Northwest Indiana Car Dealer Shows Care for Victim’s of Violence

You don’t survive sixty years as a car dealer in Northwest Indiana without being resourceful and caring for your community. For Grieger Motor Sales, being resourceful is how you survive and prosper,  but last month, it was the car dealer’s resourcefulness that helped raise $110,000 for the Caring Place.  In this article, you’ll learn how a Northwest Indiana car dealer shows care for victims of domestic violence.

As members of the Valpo Restaurant Group, chefs and businesses work together to have community events, promote Valparaiso, and create fundraisers. Made of a diverse group of businesses with a common goal of making Valparaiso a special place to live, Grieger’s Motors was one of the original members. The group first started working together nearly 15  years ago.

The Group has done some amazing things over the years, which include having numerous festivals downtown. Back then, not much was happening in Valparaiso other than the Popcorn Festival.

That all changed when the group that now calls itself the Valpo Restaurant Group first started having events and festivals. These days, Valpo Events has something almost every week,  the group is also working to help make Valpo a special city!  Just last year, the Valpo Restaurant Group organized a last-minute fundraiser that raised over $31,000 and 3,000 pounds of food for the HillTop Pantry. It was a miraculous story! If you haven’t read about it, it’s a fun read and can be found on this link. But when the group learned about the crisis facing victims of domestic violence, they decided to take on what many would say was improbable, even impossible.

Helping Victims of Domestic Violence had Challenges Beyond Finances!

According to Grieger’s blog, Fundraising for Victims of Violence, The greatest challenge facing The Caring Place and victims of domestic violence is getting people to talk about it. Everyone seems to want to sweep the need to help victims of domestic violence under the rug. Let’s face it, there are economic benefits in painting the picture that a town is perfect. A fundraiser for victims of domestic violence isn’t good for business.

The challenges are well beyond getting people to talk about it. Many people organizing fundraisers pick other nonprofits because it is considered very challenging to raise money for such charities as the Caring Place.

According to a recent Perma-Green blog called, How Valpo uses Creativity to Care for Victims of Abuse, most people love to support charities that help children. We all do! Unfortunately, people are very uncomfortable thinking about domestic violence. It’s a subject people would rather not talk about,  compound that with the fact that you can’t post an image of an innocent mom and her child that are being helped by institutions like the Caring Place. These people are being protected.

The NWI Car Dealer, Lawn Care & Restaurant’s used their SEO to Engage, Attract & Raise $110,000

According to Denise Koebcke from The Caring Place. “It costs nearly $75,000 a month to operate the Caring Place. If we don’t have the funds to help these people, most will not have a way to escape the abuse. But until we can break the silence, we will continue to struggle to get the financial support we desperately need.”

But with an insatiable drive to help these wonderful people escape the trauma of abuse and get a new start, the Valpo businesses in the group wanted to do more. Not only by breaking the silence and raising money, they wanted the fundraising to be sustainable. To do this, they leveraged their businesses’ SEO and digital marketing platforms to drive home results.

The Right Drive needs an Incentive!

Statistics support that 84% of people are more likely to give if their donation is matched. The Group contacted a friend from New Jersey about matching funds. Gutenstein and his family’s Gutenstein Family Foundation helped match funds for the previous year’s $31,000 Hilltop Fundraiser and partnered with Grieger’s Motor Sales to buy the Hilltop Ram delivery van a few years ago.

Along with his family, the Gutenstein Family Foundation offered to match anything we raised up to $20,000.

 

 

Attracting & Engaging the Community

With the right incentive, the fundraiser would reach the market where most people have access to the internet 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. A blog was created using Perma-Green’s popular blog platform. In addition to organically meeting people in search engines, the blog challenged the community to find creative ways of raising funds within family, friends, churches, and work. It also helps educate people about the need for institutions like the Caring Place.

The blog was a hit and even climbed to page 1 nationally with Google’s search engines. A nationally ranked blog is capable of remaining on search engines for years!  With a nationally ranked blog, we broke the silence and The Caring Place now had a sustainable medium that would continue to give well into the future.

Next, it was the restaurant’s charismatic chef’s turn. Many of the chefs and their employees were filmed promoting the matching funds’ incentive and people were asked to sign a giant Christmas card at the car dealer and at the restaurants.

Donations started coming from around Northwest Indiana and around the State

The Valparaiso Meijers Store employees donated $10,000 and a week later, The State Women of Meijers Group donated another $5,000. Both specifically selected The Caring Place!

When the Fundraiser Stalled, The NWI Dealer Gave it a Jump Start!

After only a few weeks, everyone was talking about The Caring Place and the Fundraiser reached $65,000. The nonprofit that nobody wanted to talk about became Northwest Indiana’s most talked about charity!

With a week to go before Christmas, the fundraiser was beginning to stall! That’s when Northwest Indiana’s longest-running car dealer demonstrated their passionate drive to help victims of abuse and sexual assault.

Brad Hallal of Grieger’s leveraged his SEO and digital marketing platform to give the fundraiser a jump start. While the car dealer’s blog reached the Northwest Indiana market organically, Hallal also volunteered to pitch the fundraiser in numerous video productions. The videos were posted and shared on the business communities’ social media.

 Two weeks later, we finished our Caring Place Fundraiser at over $110,000….and we gave Denise what she wanted. We broke the silence that hides the violence.

Read More | The blogs that Made $110,000 For Victim’s of Domestic Violence

How SEO, Video & Cast from Valpo Raised $110,000 for Victims of Domestic Violence
Fundraising for Victims of Domestic Violence | Cool Charity.No Boundaries
Fundraiser Ideas! How Valpo Uses Creativity for Victims of Domestic Violence
Valpo’s Best Living | The Story of the $31,000 HillTop Fundraiser

Meet the Caring Place!

The Caring Place is a non-profit social service organization, serving the needs of domestic violence and sexual assault victims. Our organization primarily serves victims in Lake, Porter, and Starke counties in Northwest Indiana, but may include victims across the country.

The Caring Place, Inc. provides inclusive service, shelter, and ongoing support for people experiencing domestic violence.  Through advocacy, education, and awareness, we empower people to build supportive, respectful, compassionate relationships.

 

The Caring Place is the only 24-hour crisis line and emergency shelter in Porter County.

• It costs $2,300 per month to provide food for those in shelters.

• It costs $73,352 per month to run The Caring Place facilities and all its programs.

Northwest Indiana Car Dealer Shows Care for Victim’s of Violence

 

Article by Jim Jano Janesheski

Jano-Digital

Tags: Car, caring, dealer, dealers, dealership, domestic, indiana, Northwest, place, victims, violence
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