The Soft Pitch

I’ve been thinking about the reports I’ve read recently about donations being down for toys for kids at Christmas. In one of my last posts I wrote about a branch office of Avnet Electronics Marketing hosting an annual party with customers and suppliers to raise money for charity. And last week I learned about another Avnet grassroots effort to support local kids during the holidays. Long story short, our team at the new Avnet Global Solutions Center  hosted a party for employees. Suppliers donated some prizes like DVD players, big screen TVs and Wii systems for a party and all employees received prize drawing tickets for a shot at the prizes. Employees could also get extra tickets in return for a donation, then Santa made a visit, they ate lots of food and drank hot cocoa.   Then they counted up the money to buy presents for the kids who didn’t get picked during the Salvation Army’s Christmas Angel program.  Apparently there’s always some.  This year the solutions center team raised almost $5,000 – and Avnet, Inc. matched bringing the total to $10,000 for these kids.  Now here’s the cool part – then the employees went on a $10,000 shopping spree with the Salvation Army in hand to buy the things these kids and their families really needed and wanted.  They went to the local Wal-Mart, where the manager gave them an across the board 10% discount to make those dollars go a little further.  What a great way to spread some holiday cheer! Kudos to the team and to our suppliers for finding a way to have some holiday fun and help others at the same time!

Traci Henderson unloads part of the $10,000 in Toys donated to Salvation Army

Kevin Olson, John Beimfohr and Traci Henderson join the ranks of Salvation Army Angels shopping for toys.

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