The Customer Focus Series

It pays to volunteer, literally.

Generosity makes us all happy—me, my employees, the community— and giving back to the community is valuable for many reasons. At Nolan Painting, our primary focus is to support customer causes, employee causes, youth sports, environmental organizations, and 5Ks because they are my passion.

We reward our employees for volunteering.

They receive one PTO hour for every hour that they attend our community-based events. We also offer PTO incentives for donating blood at our blood drives. And of course, our flagship event is the Reindeer Romp—a 5k for the American Cancer Society. The event honors a little boy, Brandon Lake, who died 22 years ago from leukemia. His neighbors started a 5K to help kids like Brandon. I ran it the first year and offered to help the following year. As it turns out, helping out meant being the race director. It was fun! To date, we’ve raised over half a million dollars for the American Cancer Society. Most of the volunteers at the event are Nolan Painting employees.

There are many worthy causes in the community, and it can be hard to decide how to help. When in doubt, create a system.

Every year we receive thousands of requests for help. We choose over one hundred, so we have a weekly meeting, on Tuesday at five o’clock, where our team considers all requests. This team consists of myself, Nolan Painting President Jon Meyer, and my daughter, Claire Nolan, who is our marketing manager—she is perfect for her care and empathy. There are many reasons to give back, and so many people benefit! But, even when we have to say no, we do it quickly and in a friendly way.

In the big picture, we are trying to achieve a triple bottom-line where people, the planet, and profit are equally important.

Consider how you can implement community-based marketing into your business. There are lots of reasons to do it, and you gain as much as you give! Generosity is a muscle. Build it. See you next week.