Events

Having events is a great way to expand your audience, donors, volunteers, and build goodwill in the community. Since Binky Patrol is all-volunteer, we rely on partnering with sponsors and hosting organizations that are looking for a fun event to offer their volunteers, employees, members. This episode walks you through some ideas, and a list of what you need to know before you have an event.
If you want to have an event, find partners. For Binky Patrol, we partner with United Way, HandsOn Portland, Comcast, quilt guilds, girl scouts and schools. Local coffee companies like Dutch Bros, sandwich companies like Subway help keep our volunteers fed and energized. You also need a partner to help you at the end of your event. We have our delivery team that will take all of the blankets made that day to deliver them. We have a clean up crew that will take everything to put it away until the next event. You need to plan it from start to finish, before promotions and after thank you notes.

We are still one world and sometimes one very spread out company. A great way to get to know each other is through team-building events, but what can you do that will allow each location to get to know the other locations? An event where you work with one or more charities, perhaps make blankets live, have a guest speaker from the place your teams will deliver their blankets, have a relay benefitting a charity in those big inflatable balls at each location simultaneously rolling in a field. Well, you get it. The ideas coming out of our heads are endless, not very expensive, a lot of fun and build great memories, as well as help you retain talent.  Join Susan and Lisa for this 20-minute event idea firehose. If you have questions, want to talk about more ideas, let them know!

There is no replacing the in-person experience of laughter, and compassion. Time to dip a toe into these events again through speaking, team building, 5Ks, and more! Lisa and Susan go through some ideas to make it easy for you to do what you are comfortable with and will tell you some of their experience at Race for the Cure events, corporate team building, quilt guilds, and even ski events. It's time to get back out there and really connect with your communities!
From sewing blankets on-site during a Race for the Cure, to golf tournaments, and competitive events, they could all use some warmth from your charity. At least that's what Lisa and Susan think in this episode. They share stories from at least a dozen events where Binky Patrol was exposed to entirely new audiences, kept the crowds entertained and made some blankets at the same time. Tune in.