Best Practice: Community Car Wash!

Over the years I have been writing this blog, I have tried to focus on action rather than theory. Sometimes I have been successful with this and other times I drift. Today’s post is pure action. While a community car wash might not make sense in your particular circumstances, I hope my description of what we do will spur your creativity in coming up with an idea of your own!

Impacting The Community!

In my last post, I described how we see our community as a critical part of the answer to the question, “Why does our business exist?” Our answer to that question, also our mission statement, is that our business exists to honor God by impacting the lives of our employees, customers, and community. I also told you I would give you a specific example of how we attempt to do this.

Our idea, a community car wash, came from an auto dealer best practices group meeting that I attended. The other dealer had the idea of “loaning” a section of his car lot to local community organizations once a month so they could hold community events. Most of the time they held yard sales, but there were also times they would do a car wash.

I immediately loved his idea, but wanted to put a twist on it. I was not sure what that twist would be until I found myself brainstorming one day about new ideas for ministry through the business.

Community Car Wash

Here is how it works. Once a month during the Spring, Summer, and Fall months, we host a local organization (usually related to youth) on our property and help them to hold a community car wash event on a Saturday. All they need to bring is the workforce…we provide all of the supplies they need (soap, water, buckets, brushes, towels, etc.) as well as help them with the marketing of the event in advance.

We post flyers for the event on Facebook and our website and we display a sign, describing the event details, in front of the dealership for the week leading up to the event. We also encourage them to use their social media skills, also giving them advice based on our experience.

On the day of the car wash event, one of our employees from our Clean-Up department works with the workers (mostly youth) from the organization to make sure the wash-rinse-dry process is working smoothly and to monitor the safety of those working. We take pictures of the event for later posting of the event online.

Financial Component

Here is the best part of the whole idea. We only charge people $1.00 to get their car washed. This draws a good amount of traffic, but it also encourages them to make a donation to the organization. We have seen donations of anywhere from $5 to $100 for a single car wash!

The organization gets to keep the $1.00 fees plus any donations they receive. Then, at the end of the day, they tally the number of car washes they completed and we give them a $10 donation for every car washed. We have had organizations raise anywhere from $1,000 to $1,800 for a single Saturday of work!

Other Benefits

Here are the benefits to their organization:

• They raise much needed money toward their cause.
• The youth involved learn that work brings reward.
• The participating members bond in the process.
• They do not have to rent a location or buy supplies.
• They get community exposure for their cause.

Our benefits:

• The organization members learn about our mission and role in the community.
• Our company gets 75-125 customers driving through our display lot.
• The community sees our role in giving back, boosting our reputation.
• We learn more about community organizations and their mission.
• We get to give much needed money to faith-based causes (with added benefits!)

An Easier Way?

Clearly, it would be a lot easier for us to find the organizations in the community that match our mission and just write them a check as a donation. We would save everyone a bunch of work. At the same time, I think the benefits listed above far outweigh the work involved.

In 2014, we hosted half a dozen or so of these events. We surveyed each organization after the event and the feedback we got was incredible! We learned from each one and made modifications and improvements each time. Obviously, there is no way to quantify the impact of these events on the community. Nor is there a way to determine their eternal impact.

However, based on the impact we could see, I am certain that this practice will be one we continue to execute in the future. I am looking forward to seeing what God will do with this idea in 2015!

What do you think of the idea of a community car wash?

How could you adapt the car wash idea to fit your business?

How would you improve on this idea?

photo by Courtney Carmody