Overview
Since 2009, Keller Williams (KW) locations across North America have set aside the second Thursday in May for RED Day. As the realty chain’s annual day of service, RED Day sees KW teams step up to help make a difference in their communities. Every office in the chain takes part in the event, but exactly how they do so is left up to them.
Challenge
In previous years, KW Hamilton and Niagara have taken part in RED Day with food drives, volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, and other local community efforts. However, pandemic restrictions throughout 2021 made in-person fundraising events impossible. Needing to innovate, they found their solution on Kambeo.
Kambeo’s platform is designed to help make neighborhoods thrive, local businesses succeed, and social causes get the support they need. Individuals and organizations of all sizes have joined Kambeo to improve how they fundraise, give back, and make positive changes in their communities.
Solution
Ryan Turnbull, Agent Technology Concierge, and Sue Ore, Market Center Administrator, were part of the committee responsible for organizing the event. They would have to get inventive if they were going to host their annual RED Day while keeping everyone safe. With the right tools in place, they then turned their dynamic brainpower to the real challenge of engaging their fellow teams and the community to make an impact.
“We were basically asking all of our agents to set up their fundraisers so they could market themselves,” says Sue. “One person volunteered to shave their head. Another of our agents put on a unicorn onesie and, for everyone who donated, she’d drive to their house and do a dance at their curb.”
Real estate agents are very flexible thinkers. However, they’re also very busy. “Kambeo’s ability to automatically issue tax receipts made everything much easier,” says Sue. “That freed up so much of my time, I had time to set up everyone’s profile and come up with more ideas for fundraisers.”
The platform also provided KW with a communication channel to ensure everyone involved in the fundraiser had a clear picture of progress and to further drive momentum.
“The Kambeo Leaderboard was a lot of fun,” says Ryan. “It helped create competition between agents. Since you could see what other people were bringing in, it ignited other agents to step up their own fundraising efforts.”
RED Day only takes place for 24 hours each year, but Kambeo’s flexibility with scheduling events over multiple days allowed KW Hamilton and Niagara to begin fundraising in advance of the day itself.
“Because we had Kambeo, it gave us the opportunity to fundraise up to a certain point in time, instead of just on that day,” says Ryan, noting that he believes this increased overall donation. “The last two days were the biggest. You can look at the numbers. They climbed up to $8,000, then $9,000, and then we started to see huge jumps! The last day alone was probably close to $10,000 in donations.”
Results
Given the phenomenal level of success experienced during this year’s RED Day, it seems certain that the Hamilton and Niagara offices of KW will use Kambeo again next year. In fact, Ryan would like to see the platform adopted by every KW location across the country.
“I think we raised more than any other office, maybe as much as three times more,” he says. “If every Keller Williams office picked the same cause, I think we’d see some incredible results.”
For more information on how Kambeo can help you with fundraising, donor management, and much more, contact us here.
