is awesome on it’s own, the best had yet to come…..the local Fox station wanted to do a feature segment on the business. Not be outdone, the local ABC affiliate Kansas City wanted to do a feature segment on our franchisee in Shawnee Mission. The story was also picked up by multiple newspapers and bloggers in the Denver and Kansas City areas. What amounted to thousands of dollars of exposure in our local communities was being received for free. This publicity did not come about without hard work…our marketing team put together a brilliant public relations strategy to go along with this campaign.
While publicity was not the purpose of the campaign, it does illustrate some the business reasons for small businesses to strongly consider their philanthropic approach within their communities. According to the website Causely, studies consistently show charitable donations and corporate sponsorships have a positive impact on the bottom line through increased sales, improved consumer loyalty, employee morale, and enhanced brand awareness. Further, the website states that 90% of U.S. consumers say they would switch brands to one associated with a cause.
Every business has a mission unique to it. Small business should use that mission to help them identify avenues which will help them be more ingrained in the community and truly become a local business.
Monkey Bizness has franchise opportunities available throughout the United States. If you are interested in pursuing your business ownership dreams with Monkey Bizness, please reach out to us.
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