Merit Property Management held their annual sales meeting this week at the Irvine Marriott — about 570 of their people in the room for the day. The program held the usual content of company updates, awards for successes and a fun series of videos we helped them produce. And mid-afternoon they did something that really blew me away!
The Chief Administration officer took to the stage and asked everyone to clear their tables of all content as a score of people started passing out gift bags to each table. As part of their annual meetings, beginning last year, they have determined to make charitable giving a part of the program. This year’s activity — care packages for military men and women serving overseas (last year they made blankets for children in need).
First they honored the existing veterans within the room and launched into preparing the care packages. Each table created a Hero’s t-shirt (drawing or writing whatever they wanted on a white t-shirt with colored markers), wrote personalized messages on provided thank you cards, and then filled a shipping box with multiple items purchased by Merit specifically for the packages. They had even done their homework and spoke with military representatives to find out what items a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine would want to receive.
Maybe this is something other companies are already doing … it was a first for me and I was moved. The activity was energizing, people were really engaged, there was a lot of laughter and I witnessed how it drew their workforce together.
I look forward to recommending this type of activity to everyone of our clients. I hope you pass it forward with your company.
