Imagine gaining free marketing, driving up employee morale, and making yourself feel good at the same time by giving back to cancer patients. It’s not impossible. This is what a company with a great community service strategy sees.
About This Guest:
Debbie Sardone
Founder - Cleaning for a Reason
Debbie Sardone is a brand pioneer, creating “first to market” categories in unlikely places. Her nonprofit Cleaning For A Reason (an ISSA Charities program) is the largest cleaning for cancer charity in the world.
Debbie turned a cleaning job into a three-million-dollar cleaning empire. After building one of the largest self-running maid services in the country, Buckets & Bows Maid Service, Inc., she began speaking and training other cleaning business owners around the world creating more “Mop-Free Millionaires” than anyone on the planet!
Debbie also owns SPEEDCLEANING.COM and manufactures her own line of non-toxic cleaning products. Her nonprofit, Cleaning For A Reason, has risen to national prominence and has provided free house cleaning services to over 50,000 families with cancer. Debbie’s been featured on Fox & Friends, Oprah, Reader’s Digest, Today.com, Yahoo! News, as well as, dozens of other local and national media.
Podcast Transcription
What is Cleaning for a Reason?
People inherently are drawn to the idea that what they do should leave an impact. Cancer is one of the worst diseases, in that its effect is horrendous and its reach is far. Cleaning for a Reason unifies that need for impact with the inherent need for relief that exists in those impact by cancer.
The organization was started by Debbie Sardone and is a collection of residential cleaning companies and others from the industries that donate services, resources, and money to providing free home cleaning services to cancer patients.
Why Businesses Join the Cause: A Morale Boost
Giving back and volunteering have the amazing benefit of making you and employees feel empowered by the help you give.
By donating or offering services or products, you can bring the good feeling that volunteering brings back to your team. This can have the overall benefit of increasing team morale by making the employees feel more engaged with the company.
Did Someone Say Free Marketing?
Not only does giving back either through your own means or by joining an organization like Cleaning for a Reason, but it has great benefits in the form of marketing. Debbie has an entire folder of free coverage of her company that she’s gained from the work she has done.
Marketing is expensive, easily overlooked, but most important vital for growth. Debbie’s folder amounts to what would have otherwise cost thousands and thousands of dollars and she didn’t have to pay anything.
Typically cleaning businesses run on word of mouth for much of their early life as finding a suitable budget for a good marketing strategy is nearly impossible. However, with growing as a business and luring in new (talented) employees having a recognized brand and a local presence is extremely important.
Now imagine gaining all of that desired awareness and good press coverage without having to lift a finger or dip into your wallet. That’s what giving back can potentially give you.