Picture this: you’re at your first CNOY Lead Team meeting, and there’s a list of tasks that need doing. Which of these makes you shoot your hand high and say “pick me, pick me”?
a) Taking notes and sending meeting follow-ups to the team b) Creating a Team Captain Prospect list to draw on your community connections c) Encouraging your team members by sending them personal notes reminding them of the importance of their roles d) Planning out the campaign’s maps, permits, and insurance needs e) Taking a look at last year’s results to project potential outcomes for 2025
All of these are important tasks with meaningful payoffs for your campaign, and while some take precedence at various points in your CNOY journey, none is exponentially more important than the rest. In fact, you need people who can fill all of these shoes on your team.
Based on your choice above, here’s your extremely-scientifically-measured Lead Team type:
a) The Organizer shows up on time, does what they say and always (always) finishes what they started.
b) The Networker shows up with a miles-long list of people and businesses who they know personally.
c) The Cheerleader shows up with every ounce of their enthusiastic being.
d) The Risk Manager shows up with a thoughtful, critical eye on plans, strategy and risk management.
e) The Number Cruncher shows up with Excel loaded up and a great handle of stats and projections.
Other types include the The Do-It-Your-Selfer, Collaborator, and always-on Promoter. The point is, great teams are almost always made up of different types of people with their own unique personalities. A P2P fundraising event team will likely require team members who, collectively, have all of these skills and abilities. As Event Director your goal in this first week of your campaign is to strategically assemble the best possible team.
So without further ado, here’s what you need to do:
Gather Your Team.
Do it soon. Ask staff, high-capacity volunteers, Board Members, or former event participants. Invite people with different gifts, skills, and backgrounds. People love to be needed, so don’t hesitate.
Once they agree, set a weekly or bi-weekly meeting schedule to gather (or zoom), plan, and execute your recruitment and fundraising plan. The more often you meet and the more accountable you are to each other and to your plan, the more successful you’ll be.
Make a Plan
The best part about a great CNOY plan? The fact that you don’t have to create it all from scratch. Our CNOY Guide (in WAVES) takes you through the planning process, step by chilly step. As regards your Lead Team – here are four planning tips to guide your way:
Set your fundraising goal using expected number of team captains as your guide—for every 10 teams you expect to recruit, add $15,000, and always set your public goal 15-20% less than your private goal.
Prioritize team captain and sponsorship recruitment in every meeting. Tackle these tasks first before anything else.
Have everyone on your team responsible for asking 2-3 prospects. Own the recruitment responsibility together.
Make sure your meetings are fun so that, you know, people actually come to them. You’ll need to pull hard together from November through February, so make it a fun and exciting experience for your team members, not a never-ending grind.
Key Takeaway:
Don’t try to do this alone. Gather a team around you, make a plan, meet regularly and have everyone on your team contribute in the recruiting of your team captains and sponsors.
Metrics matter to your peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. If you are going to be successful long term, your charity needs to understand (and react to) the fundraising trends of your participants. These trends reveal the fundraising health of your event. Are you recruiting participants who merely show up or fundraisers who raise cold, hard cash? Tracking these participant fundraising metrics will help you ensure your event grows an ever increasing culture of fundraising.
The #1 Metric Every P2P Fundraising Event Should Be Watching
No matter who you are, how big your charity is, or how successful your p2p fundraising events have been in the past, you need to monitor your “Participants Fundraising Percentage.” This metric tracks every participant who registers for your event and, depending on their activity, tags them into one of four categories:
No Activity
Self Donated (only)
Fundraised (only)
Self Donated and Fundraised.
If your event charges a registration fee (which we’d generally discourage given how it transactionalizes your participant relationship and weakens your culture of fundraising), then you’ll want to track that too. Categories might then include “Reg Fee Only,” “Reg Fee + Self Donated,” “Reg Fee, Self Donated + Fundraised.”
Why do these categories matter? What can they teach you? How will they inform your campaign? Let’s take a closer look:
No Activity
Participants who register and then do nothing are in this category. Every event has good folks like these so don’t be too put off. They may have sincerely intended to fundraise, but in the end, for whatever reason, they didn’t. If your event is family-friendly, then of course some of your “No Activity” participants could be toddlers or children who you wouldn’t necessarily expect to fundraise.
All that being said, you want as few people as possible in this category, but, depending on your event, it will likely never get to zero. Set a goal of having no more than 20% off your registered participants here and keep a close eye on which direction this category trends. Are your “No Activity” registrations going up or down? If your percentage is increasing (even after accounting for kids), you’ve likely got a problem. Take an honest look at the way you are recruiting – is there a clear expectation to fundraise? Look closely at your messaging and recruitment efforts – do you use the language of participation or fundraising?
A word about awareness. We all want to grow the awareness of our events, hard as it is to measure sometimes. But don’t let your awareness pursuit distract you from your fundraising purpose and be cautious you don’t trade fundraising failure for awareness success. Let awareness follow your successful fundraising event rather than lead it. A hugely successful fundraising event will satisfy your funding needs now and bring you all the buzz and momentum you desire to grow your charity later. Focus on fundraising success and the awareness you seek will find you.
Self Donated (Only)
Participants who have registered and donated to themselves, but who do not receive any other donations, are in this category. Again, maybe they intended to fundraise, but in the end they did not or could not bring in any other funds. The good news is they did put themselves out there financially and participated on event day. You can work with that effort. Any skin in the game is positive and some participants in this category give very generously.
Having a number of people in this category is not inherently bad, but don’t confuse them with fundraisers – at least not yet. Self-donating participants are really just donors who also participate. They have potential. If you can convert them to fundraisers they’ll be absolute gold for you. So watch how this metric is trending year over year – are more people self-donating than last year? How does this number compare to those who “Fundraised” or were in the “No Activity” category?
The relationship between these numbers will paint a different picture of your event’s long term success. If your number of “Self Donated” participants is going up while your number of “No Activity” participants is going down, that’s progress! But if your number of “Self Donated” participants is going up while your number of “Fundraised” or “Fundraised + Self Donated” participants is going down, your people are becoming disengaged, and that’s no bueno.
Regardless of the trend, always remember there is real potential to bump up the engagement in this group. With the right messaging, motivation, and management, you can move participants from “Self Donated” to “Fundraised + Self Donated.” Lean into a strong fundraising message, ensure captains are clear on their responsibilities, and share your momentum throughout the campaign. Note: some percentage of self donated registrants may be children whose parents donated on their behalf.
Fundraised (Only)
This category tracks participants who register and fundraise, whether $1 or $1,000, but who do not (or have not yet) donated to themselves. These folks are wonderful. A team captain has recruited them (or maybe they are a captain themselves) and they’ve done the work: setting up their personal fundraising page, posting pictures, sharing their story, and asking their friends and family for m-m-m-say-it-with-me-MONEY! They are the engine in your campaign and what’s great is they come in all age ranges. Kids, youth, teens, twenties, middle aged and beyond (where I reside) can all successfully find their way into this “Fundraised” category. The data shows that the wider your demographic of ages, the better your chances of hitting your fundraising goal.
As you monitor this metric, you want the number of “Fundraised” participants (and “Fundraised + Self Donated”) to always, always be trending upwards. If these numbers begin to drop, you need to act quickly and reorient your campaign to be focused on the fundraising first and the event second.
Fundraised + Self Donated
We saved the best for last. This category contains participants who register and self-donate and fundraise. They are the diamonds in your campaign. They are truly invested. They give to themselves, likely others as well, and fundraise with effort. These are often team captains, eager to recruit, and have nothing but positive things to say about your event (and they talk to a lot of people about your event!). It would be wise for you to get to know them. If they are this committed to your event they might make a great committee member or value becoming a long term organizational donor. The ultimate goal would be to have as many participants as possible in this category. As with your “Fundraised” folks, if the number of people in this category is trending downward, you need to act – fast!
Setting Targets For Your Event
Now that you know your categories, what should your target be for each? In a perfect world you’ve got only “Fundraised + Self Donated” participants, but if you’re like us, working in the family-friendly p2p event market, you’ll likely have a spread of all four categories.
Let’s take a closer look at the Participants Fundraising Percentage from our 2023 Coldest Night of the Year event. We had just over 5,900 captains and 37,500 participants. In the end, here’s where our four categories broke down for this event:
This is a great result. 74% of our participants were fundraising. We’re always trying to increase that figure – the struggle is real. The challenge for all of us in the p2p world is to watch our participant fundraising metrics closely.
Your own goal should be to have 50% or more of your participants in the “Fundraised” and/or “Fundraised + Self Donated” category. If your percentage is lower than 50%, we’d advise you to address it soon. There are some simple, achievable strategies to troubleshoot your event before it dies or worse, continues on life support while wasting time and resources. A few bold steps will turn your event around in one campaign – it all starts with monitoring the metrics.
Special: Blue Sea Foundation partners – you can track your participant fundraising percentage metrics easily by logging into waves and scrolling down your dashboard. Remember to navigate to each event year to track the trends.
A thousand years ago, before the internet and online fundraising systems were ubiquitous, charities would have little clue how their p2p fundraising event-a-thons were doing until event day or later. You would recruit teams and fundraisers, arm them with pledge sheets and brochures, send them out, and then white knuckle it till your team started counting the stacks of coins and cash after the event.
Thank goodness things have changed.
With the majority of participant registration and fundraising now happening online, organizers (like you), don’t have to sweat it out. We’d go so far as to say, the last 30 days of your campaign can be confidently predicted, if you’ve done the work to recruit team captains.
The Big Ifs
If you have the following results 30 days before your event (which, if you’re following our method, you should), you can predict with confidence** how much money your p2p fundraising event will bring in.
The 30 Day Benchmarks
In order for the math to work you’ll need to be within 10% of these metrics:
Teams – 60% – 30 days out you should be at about 60% of your goal for team recruitment. Did you want 20 teams? Then you should have 11-13 registered and fundraising.
Participants – 30%– If you recruited your team captains with clear expectations to recruit and fundraise you should have 30% of your expected participants signed up.
Revenue – 15%– With teams and participants signed up, you’d expect to see some fundraising happening right? If you don’t, you’ve got a problem. If your goal is $30,000, you should be at $3,000-$4,500 at minimum.
Donors – 10-15%– Your donor total, (assuming you’re hitting the average of 5 donors per participant) should be 10-15% a month out.
Where Are You Heading? Calculate Your Event’s Performance
So enough waiting – if your campaign is in the range for all four metrics above, here’s what should happen in your campaign 30 days later. Grab your pen, a calculator and have some fun factoring in these expected results.
Teams– should increase by 50%
Participants –normally swell by 150%
Revenue – surges 300%
Donors – grows exponentially by 450%
Let’s look at a pretend event. Here’s what we’d expect to happen based on where they are 30 days out:
Metric
30 Days Out
Factor
Add
30 Days Later
Teams
20
50%
10
= 30
Participants
50
150%
75
= 125
Revenue
$10,000
300%
$30,000
= $40,000
Donor
60
450%
270
= 330
So now, punch in your numbers below to see if you are trending the right way.
Metric
30 Days Out
Factor
Add
30 Days Later
Teams
50%
=
Participants
150%
=
Revenue
300%
=$
Donor
450%
=
Now, there other factors that will impact your results, including but not limited to, your culture of philanthropy, event leadership buy-in, nature of your beneficiary, familiarity and comfort with your cause and charity, age of your charity, demographics of your community of supporters, accessibility of your p2p event activity, etc.
How do things look? Do these stats encourage or concern you?
If you’re on track: Keep your foot on the gas! You are doing great.
If you’re behind: Don’t be discouraged. Call us please. We’ll troubleshoot with you, help you reset and you’ll get your momentum back. Also, consider reviewing these articles below to inspire your recruitment:
Visualize successive waves hitting the beach: the first wave of effort is focused on acquiring team captains. The second wave comes as a result of those captains arm-twisting their friends and family to sign-up. This is followed closely by a wave of fundraising revenue as event day nears, and finally, the much larger donor wave hits with force the last 4-5 days before the event
That’s how a well run p2p event looks. It’s exponential.
**Over the past three years, here’s what happened to our four key Coldest Night of the Year event metrics in the last 30 days. Remember, these metrics are averages based on the week to week results of 200+ different campaigns run by small, medium and large charities in the same event, some with staff, some with high-capacity volunteers. A good mix of urban/rural and old/new charities, too. Budgets as low as $100,000 or as high as $25 million. So, a nice wide cross section in the pooling sample.
BC Housing is all about home: making a positive difference in people’s lives and communities through safe, affordable, and quality housing. This organization goes above and beyond the idea of simply putting people in rooms, focusing instead on creating meaningful spaces for people to live, and to live well. That means thinking outside the house-shaped box to partner with organizations and community partners that make a huge difference in the lives of those who need housing support.
Uncommonly Intentional
When it comes to their life-changing work, BC Housing takes a forward-thinking approach that’s creative, adaptive, and flexible. They are trusting, collaborative, and open, well aware that providing a home to everyone who needs one is a community endeavour. These are more than words on a website – BC Housing truly puts their money where their vision is.
Having sponsored a number of Coldest Night of the Year (CNOY) charity partners in the past, BC Housing decided to take a bigger step. CNOY is an annual family-friendly walk held in February to raise money for local charities who serve people experiencing hurt, hunger, and homelessness. For 2023, BC Housing wanted to give more, create more impact, and find a way to reach more local neighbourhoods throughout the province. They worked with Jim Heuving, our Manager of Corporate and Community Partnerships, to develop a granting process that delivered BIG results.
Blue Sea + BC = Big Change
Through our partnership, BC Housing has granted a total of $53,000 to 26 CNOY charity partners, adding early momentum to charities’ campaign scoreboards and real impact to their continued ability to serve the community.
For BC Housing, this partnership was simple:
“The CNOY campaign aligns with our values and we want to be more involved,” said Vincent Tong, Acting CEO, BC Housing. “Through initiatives like this, we continue the vital work of providing safe, secure housing to people who need it most.”
For us at Blue Sea, we are so thankful to be part of a movement that helps link local charities with regional, provincial, and national organizations that want to help the hungry, hurting, and homeless. “We exist to help charities fundraise successfully,” says Jim Heuving. “Thank you to BC Housing for their vision and commitment to making real and meaningful changes in BC communities. Perhaps more importantly, thank you to our incredible charity partners who show up day in and day out to offer warm meals, warm beds, and warm smiles to those who need it most.”
“BC Housing provided early sponsorship support to our Burnaby CNOY which created some great encouragement and early momentum to our fundraising efforts. The funds raised through our CNOY allow us to continue to expand our services to meet the growing needs of our vulnerable community members.” – Carol-Ann Flanagan, The Society to End Homelessness in Burnaby and Alex Monroe, Burnaby Community Services.
Stronger Communities, Together
Building a safer, happier, warmer province is only possible when people care. CNOY is a way to bring these people together and help them make change, together. When tireless charities, dedicated walkers, generous donors, and big-hearted organizations join hands in CNOY’s highly successful fundraising program, big change is possible. Nationally, the CNOY 2023 campaign is well on its way to hitting its $12,000,000 fundraising goal. These funds fuel countless stories of housing, healing, food, dignity, impact, and kindness. We are so grateful to help make this happen, because, what better story is there to tell?
For Skyline Group of Companies, “corporate social responsibility” is not simply something to check off a to-do list. It is proactively imagining – and re-imagining – ways to develop, support, and engage strong communities across Canada.
There’s No Place Like Home
The importance of home cannot be overstated. Having a place to come home to each day, a space that feels safe and where you can gather with your nearest and dearest, is a core human need. For the leaders at Skyline, providing Canadians with places to call home is what drives them each day.
Skyline began as a property management company in Guelph, Ontario. Since 1999, it has bloomed into a national organization with several divisions and alternative investment funds promoting sustainability on all levels. It believes in building and supporting strong communities.
With an eye on environmental, social, and governance sustainability, Skyline is invested in creating and maintaining thriving, vibrant communities for its residents, employees, and community members.
Skyline knows first-hand that home can be a complicated concept: job changes, medical situations, and a litany of unexpected circumstances can make paying the rent hard, and staying well even harder. If a Skyline tenant is going through these circumstances, Skyline’s team does all it can to ensure the tenant stays housed.
As Skyline expanded across the country, it took a pulse check on its giving strategy, asking: as a national organization, how can we meaningfully support the individual communities we serve?
Enter Coldest Night of the Year (CNOY).
National Generosity Meets Local Impact
Coldest Night of the Year unlocked a new way for Skyline to fundraise and support local charities while enabling all Skyline staff to share a nationwide experience. CNOY allows Skyline staff to team up and compete against other Skyline locations across the country in an effort to raise the most money for those in need. For Skyline, CNOY:
delivers a national campaign with profoundly local engagement.
creates opportunities for employees to make a difference in their local community.
raises critical funds for local charities that directly contribute to stronger, safer, and healthier communities.
Plus, Skyline really puts its money where its passion is: it matches all CNOY fundraising – meaning every $1 is really $2 – motivating other teams and organizations to step up their efforts!
All in all, it’s a perfect fit.
CNOY: Everything Skyline Needs to Make a Difference
According to Skyline, perhaps the best part about its annual CNOY campaign is the organizational ease of… well, everything! The resources, emails, social media, and team tools given to all CNOY teams makes the “work” of getting up and running almost non-existent. Team captains can focus on fundraising, team building, and results. Skyline has everything it needs to empower its people to do the very work they love doing: building communities where people can thrive.
CNOY was just what Skyline needed to make a huge national impact. With each year, the campaign gains momentum, interest, and engagement, driving up Skyline’s fundraising to an incredible $63,672.56, doubled and then invested back in local communities. What felt impossible was made possible by this perfectly paired partnership of CNOY and Skyline.
If your organization is ready to think big and engage meaningfully, CNOY is ready to make it easy for you, too! We challenge you to get your people moving and support the needs of communities across Canada, making a true impact in the places where you live and work. Challenge accepted?
Many Canadian churches are eager to be the presence of Christ in the world – kind, compassionate and generous. But they wonder, “how can we show up and do something to positively impact our neighbours? How can we step out of our buildings and into our community?” For some big-hearted Anglican churches in St. Catharines, Ontario, the Coldest Night of the Year became their cold, bold, and creative way to do just that.
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
Matthew 25:35-36
For many Christians (and many charities too), Matthew chapter 25 is an underlying foundation for their charitable efforts. This well-known parable is impossible to read by anyone, regardless of faith, without serious self-reflection. It asks us to evaluate our hearts and our actions. What are we doing to make a difference? How are we showing up in the world, whether in faith or in duty?
For the Anglicans in Action (AIC) of St. Catharines, their lives of faith and these nagging questions were the reason they decided to participate in the Coldest Night of the Year.
The Gathering of Hearts
The Anglican church exists in a parish model – with each church having their own community of souls to care for. While the St. Catharines parishes were siloed, many among them longed to work together to be a tangible presence of God’s love in the community. This desire sparked a meeting of like-minded parishioners, intent on finding a way forward.
The group that gathered aptly named themselves Anglicans in Action. Even though they came from different churches, they were all interested in grassroots, charitable, tangible action that would bring about positive change in the local community. Seeking to be those who show up, notice, and do something. But with no shortage of ways to engage or issues to address, beginning was easier said than done.
A Way Forward
Coldest Night of the Year (CNOY) provided the bridge for Anglicans in Action to galvanize action and get going! In their early days, they walked in support of Start Me Up Niagara – a charitable organization who offers services and programs to individuals who face significant life challenges to provide them with opportunities to stabilize, participate, and grow.
Start Me Up Niagara has had a robust relationship with Coldest Night of the Year for a decade or more, so they were ready and able to welcome new and eager teams – exactly like Anglicans in Action. And Blue Sea had everything set up for the Anglicans in Action team leaders to move forward with. One team leader, Diane, reflected:
“It’s very well coordinated. It’s very easy to be part of. It’s very easy to be the team leader, with the website and resources, it’s easy to coordinate even through COVID. We used a few videos and off it went. And it’s a great family event.”
By gathering around a cause that was city-wide, rather than parish-centric, CNOY facilitated the momentum needed to set the group on a long journey of showing up, noticing, and doing. By staying connected to CNOY, Anglicans in Action got to know organizations, build teams, and keep walking – for the last 7 years raising more than $204,500 since.
Today, Anglicans in Action feeds over 1,000 people/week with food kits they prepare for a local food bank, whom they connected with through CNOY. What started as a walk and desire for impact turned into just that: daily food for the hungry. It was the very heart of the hope, the action that mattered most.
Prepared For You
Reflecting God’s love to a community is easier said than done for a church, and yet Anglicans in Action knew it was exactly what they needed to do. Churches need effective and engaging tools to mobilize their congregation of faithful people who long to follow the example of Christ: Feeding the hungry. Satiating the thirsty. Welcoming the strangers. Clothing those in need. Caring for the sick. Visiting the imprisoned.
It’s time to do exactly that: show up, notice, and do.
The Challenge is a great way to hit two birds with one stone: it enables you to engage local businesses, churches, and community organizations while also finding new teams and fundraisers.
Now, I don’t go around throwing rocks at birds, but I do love this “two birds” principle. My father mentored me with a similar principle in our family bakery, “Why take two steps to do a job, when you can do it in one?” His words continue to challenge me every day. How do I make the most of the time and energy I have?
Let’s apply this principle to team recruitment for your p2p fundraising event:
The Key to Success
Instead of hunting one bird at a time, go to where the birds hangout. Don’t misunderstand me, door-to-door, individual asks will always be effective, but, as you know, it is time consuming. A key recruitment strategy is to find places where many birds hangout together and spend time there. These are opportunities for you to connect with folks in a meaningful manner – en masse.
Opportunity-Rich Watering Holes? Local Networking Groups.
Professionals, business owners, and church leaders often join business networks, clubs, and community associations in order to develop relationships, gain referrals, and participate in shared efforts. You can join these same networks and clubs to achieve these same goals: build relationships, recruit captains and challengers, find sponsors and donors, and gain referrals for all of the above.
I’ve seen this strategy in action. In December 2022, Valerie Louter, from the Ontario-based charity Neighbour to Neighbour (N2N), invited me to a business networking breakfast. In that single meeting, I watched as N2N received multiple donations and a CNOY team commitment that far exceeded the cost of her annual membership and time. Moreover, it warmed up a number of leaders who will welcome her when she knocks on their door for greater engagement in the future. #tweettweet
If you are unfamiliar with, or new to, the area, read the weekly local newspaper where you will find them mentioned in pics and stories. Check websites like MeetUp.com or EventBrite.com and search for networking groups in your area. With a little looking around, you’ll likely find a group that’s perfect for you – whether you’re an early bird or a night owl!
Take Action Now
Now is the perfect time to start your bird hunt:
In the short term: Choose one or more groups in your area and reach out to the Chair or President (find their email address on their website or send a DM on LinkedIn). Ask to present your CNOY, RIDE, or TGP ask to their group leading up to this year’s campaign. Be sure to tell them why it’s important and, wherever possible, connect your charity’s mission with their group’s mission.
In the long term: Join a thriving networking group. Lean into the cause and invest in building relationships. An added benefit: once you bring value to one network, you will be introduced to new networks.
The Challenge is a unique offering from Blue Sea Foundation. It’s the perfect opportunity for your organization to build awareness, buzz, and help turn community-minded people into deeply committed advocates for your charity. Find the right groups, tell them what you’re doing, and they’ll be like a duck to water. The best part, with strategies like the one outlined above, you can get more people, more invested with less time and fewer costs, leaving you as happy as a lark!
Starbucks is more than just a coffee shop. As an organization, they exist to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighbourhood at a time. To us, their spirit of philanthropy and care for the community is absolutely inspiring! Since 2011, Starbucks has partnered with Coldest Night of the Year in many ways:
Local stores sponsor individual locations, providing tasty treats, hot drinks, and warm smiles at CNOY in-person events across the country.
Starbucks employees sign up to participate as fundraisers and walkers. Across Canada, these teams have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for hard-working local charities.
In 2022, 1602 Starbucks fundraisers on 164 teams competed on the CNOY Challenge Leaderboard to see which group would top the charts as the most generous team!
Learn more about one extra special team in Durham Region who raised over $20,000 in 2022.
Thank you Starbucks! It’s cold out there, but Canada is a little bit warmer because of all that you do.
Your job can be a lot of things: stressful, engaging, fulfilling, mundane, exhausting, challenging, uplifting to name a few. Mostly, it can be work. Work AND life can be any of those things on any given day. Showing up in the good, the bad, and the ugly is possible when you work with great people and for an amazing organization. You show up knowing that yes – there is a job to do – but you matter too. That’s when the job offers a lot more than just work. It offers safety, connection, and impact. That’s Starbucks.
Infused Goodness
For Starbucks, caring about their employees – which they call partners – is infused in everything they do.
It’s in their mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighbourhood at a time. It’s the pump of goodness they add to every hand-crafted relationship – authentic care.
That care isn’t just lip service:
It helps partners who are far from home find a family.
It reassures someone having a hard day that they can cry during their break and still be and feel safe.
And that same care ensures that when a group of partners want to give back, they won’t wonder if the organization is behind them – they know they are.
Partners In Action
Revved up on more than just coffee, a group of Starbucks partners in Durham Region (east of Toronto) had a simple desire: to make a difference. But, like most people with big hearts, figuring out how to help (there is so much to do) was a huge first step. A venti sized first step. Coldest Night of the Year (CNOY) offered an open door to explore local organizations doing the exact kind of work they wanted to support. One place in particular, The Refuge, stood out:
The Refuge works with youth who are experiencing homelessness or are at-risk ofexperiencing homelessness, and who are struggling. Built on a foundation of holistic care offering food, housing, and community, The Refuge is a space youth can findcommunity, safety, belonging, and a renewed hope for the future.
The Refuge was working with local youth who could be looking for a warm seat and a smile, or a job someday. “When we started to dig into what The Refuge was all about, it hit home,” shares Bryan, the Team Captain at Starbucks. The mission of The Refuge deeply inspired the action, because the Starbucks partners had learned, felt, and experienced the difference a caring, welcoming environment makes in their daily work. It was everything.
The partners knew they might be the first – or only – smile someone sees that day. They are one of the few people who truly cares when they ask a guest, “how are you?” They could be the single person to look someone in the eyes that day. The partners didn’t wonder what difference a warm, safe, welcoming place was. They already knew, and they wanted there to be more.
One More Step
The most powerful part of the story is that it kept going; it wasn’t just one year or a small group of partners. What started as a small group in 2019 became a whole crew of invested and engaged partners, teaming up to raise tens of thousands of life-changing dollars.
Last year, this team of Durham-based Starbucks partners visited The Refuge, met with the leadership team and were floored by the incredible work being done in their backyards. There was more to do – much more. This spurred District Manager, Bryan Kendall, and his team to recruit more partners to join the team, and more new donors. Using their creativity and the support of their store, they got to work:
They joyfully egged each other on and kept lively tabs on the donation leaderboard.
They encouraged each other, and every other partner on the team, with a tidal wave of support.
More than $20,000 later (!!), coupled with Neighbourhood Grants from the Starbucks Foundation (even MORE community impact) the Starbucks team helped The Refuge purchase a second facility offering scores of new beds and housing options for local youth. That’s some truly delicious, real change.
Partnered for Impact
The CNOY Challenge creates a space and place where Starbucks partners can unleash their energy, enthusiasm, and generosity. With simple, engaging, and streamlined systems, these partners turned dreams into reality.
We took this step together with our Starbucks partners and you can too. All organizations can make a huge difference, and if you are ready to engage, the CNOY team is ready to fill your cup with options, resources, and real impact. Let’s come together and be the change!
Turkstra Lumber doesn’t simply sell building supplies, they’re actively engaged in buildingcommunities across Ontario. The team at Turkstra have adopted the Coldest Night of the Year (CNOY) fundraiser as one of their signature employee engagement initiatives. Every year they challenge staff and management in retail locations across the province to raise funds for people experiencing hurt, hunger and homelessness. And boy-oh-boy, do these Turkstra teams rise to the challenge! For the last 5 years, Turkstra Lumber has been a top-two Challenge Partner, raising over $151,000 (and counting!).
What’s the secret to Turkstra’s fundraising success? How does participating in the CNOY Challenge deliver benefits to their corporate culture and help improve employee satisfaction? You’re about to find out!
An Invitation to Walk
In 2017, some folks from Turkstra were asked by a customer to walk in a little thing called the Coldest Night of the Year. They were told something along the lines of, “it’s a super fun fundraiser… we walk at night to experience a little taste of what it might be like to live on the streets, then we warm up with homemade chili. Very fun, very easy.” So, they gave it a try. They zipped up their coats, donned their toques, and raised $2,635 as a team. Perhaps more importantly, they heard more about how homelessness was impacting their community.
Little did they know, that February night was going to be the start of something truly amazing!
Inspired by this cold, snowy CNOY walk, Turkstra leadership issued a challenge to the ENTIRE organization: let’s make our communities a little bit better, a little bit kinder, and a whole lot warmer. The following year, all 11 locations were challenged to form teams with their co-workers and families and raise funds to support local charities. With hundreds of events around Canada, every Turkstra Lumber store was conveniently located in a “CNOY city,” meaning each store team would be fundraising for a truly LOCAL charity.
Sure, head office could *just* donate the cash, but leadership saw this as more than a simple CSR strategy. They wanted to mobilize the incredible spirit, passion, and dedication they saw in their staff – for a good cause! Turkstra’s leadership predicted that including a fun, charitable activity into the workplace milieu would also improve employee engagement, foster a broader sense of community between staff, customers and vendors, and of course make a real difference in the lives of those around them.
The result? Eight teams signed up and swiftly surpassed their initial $10,000 goal, fundraising $16,500! The friendly internal competition sparked something in the Turkstra teams – as predicted, these passionate people pushed one another to be even better.
Leveling Up
Gearing up for their 2020 fundraising campaign, the leadership team at Turkstra Lumber asked themselves the same question that has made them one of Canada’s Best Managed Companies for the last 5 years: what can we do better? The answer was a wellspring of staff-led, grassroots ideas for building more awareness, getting more people involved, and raising more money.
Committed staff came up with creative ways to fundraise – some were bold “askers”, some made & sold cupcakes, others worked with the marketing team to help organize partnership events.
Did you happen to see the limited-edition Hamilton Tiger-Cats toques and fleece blankets only sold at Turkstra Lumber? If you bought one, then you supported CNOY, as ALL proceeds went directly to those in need.
The spirit was infectious. Staff, customers, and vendors were asking how to donate before the fundraising officially began.
Stores rivalled one another in fiery-but-friendly competition (we see you, Waterdown and Dundas locations!) – strategically updating their numbers at the last minute with video messages that always “inspired” the others to get creative.
Company-wide emails kept the conversation lively and celebrated top fundraisers, while new branch members were integrated into the spirit of the challenge and the camaraderie of the organization.
By 2022, Turkstra Lumber had 11 teams registered, 50 walkers braving the cold, and over $50,000 in fundraising on the leaderboard. More than that, they had a province-wide team of employees who’d never felt closer or more engaged. Participating in CNOY created opportunities for employees to talk, connect, and learn more about one another. It enabled them to band together to out-fundraise their now-rival stores, and gave them a chance to work together on fun, new initiatives. It gave them an event to look forward to in bleak-old-blah-blah February, and a chance to celebrate over those now beloved chili bowls with their co-workers and families. Participating in CNOY helped create a sense of community in, and between, Turkstra’s many locations.
Build-It-Better
Turkstra Lumber is no ordinary building supply store. They are a group of smart, creative, generous people who want to help their communities thrive. Partnering with the CNOY Challenge has helped them strengthen their corporate culture while creating real change in their various trading areas. It’s a heart-warming (and hand-warming) story that we’re happy to share.
For more information on Turkstra Lumber, check out their website here. For more information on the CNOY challenge, pop on over to cnoy.com/challenge for all the details!
