If you’re thinking about implementing some new community service activities as part of your real estate business, we have a few ideas that we’ve tried and tested over the past 21 years.
- Purchase a moving truck – lend it out to clients, local non-profits, and for community events – free of charge
- Food Drive – Connect with a local neighborhood (or a few) that is willing to do a food drive. Act as the facilitator between a local food pantry and the neighborhood to coordinate a collection date, create a flyer, and distribute flyers with collections bags. On the day of the food drive, gather your team and collect donations that have been left at the curb throughout the neighborhood.
- Holiday Toy Drive – Same process as the food drive but connect with a non-profit that distributes toys to area families at Christmastime.
- Start a charitable fund (see No. 5)
- Pick a community service project – We pick one project a year where we can either contribute our time (volunteering/boots on the ground), talent (think marketing turbo booster for the non-profit, educate, social media), or treasure (fundraising)
- 200th Home Sale for Charity – pick any number of homes you want to sell in the calendar year; we just happened to pick 200. Decide on a charitable donation you’d like to donate when you close on that number of homes. Engage your past clients or the community to nominate local non-profits – work your social media! This year we changed our process to a grant application and gathered a group of our past clients to be on our selection committee. When we sell our 200th home, we’re awarding 3 cash donations totaling $10,000! We hope this is helpful as you start building new ways to give back to the community.
It’s truly rewarding and a great way for our team to connect outside of work.