gas buy-down makes the front page
Last weekend MapleGrove held an outreach event at a local gas station where we paid for $.20 cents off each gallon of gas purchased. It made the front page of the local newspaper and was a huge success overall.
Here’s how we did it:
We allocated a fixed amount of money to go toward the project, in our case it was $300 - enough to reduce the price of 1500 gallons of gasoline.
We picked a date and time but didn’t release this to anyone until we had to. We told media the date only a few days before the event, but not the location. Only a few team members knew the location of the event before that day. We did not want all our own members showing up for the discount, and we did not want people hearing about it on the news, as the local traffic would draw enough attention and cause enough of a line-up.
Once we started we had plenty of traffic. Many people in line were calling their friends on their cell phones.
We approached several gas stations before finding one that would host the event under our terms. This ended up being a small locally owned station that was not worried about what “the corporate office” would think of it.
We started at 12 noon, and ended at 3:00p (which was also when 1500 gallons of gas limit was reached).
Each person was offered free coffee, donuts, and was personally talked to by at least one of our staff members. We wanted to tell people that we were just there to offer a free, no strings attached gift from MapleGrove Church, and we handed them a standard business card with our contact information, website and a map of the church’s location on it.
This project took a lot of volunteers -
- at the gas pumps to offer “full service” to pump gas, take payment, wash windows, etc.
- down the street both directions with large signs to attract attention.
- offering free coffee and donuts (both also donated) for people in line.
- helping direct traffic in the lot and at the entrances.
- talking to people while in line.
Read the article that was in our local newspaper.