“What would you do if money was no object?”
In January, our team sat down to discuss our core purpose during our first planning session of the year. The goal was to answer one question: Why do we come to work each day? Yes, we’re good at PR and we enjoy helping our clients grow their businesses and their brands, but there had to be a bigger purpose. We just couldn’t put our finger on it.
We came up with this core purpose statement:
Challenge ourselves through work we love, with people we love, to make a lasting impact.
But what does that mean? What can we as an agency do to make that lasting impact? We’re just a few women working in a small office in Nashville. How can we work toward something larger than ourselves to truly make a lasting impact – in Tennessee and beyond?
Fast-forward a few weeks.
Raven was peppering me with questions on our way to a client meeting in St. Louis. Among them was one of the most simple, yet thought-invoking questions I had ever been asked.
“What sort of business would you start if money was no object?” she asked.
Without hesitation, I shared that it wouldn’t necessarily be a business. It would be a nonprofit that provides travel scholarships or financial assistance to send people into the field to do mission or volunteer work. We delved into what that would look like and suddenly had a near-complete hypothetical business plan.
Within a matter of minutes we realized that we – RPR – could do that.
In ten minutes we had the plan mapped out: the selection process, candidate criteria… even a map of the world for our office that we would add a pin to each time we sent another traveler into the world to do good.
There was a lot of squealing, and in our excitement, we missed the exit for our hotel. Twice.
This is an area that I am deeply passionate about. Mission work changes you. It makes you a better business owner, team member, spouse, parent and friend. And with this program, it goes even further. It impacts the lives of those we’re sponsoring, and it impacts the lives that they are touching.
RPR will provide travel grants to individuals who wish to do volunteer or mission work abroad. The amount of money allocated to this will be tied to agency revenue. This allows us to work for something bigger than ourselves.
It’s actually quite simple. We do fantastic work for our clients, make money and send people to do more fantastic work around the world. Now instead of making money for “the man” (or woman, in our case) our team is working hard to help mankind.
You know that action-oriented core value of ours? Well, since dreaming up this program in November we’ve been able to provide grants for four individuals to do mission or volunteer work in various parts of the globe, including Africa, Ireland and Costa Rica – all during the unofficial pilot phase.
Stay tuned for the official launch in 2016. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for details on how to apply and where our volunteers are going.
We’ve only just begun.