Every year our team works ASOTU CON side by side, and the amount we get done together is outrageous. The effect lasts all year. Our quick messages and calls run smoother afterward, because serving together gives each of us a fuller picture of the person on the other end.
Patrick Abad, general manager of Beaver Toyota, has written that effect into store policy. He joined today’s Automotive State of the Union live from Cumming, Georgia, one day after his team’s fifth annual golf tournament.
How much did the Beaver Golf Tournament raise in year five?
Year one to year five: from what the team half-jokingly called an experimental tournament to more than $126,000 raised
Recipients: four Forsyth County charities
Year six: planning has already started
The charities stayed all day at Hawks Ridge Golf Club, alongside a large share of Beaver’s own staff.
Why does Beaver focus its giving on kids and law enforcement?
That’s the store’s stated mission, and it stays hyper local. Several of this year’s recipients work with children who have faced abuse and neglect, and they stay with those kids long after the crisis.
“[H]ow do we take these kids on the journey of healing, not just in the moment, but like a year from now, two years from now, three years from now[?]”
Backpack drives and basic-needs programs matter. Organizations doing years-long work in the hardest situations need steady local backing too, and a dealership is well placed to give it.
What is Volunteer Time Off and how does it work?
New at Beaver this year, VTO pays every employee for up to 40 hours a year to volunteer for a cause they care about. Across 330 employees, the store went from zero dedicated volunteer hours to as many as 13,200. It removes a barrier Patrick hears all the time:
“I would love to go volunteer for eight hours in a day, but I can’t afford to miss eight hours of work.”
Not everyone will use all 40 hours. Some team members would use 200 if they could.
Why would a dealership pay employees to be away from the store?
The answer is what serving together does to a team. Patrick grew up in the car business cooking meals at the Ronald McDonald House and painting houses for Habitat for Humanity. He’s watched service, sales, finance, and accounting bond in ways no meeting produces.
“There is no dollar you’re going to spend on training and developing your people that will impact as much as that will.”
We’ve seen it firsthand. A ten-person dealership team that volunteered together after the Texas hurricanes is still one of the tightest groups we know, even though some of them have moved on to other stores.
Presenting a check helps a community.
Calling your people into the work builds community inside your store too. Even one paid volunteer day that mixes departments is a place to start. The full conversation with Patrick is on today’s episode of the Automotive State of the Union podcast.
