When people have worked hard all year to qualify for a lavish incentive trip, why would they want to give up time on the golf course to work a little more? Do these high-powered, high-earning overachievers really want to paint a local school or assemble bee hives for a local honey farmers’ cooperative?
Increasingly, those involved with incentive planning are finding the answer is a resounding “yes.” Just as community volunteerism has become part of association meetings and corporate team-building endeavors, it is also finding a place in the plush and pampered world of incentive travel.
“What I’ve noticed in bringing people together is that people want to give back—it’s a basic human need,” says Lynda Baum, president of the Northern California chapter of the Society of Incentive & Travel Executives. “We all want to contribute and it’s important that our industry understands this. It’s a big part of what inspires people.”
Baum, who is also president of San Jose-based Exclusive Destinations, a marketing representative for international DMCs, believes that the motivational and performance improvement objectives behind incentive travel are well served by incorporating a charitable effort into the agenda.
“The motivation level for participants goes way beyond anything else,” she says. “If you take a bus trip to view a volcano, you’ll come back impressed with what you saw. But it’s nothing in comparison to the feeling you get when involved in a charitable effort.”
Baum also notes that volunteer projects tie into the growing popularity of “experiential” travel.
“The incentive industry tends to follow the trends in upscale leisure travel, where the ‘voluntourism’ aspect has become very big,” she says. “Now we’re seeing the incentive decision-makers pick up on this as well.”
Lucy Eisele, CITE, owner of Integrity Incentives in St. Cloud, Minn., adds that the string of early 21st century catastrophic events have also played a part.
“Attitudes have really changed in recent years and I think it’s a combination of 9/11, Katrina and the tsunami all happening in the space of a few years,” she says. “These three things were a one-two punch that really woke people up to the need for community involvement.”
Bee Movement
The ways that incentive groups are participating in community volunteer projects are as varied as the destinations they visit, ranging from wildlife conservation in South Africa to renovation work in New Orleans to supporting a new astronomy center on Hawaii’s Big Island.
For a recent incentive program of 300 attendees from Citigroup held in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Ira Almeas, president of East Hanover, N.J.-based Impact Incentives & Meetings, organized an activity in which members of the group could build beehives for a local cooperative, the All Island Bee Farmers Association.
“While the island was doing great with tourism, the local honey industry was in need,” says Almeas, whose company includes a division called Impact 4 Good that develops volunteer programs for meeting and incentive clients. “We got beehive kits and set things up poolside along with story boards so people could see the value of what they were doing. People could participate whenever they wanted over a two-day period—a lot of people came both days.”
Other aspects of the program included room gifts consisting of jars of local honey accompanied by personal thank-you notes. At the final-night awards gala, the head of the bee farmers’ co-operative came to thank the group and received a monetary contribution for the co-op.
School Work
In New Orleans, Bonnie Boyd, president of Bonnie Boyd & Co., a local DMC, likes to steer clients toward revitalization projects such as one surrounding the International School of Louisiana, a charter school founded and supported by local parents that teaches children in three languages, Spanish, French and English. The school lost its building in the floods following Hurricane Katrina and has since moved to another site.
“A new building was found for the school, but it needed a lot of work—everything from painting to new bathrooms,” Boyd says. “The schoolyard needed landscaping. Over several months we came in with groups who did painting and other work. They even created a mural with international scenes.”
While Boyd has seen corporate groups tackle a wide range of worthy projects in New Orleans, she says the school renovation seemed to be especially successful in terms of fostering good feelings among participants.
“Anytime you have a project that involves children or animals—it’s an instant win,” she says.
Animal Acts
Incentive volunteer projects have also involved wildlife conservation, including efforts to protect pandas in China and cheetahs in South Africa.
Jami Katz, business development manager for Enterprise Events in San Rafael, Calif., has worked closely for the past several years on a Cheetah Drive initiative for a Silicon Valley software company, which holds an annual incentive meeting in South Africa every three years.
“A focus of the program is on teaching the local farmers to drive the cheetahs off their lands—not shoot them,” she says. “The client has also been involved in training Anatolian shepherd dogs to herd cheetahs off farmlands.”
The Cheetah Drive project has been involved with the creation of the Cheetah Outreach Center and surrounding cheetah habitat near Capetown. Incentive participants have also adopted cheetahs and provided for their care.
Challenges Ahead
While community giving can work well for incentives, organizers caution that there are numerous hurdles both in regard to destinations and the corporate clients involved. At the same time, they say tailoring volunteer projects for incentive trips is different than it is for corporate team-building events.
Among the initial challenges is finding a suitable volunteer project that benefits the destination. According to Integrity Incentives’ Eisele, a sensitive approach is essential.
“You first have to find out what the needs are. I visit the destination and snoop around,” she says. “The trick is to not make the destination feel like a charity case. You don’t come in and say, ‘Wow, you really need help here.’ It’s kind of a velvet glove operation.”
To ensure that charitable activities are tied into local culture and heritage, Eisele recommends consulting with local historians and organizations such as the chamber of commerce.
While community needs in some destinations are more obvious than in others, Baum believes any destination can lend itself to community involvement.
“For the past few years we’ve done a program in New Orleans, but next year we’re going to Naples, Florida, which is a more affluent community,” she says. “Yet we’re confident we can still do something—perhaps something for foster children or Big Brother/Big Sister programs. There’s always something you can do.”
Making It Work
While many corporations have community service programs in place, Eisele says it can still be a challenge to convince corporate clients to make volunteerism part of an incentive.
“There’s a fear that people will balk at community giving—that the incentive is a reward and should not involve work,” she says.
To generate enthusiasm rather than dread among participants, Eisele says it is essential that the community giving aspect be part of the incentive promotion from the very beginning.
“You need to put it up front in the marketing. You can’t just spring it on people,’ she says. “It needs to start from the top with a letter from the CEO. You need to show that it’s in keeping with the company and culture. It should be included on the website, in teasers and monthly letters. It must be an integral part of the campaign.”
When working with corporate clients, Almeas says it’s important to look into each company’s history of charitable work.
“You have to do some research, just as you would with the demographics of the group,” he says. “For instance, we have a financial client whose charitable efforts are directed toward children, so any charitable activities we design for them involve children.”
He adds that it is also important is to realize that a community service project for an incentive group cannot be treated in the exact same way that it would for a team-building activity.
“Incentives differ from straight corporate team building in that they are often comprised of guests and people who don’t work together in an office,” he says. “So the objectives of fostering trust and cooperation may not be as applicable.”
Almeas and other incentive planners recommend that community giving projects be presented as strictly voluntary options and scheduled in such a way that attendees still have plenty of time for leisure activities.
“During a four-day event, we might schedule the incentive in the late afternoon, so attendees can still enjoy golf or the beach,” Almeas says.
Katz adds that a lot of worthwhile projects can be conducted in a short amount of time.
“You can put together medical supply kits for seniors, build bicycles for kids, make tiles for a local hospital,” she says. “There’s a lot that can be done in a short amount of time in a hotel ballroom.”
Whatever the time involved, those who have organized such events say the feedback from participants is overwhelmingly positive.
“I’ve never had anyone say they didn’t enjoy it,” Eisele says. “The time devoted to the project is never enough. Often, we’ve had people willing to give up their next day’s activity to spend more time on it. I’ve even seen it change the nature and outlook of some people.”
Almeas agrees, adding that community service goes a long way toward providing the kinds of results that companies want from an incentive.
“The definition of an incentive is an extraordinary travel experience,” he says. “So how do you make their experience extraordinary? This does it.”
