Targeted Kindness
There have been some discussions lately about the best way to handle charitable work done by pressure washing contractors. Most of these discussions have been about donating services or gift cards to be auctioned as fund-raisers.
I’ll give you my twist on that.
In Omaha, and I’m sure elsewhere around the country, the carwash is second only to the bake sale as a fundraising activity for youth groups. On a typical Omaha weekend for around eight months of the year, you are highly likely to encounter groups of young women and men standing at busy intersections, holding hand lettered signs for their group’s car-wash in some grocery or fast-food restaurant parking lot. One year, I heard that my parents’ church youth group was doing one to raise funds for their trip to Mexico to do mission work.
They were wondering if I would donate some soap for them to use. Of course, I said no.
Instead, I donated a Sunday morning full of work. This year will be the fourth year, I believe, where we washed over two hundred units in two hours. In fact, people went in to their service, and came out to freshly washed cars and SUVs’.
StainlessDeal rolls up, hooks up, and I soap vehicles with a 4GPM hot water machine, the kids gang scrub the cars, and my helper rinses with 8GPM warm. A small crew of adults moves the cars in a continuous line from the specified dirty parking area, to a specified drying/clean parking area. A donation envelope left on the seat with the keys holds whatever the congregation cares to donate, and the kids leave a flier and a business card on the drivers seat, with a thank you.
The only thing the kids have to do is scrub, move, and dry the cars. They raise scads more money in no time, without overhead. The average donation used to be just under $5, now it is just over $7, and they wash around 40 more cars per year. All during one Sunday morning, during services, no waiting. I provide equipment, Hotsy of Omaha provides the Blue Thunder concentrate, and the whole thing provides a service to the community at large.
WIN, WIN, WIN!
Scott Millen
