For many holiday seasons, local law enforcement agencies across the United States have spread cheer and goodwill through “Shop With a Cop” programs. This holiday tradition pairs police officers with underprivileged children on shopping excursions that enable participants to purchase needed items like food and winter clothing as well as toys and gifts for the family.
Shop With a Cop programs faced a grim Christmas in 2020. In the thick of the pandemic, outreach efforts such as this, which rely on private donations and fundraisers, felt the belt-tightening of many corporate donors who had slashed their benevolence budgets.
Fortunately for the organizers of Shop With a Cop in Alamance County, N.C., an advocate in the form of First Source Equipment Rentals, Burlington, N.C., stepped forward to help.
“At Christmas, my wife and I always sponsor a couple of families or do a random donation to a cause that we feel needs it,” says John Scott, First Source Equipment Rentals owner. “With everything going on in 2020, it was a personal goal to have a normal Christmas for my family, and we felt other people needed some ‘normal’ as well. We started looking at things we knew existed and Shop With a Cop was one of them. This past year, no one in our area was helping to fund Shop With a Cop.”
Some close-to-home factors helped seal the deal for Scott’s decision to support “the blue” by throwing First Source Equipment Rentals’ support behind Shop With a Cop last Christmas.
“The husband of a lady who works with us is on the sheriff’s department, and the mother of another guy who works for us is a police officer. Also, with everything going on with police departments across the country, we felt they probably needed a refresher. We support our police department — and police everywhere — fully. That is kind of big thing with us. So, we decided to help raise money for Shop With a Cop,” he says.
First Source Equipment Rentals’ connection to a local radio station made the fundraising effort an easy process for the busy rental company.
“A local radio station, 95.1 The Maverick, which we advertise with, had done something a year or so ago with Shop With a Cop. We called them and asked, ‘How can we be part of it?’ They said that this year they didn’t have anybody willing to sponsor or donate to it. Usually there are companies that will donate, but with COVID, that completely stopped. All that stuff was off the books. So that’s what really kicked it off, the radio station. They did all the heavy advertising and handled the money,” Scott says.
Scott quickly found himself on the air with the local sheriff and police promoting First Source Equipment Rentals’ pledge to match donations to Shop With a Cop up to $3,000.
“We also posted it on our Facebook page. We called it the ‘Kinfolk Christmas Shop With a Cop.’ We promoted it at both of our stores, where we had materials about it upfront for donations. But mainly it was getting on the radio to talk about why we wanted to do it — because last year was going to be a harder Christmas than normal for many families — and encouraging people to donate,” Scott says.
In the end, the fundraising effort generated more than $15,000 for the Alamance County Shop With a Cop program.
On top of the warm holiday feelings the campaign generated among Scott’s team at First Source Equipment Rentals, the company’s participation with Shop With a Cop had the added benefit of helping to secure a much-needed new hire in an environment where help has been hard to come by.
“After we did [the campaign], we hired a new bookkeeper. Because people have options right now, applicants are interviewing us about the job as much as we are them. One of the questions this person had for us was, ‘Do you all do any type of giving back to the community, service work or volunteer work?’ Part of the reason she took the job was because we had done Shop With a Cop. That was kind of neat. It got us a new hire who is still with us today because we did a simple program like that. People are wanting to be with companies where they can do more than just go to work,” Scott says.
The 2020 Shop With a Cop project was such a success, Scott anticipates repeating the activity again in 2021 — this time with a more ambitious fundraising target.
“Overall, it was a great experience for our employees and my family,” he says. “It wasn’t meant for a PR purpose — that wasn’t the intent, but it definitely benefited us, giving back like that. We had a lot of people talk about it around town. It humbled some of the employees that we helped Shop With a Cop as First Source Equipment Rentals. For next year, we have already pledged to match $5,000 with hopes to raise $20,000, and we look forward to doing more things like this in the future with our local community.”