When skills and purpose perfectly align, doing good can yield some pretty impressive results.
Last Friday, as June temperatures began to climb into the 90s, scores of Pinkard people gathered under the large outdoor pavilion at the Westminster Elks Lodge, across the street from the Pinkard construction yard, to roll up their sleeves and build beds for kids in need.
Organized by Pinkard’s community outreach program, The Pink Crew, the volunteer event benefited Sleep in Heavenly Peace, an award-winning nonprofit that delivers beds to children who don’t have one. As the tagline on their trailer reads: “No kid sleeps on the ground in our town!”
Needless to say, our people’s considerable experience building things with power tools made for an overqualified workforce on a project that required various teams to cut, drill, sand, and assemble the bed frame components before dipping them in a sealant bath and branding the headboards with a hot iron.
“The goal was to build 60 beds, but they’re not used to having construction people as their volunteers,” says Pinkard accountant Kristen Rebmann, who co-leads the Pink Crew. “When they asked how many people knew how to use a saw and everybody’s hands went up, they decided to leave the excess lumber they had delivered and see how many extra beds we could build in the allotted time. Our people ended up using up every board supplied to build 71 beds in 5 hours.”
In total, 40 Pinkard employees, along with a handful of friends and family members showed up—all wearing their bright pink T-shirts—smashing the previous record for turnout at a Pink Crew event.
“It was so great to see everyone come together, utilizing their skills to serve the community,” says CFO Odette Bent-Buckles, who worked the dipping and drying station of the assembly line, adding how she was especially pleased to see many faces who hadn’t previously engaged in Pink Crew projects.
In addition to organizing community service opportunities through the Pink Crew, Pinkard offers 16 annual hours of paid VTO, or Volunteer Time Off, to all employees interested in pursuing charity work. Next up, the Pink Crew will be helping our longtime partners at the Action Center with their annual school supply drive taking place in July.
