Give Back, Get Back: Cooking Up Chili and CSR in Cowboy Country October 02, 2009
By Geraldine Gatehouse
The 2009 Site Classic was held Sept. 9-12, 2009 at the Omni Fort Worth Hotel. Fort Worth—the City of Cowboys and Culture—is a new destination for many planners and corporate end-users, so it was a good opportunity for the city to showcase itself.
Part of the 2009 Site Classic was a community give-back event, the Chili Cook Off, proceeds from which were donated to the city of Fort Worth for its Directions Home program, www.directionshome.org. This program, supported by the city and partner agencies, is aiming to make homelessness a rare, short-term, and non-recurring experience by 2018.
The Chili Cook Off, organized by Ultimate Ventures, took place in the Fort Worth Stockyards in the city’s National Historic District. This Texas culinary teambuilding program, with its corporate social responsibility twist, proved to be a fun, interactive event that raised $4,200 for Directions Home.
A Chili Recipe with a CSR Twist During the cook-off, teams had to cook a pot of chili and market Texas' official state dish. Team members planned, allocated resources, maintained schedules, and divided workloads. Each team was provided basic cooking equipment, as well as recipe suggestions, spices, and meat. The teams also “shopped” for fresh vegetables and other ingredients necessary to spice up and individualize their chili at the “market.” They then chopped, sautéed, and fine-tuned to create their best tasting chili. They also devised team names and designs and created banners.
In addition to competing for the “best bowl of red” title, teams also competed to raise funds for charity. Following the cooking, guests participated in tastings and judging. They voted on their favorites through donations, and the chili that won the most money was the winner. In addition to raising funds for Directions Home, all the chili and perishables were donated to the homeless.
The check for the proceeds was donated to Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief at the final awards night, which was held at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel. The mayor spoke about the city’s commitment and success rate with Directions Home and even drummed up bidding for the live auction! Here was a great win-win situation, a classic example of give back, get back.
Part of the educational component of the 2009 Site Classic was an industry CEO panel, a member of which was John Graham, president and CEO of ASAE & the Center for Association Leadership. Graham is the task force co-chair of the Convention Industry Council’s recently launched campaign to improve the generally negative public perception of meetings, events, incentives, and business travel. Graham explains: “As an industry, we need to articulate the key values in face-to-face human interaction. We know it innately, but all of our industry organizations need to be saying it explicitly, and saying the same thing.”
As noted by the CIC, and echoed throughout our industry, one of the primary issues is that many people don’t understand how meetings and incentives work and see them as just a way for employees and management to have a good time at the taxpayers’ or stakeholders’ expense. Involving a city in a give back, get back community event is a great idea that more companies can use to improve that negative perception. I think it is one that groups and planners should consider when planning their meetings and looking for nonprofit/community program partners for their CSR events.
Including a CSR component in the Site Classic program gave the industry trade group a chance to reinforce the message that there is a strong benefit to meetings, incentive programs, and events being held. Having the mayor attend the final night was a powerful endorsement for our industry.
CSR BYTE I am involved in an annual industry event, one of the aims of which is to raise money for local grassroots charities for children. In prior years, through a combination of luncheon table sales and silent and live auctions, we have been fortunate enough to donate substantial amounts to the chosen charities. This year, with the challenges our industry is facing, I have been looking for other ways to help bring in the funds that we need to support our nonprofits. One way has been enlisting the services of Firstgiving, which we are using in conjunction with our first annual five-kilometer run/walk.
Firstgiving is a leading web-based fund-raising platform for nonprofit organizations. Individual fund-raisers get an online fund-raising page that can be personalized with messages, a fund-raising goal, photos, and videos. Through Firstgiving, each walker/runner will have the ability to send his or her fund-raising links to family, friends, and networks around the globe to ask for support. This is a fun, easy, creative, and interactive way to use social networking technology to raise funds; additionally, Firstgiving has found that online fund-raising raises an average of two to three times the amount of donations traditional offline fund-raising methods generate.
For a company looking to teambuild and support a nonprofit through a CSR event, Firstgiving is worth researching. The sponsoring company could kick off its program with a donation, and stakeholders could be invited to participate. Employees could raise funds individually or form fund-raising teams. The sponsoring company could also consider making donations when certain work goals are reached, such as increased sales, lower absenteeism, or improved safety. Everyone within the company would be included and could contribute to the outcome. At the end of the campaign, an awards event involving employees and the charity recipients could be held. Winners categories could include highest dollar amount, most enthusiastic, largest team, and most individual contributors. There is potential in the ways that Firstgiving could tie in with CSR events; more information is available at www.firstgiving.com.
Geraldine Gatehouse is an independent planner with a passionate belief in the value and potential global impact of CSR. She is based in southern California, pursuing studies in sustainability, and is a 2009 board member of Site Southern California. She can be reached at geraldine-g@cox.net, via her her website, or on LinkedIn.
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