Members of Royal LePage Community Realty stand outside their Southview Drive office with a $1,000 check for Medicine Hat Family Services on Friday, the first of a dozen donations in the organization's 12 Months of Giving campaign.--NEWS PHOTO RYAN MCCRACKEN
mccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken
Forget the 12 days of Christmas, Royal LePage Community Realty is stepping up with 12 Months of Giving.
The local real estate team recently announced it will be taking $1,000 from its Institutional Advertising fund and giving it to a local not-for-profit group every month for the next year.
“We wanted to repurpose those funds and do something we could feel good about,” said Royal LePage Community Realty owner/broker Brooklyn Kalista, adding the Institutional Advertising fund is built through monthly contributions from agents.
“We support the community and the community supports us. Without community support it’s pretty hard to have success in our industry. It’s just wanting to be there for the community on a collective level. A lot of us do it personally and collectively throughout the year, but just seeing what was happening this year, specifically with COVID and everything else, we just thought this would be a really good time and a great way to repurpose funds and inject something back where we could.”
First up will be Medicine Hat Family Services, followed by the Medicine Hat Women’s Shelter Society, the Santa Claus Fund, the food bank’s Brown Bag Lunch Program, the Kinsmen Club of Medicine Hat and Medicine Hat Soccer Association.
The second half of the campaign will feature donations to McMan Youth, Family and Community Services Association, the local Mustard Seed, SPCA Medicine Hat, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Hat Ronald McDonald House and Habitat for Humanity Southern Alberta.
Kalista says many of the team’s 46 members already volunteer their time at a number of these organizations throughout the year. When approaching the 12 Months of Giving campaign, Kalista says team members were asked to express which organizations mattered most to them.
“We kind of just picked things that really hit home, literally,” she said. “We went with things like bringing food to the table, things that deal with mental health – because obviously that’s been a really big thing for our community this last bit – and just family. Anything to do with those sorts of services that relate to everyday living, we wanted to make sure we were hitting.”
After figuring out the 12 recipients, Kalista says the team reached out to each one to co-ordinate a schedule that will help each organization at a time when it’s needed most.
“We put some thought into our timeline over the next 12 months, as to when it works best for those organizations. We connected with the organizations too, to see if there were times that were more opportune for them as well,” said Kalista. “We kept our one that goes directly to the Santa Claus Fund right around the time that we know we’re usually donating to them anyways. And we will collectively donate toys and games on top of what we’re doing. We did try to match up with the food bank for the brown bag lunch that they have going on right now.”
