Mark Ripley, dealer principal at Mann Northway Chevrolet Buick GMC Cadillac, stands beside firefighters.
The pandemic has made it difficult for many organizations to raise money for charitable causes, but numerous dealers in Canada are finding ways to help raise funds regardless of the hurdles they encounter.
One such example comes from Mann Northway Chevrolet Buick GMC Cadillac in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Mark Ripley, the dealer principal, said they were able to raise thousands of dollars for a hospital in their community through a radiothon that has been running locally for more than 20 years.
“What it is, they fundraise for equipment or different units in the hospital, (but) it’s very low government funded,” said Ripley in an interview with Canadian auto dealer. “It’s really a fundraised hospital in the community, and so they have a foundation for that — and every year they have a radiothon and for 12 hours they raise money.”
Over the years, Ripley said the radiothon helped raise anywhere from $100,000 to up to $700,000 for the Victoria Hospital Foundation, but that with COVID-19 restrictions the event could not be hosted at the hospital. He received a call about the situation and offered to help, and explored safe and contactless solutions with the foundation’s CEO Sherry Buckler.
“So I said, why don’t we use our service; we’ll promote the event,” said Ripley. “Let’s just start (preparing) all our media and all our advertising (to let) people know that we’re going to be doing it this year, but it’ll be safe. And we opened up our service drive-thru for it.”
Ripley said they closed off half the showroom when the radio station arrived, and did not allow people to enter the building to deliver their donation. Instead, people delivered them from their vehicle in the drive-thru, where the dealership had volunteers equipped with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) accepting donations.
“(Then) they would drive to the next store to the Tim Horton’s and get a free coffee,” Ripley. “We had no idea what we were doing when we started and said, if we could even raise a couple hundred thousand dollars, we would be happy. And we ended up (raising) nearly $563,000. And of that, we personally (from the dealership) wrote a check for $72,000.”
The fundraiser was part of an extension of the previous campaign, which raised funds for the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), according to the 900 CKBI. Ripley said the donations will be used towards the purchase of equipment to help furnish the new children’s unit the hospital started building about two years ago.
Ripley is hoping the dealership will be able to continue to help out with the radiothon through a partnership with the foundation. “That’s where it’s going. We want to, they want to, it’s just a matter of making it happen now. It was huge, very huge, and for my staff it was such a good feeling. You know, when you’re a part of something that big in a smaller community,” said Ripley.
The “Give a little life” day radiothon went live on Dec. 4, 2020 from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on 99.1 FM, 101.5 FM, and 900 AM. Donations were offered over the phone and submitted online.
Mann Northway Chevrolet Buick GMC Cadillac.
