MISSION ARLINGTON FOOD DRIVE A BIG SUCCESS!
For Lone Star Communications Grand Prairie's (LSGP) philanthropic event, the SEC (Special Event Committee) hosted a Food Drive, initially set to begin in the last week of February in recognition of February being National Canned Food Month.
The charity was chosen based on polled responses we received from several coworkers during another one of our February social events and Valentine giveaway.
There was a suggestion box posted in the break-room inquiring information for charities most near and dear to us that we’d like to support this year. Individuals with the most entries would win a gift basket. Mission Arlington was popular within the entries we received.
Therefore, SEC gathered boxes from the warehouse and set up the donation boxes in the break-room. To promote teamwork, we allocated teams. To incite a bulky collection, SEC decided to throw in free breakfast for the team who donated the most items.
Items were trickling daily. Sales was the first group to donate with a huge drop and that set the tone for the collections. Engineering was next to hit the boxes. The Operation/warehouse team wasn’t shortly behind. Administration came in third place.
We had ourselves a battle. When it looked like Operations was pulling ahead, the Customer service & Experience teams decided to intensify the competition by dropping of numerous items. When they brought things in, all 8 departmental donation boxes then contained goods for donation.
The food drive had an original due date for the last week of March. When the work of COVID-19 reached LSGP, we were sent home to shelter in-place. The food drive was put on hold.
On May 18th, the office slowly invited more employees in the building. By June 1st we were operating at about 70% capacity and getting into the swing of things again, so the Food Pantry drive re-emerged. We began noticing how prevalent food assistance became as we watched the news reports.
We definitely wanted to continue our collection and give as much as possible. LSGP SEC opened the donations to anyone in the office as well. SEC set a new final due date of June 27th. In the final week, we tried to incentive the groups with the offer of doubling each item they donated.
We are in Texas where everything is done BIG. Each team graciously brought in more items. As promised, each item was matched by SEC. And here are the results of the final collection.
This is the breakfast bar SEC prepared for the winning team, Engineering & Sales. Because office capacity was low that morning, very few of the team was in the office. Therefore, SEC had enough breakfast leftovers to share.
After all, LSC Core Values are: ONE Team, ONE Purpose, ONE Family and we stand firmly on them. It definitely was a team effort to pull this off. Great Job LSGP!!! Please keep an eye out for details of next month's event.
-Lasonia Reed, CAD Operator