Cooking for the Cause

Due to the positive swell of voting and support for What Would You Do For THE CAUSE? video from employees at LPL Financial, and unbeknownst to myself, our senior management team took an unexpected initiative and approved a food fundraiser to benefit the Run4Papa campaign the day the charity contest totals were announced. Kathy, one of the managers on theNew Accounts Team in Charlotte and well-known for her culinary skills (she could easily be mistaken for a gourmet chef if she weren’t working in finance full-time) lead the way. Minus the cost of food, all contributions would go directly to fund research for PPA.

Kathy offered to cook twice during the week. On Monday, she prepared chicken curry with rice while on Friday, she cooked stir fry with spicy noodles ($5 a plate). Both days included spring rolls (2 for $1) and cupcakes ($1) which were handmade by her daughters.

Our entire team was emailed the Run4Papa Meets LPL Food Fundraiser flyer. On Monday morning, Kathy prepared a massive cauldron of her homemade chicken curry with over 300 spring rolls and 80 cupcakes to compliment the main dish. Several co-workers paid in advance and requested Kathy set aside their plates due to meetings during our lunch break; some even requested multiple plates – one for lunch and one for dinner (they had sampled her food in the past).

We brought the food up to our break room and before we finished setting up shop, a line had already formed. The mix of curry spices, chicken, vegetables and rice was emanating throughout our floor; the smell alone would make you salivate. We went through all the chicken curry within an hour and had repeat customers for the spring rolls. In the latter part of the afternoon, we walked from floor to floor selling the remaining spring rolls and cupcakes.

Word of mouth spread about Kathy’s cooking from earlier in the week and people from not only our department but numerous others lined up to eat, donate, and express their praise about the campaign. Similar to Monday, the stir fry with spicy noodles and egg rolls went quickly. Moreover, there were people who would donate more than the cost of their food and others who had brought their own lunch but wanted to contribute to the cause.

The takeaway from the LPL food fundraiser amounted to $489! On top of that, Kathy made the donation on behalf of our New Accounts team which ended up being doubled through our firm’s matching program. Overall, the success of the food fundraiser attracted people’s immediate attention, raised awareness for PPA, and collected monies to the tune of $978!

My co-workers had clearly been inspired by the video and previously had no idea about PPA, let alone the symptoms of the disease. I am proud the PPA video produced this type of positive reaction and thus created more awareness about this widely unknown dementia.

Hopefully this video will enable people to take more notice of those battling this disease, and one day with that mentality, PPA will be as familiar to people as Alzheimer’s is today…

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Voting for the Cause

I always had the goal of producing a creative video to help create more exposure and awareness for PPA research before the New Year. This idea quiclkly became fast-tracked due to my company, LPL Financial, offering a $500 prize for best charity video, $250 for 2nd place, and $100 for 3rd place. Since I won the last two firm wide competitions-one for our New Accounts Team and another to cover our Annual Conference as a “Rovering Reporter”-I knew people would be gunning to knock me off.  In fact, I got emails internally stating that “You will not 3-peat” and “I was going down.” With this type of incentive and motivation, I wanted to craft a movie that would instantly grab the viewers attention as well as educate people about this relatively unknown disease.

I needed an idea that was fresh and would stick in people’s minds longer than 5 minutes after they saw the footage.

I brainstormed the idea of a silent movie with cue cards explaining the symptoms of PPA and why fighting to raise awareness for research is absolutely essential. The original premise was to stand in a dimly lit room with a spotlight pointed squarly on my body dropping cue cards one at a time while music playing in the background. About 10 minutes into filming, my friend Brad and I realized this wasn’t going to work nor be as effective as we wanted to portray.

We talked about it and came up with something special.

Instead of solely standing in one place dropping card after card, why not venture around Charlotte (my current place of residence) and take photos with the cue cards all over the city? This approach would defintely captivate people’s attention by demanding they not only read each written phrase but also have a scenic visual along the journey. The concept was so moving that we went out that evening and started shooting.

Over the course of the next couple days, we photographed all our shots, edited the movie and blended in background music. I submitted the video to my company for firm-wide voting and qualified in the Top 3. The 3 videos included:

a) Unchained Dogs – building fences for dog owners so they don’t have to chain their dogs down for fear they will run away.

b) Rescue Mission Farm Project – growing fresh produce for those in need in the Temecula and north San Diego County regions.

c) What would you do for THE CAUSE? – creating awareness and research for PPA while bringing light to a disease that over 1,000,000 people fight everyday.

The voting period went from Monday-Friday and on Thursday morning, the 3 of us received an email – 1st Place: Unchained Dogs (113), 2nd Place: PPA Video (101), 3rd Place: Rescue Mission (76). I immediately assembled a meeting with my AVP’s and managers in hopes of spreading the word amongst my firm by establishing a marketing strategy that targeted all 3 of our office locations: Boston, San Diego and Charlotte. The hardest part about generating exposure is ensuring people take a couple minutes out of their busy day to be cognizant of what’s going on. While voting on the video contest will clearly benefit all charities involved, with all work responsibilities we have on a daily basis, this competition can easily get lost in the shuffle of daily emails and routine homepage postings.

Since my SVP has strong working relationships with our Boston office, I asked him to email the executives and get them to view the videos for voting. One of my AVP’s worked in San Diego for years, and I insisted she email all the managers out west and make them aware of the competition. Lastly, I decided to personally email each employee on our marketing and sales teams about the closely contested race and provided them with a direct link to the movies. They now had every opportunity to watch the video submissions and make an informed decision.

The next morning, I got a phone call from corporate communications, “You Won! How did you get so many votes?  What was your secret? We will email you the final totals by lunch.”

Final Totals: 1st Place: PPA (245), 2nd Place: Unchained Dogs (145), 3rd Place: Rescue Farm Mission (131).

The hidden secret to the massive swing in votes for this race was nothing that secretive at all, rather what we are always trying to promote for this campaign: AWARENESS! When people are presented with information about this disease and cause, they take notice.  Managers sent emails to their teams, employees emailed one another and I received loads of complimentary emails from fellow co-workers. Even from the guy who said “You will not 3-Peat!”

Substance = Results.

It doesn’t take much to spread the word, just a couple minutes out of your day. And for spreading the word, Run4Papa raised another $500 for research thanks to the employees at LPL Financial taking a couple minutes out of their day to learn more about a disease they had never heard of moments before…

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