What if your franchise gave away what the community actually needed?

By Tam Goldsmith

Premium Service Brands franchisees are helping schools and families with supplies, food and practical projects through Kids-Lift.

Premium Service Brands has more than 1,000 franchise units across nine home-service brands. Through Kids-Lift, its franchise owners are helping schools and families with food, clothing, supplies and practical projects. Tam Goldsmith looks at what happens when a franchise asks communities what they need before deciding how to help.

There is no shortage of companies willing to give money to good causes. The more difficult part is making sure what they give is actually what people need.

Kids-Lift, the nonprofit founded by Premium Service Brands founder Paul Flick in 2008, has taken a fairly straightforward approach to that problem. It works with schools and community organisations to find out what would genuinely help, then gives franchise owners the opportunity to get involved locally.

Today, Kids-Lift is active in more than 50 communities across the United States and Canada. The projects can look completely different from one place to another, and franchisee participation is voluntary. That means a local owner can get involved where they believe they can make a useful contribution rather than simply carrying out a charity campaign designed at head office.

One school needed backpacks. Another needed cleaning supplies.

The difference between communities becomes obvious when you look at some of the projects Kids-Lift has supported.

During one back-to-school programme, Naperville, Illinois, needed supplies for 250 homeless students in the district. In Williamson County, Tennessee, an elementary school was asking for classroom cleaning supplies. In Virginia, 360° Painting and Maid Right franchise owner Justin Rowling and his team collected and delivered 75 backpacks to Woodbrook Elementary School.

There is nothing elaborate about any of those requests, and that is precisely why they matter. A child starting school without a backpack does not need a complicated corporate programme. They need a backpack. A teacher short of basic classroom supplies needs somebody who can provide them.

For a franchise system spread across dozens of communities, allowing those needs to be identified locally makes sense. What is useful in Tennessee may have very little relevance in Illinois, and there is no reason a national community programme should pretend otherwise.

Sometimes a school just needs people willing to help

Kids-Lift's work is not limited to collecting supplies. At the Oakland School in Virginia, which works with students with learning differences including dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD, the organisation has worked with Rubbish Works of Charlottesville on improvement projects.

The work has included removing rubbish, cleaning areas around the school, clearing weeds and replacing old mulch. These are jobs that are easy to overlook until a school has to find the time, people and money to get them done.

This is where a home-services franchise group has something particularly useful to offer. Premium Service Brands includes businesses involved in painting, cleaning, rubbish removal, garage doors, home organisation and other household services. Across more than 1,000 franchise units, there are owners, employees, vehicles and equipment already working in local communities.

That does not mean every charity project has to become an opportunity to demonstrate what the franchise sells. In some cases, the most useful thing an owner can do is put boxes of school supplies into a van and deliver them. In others, having people who are used to turning up and getting practical work done can make a real difference.

New franchisees are introduced to Kids-Lift early

Premium Service Brands does something else that caught my attention. New franchisees are introduced to Kids-Lift during their training, when they take part in packing bags for a local food pantry.

It is a small detail, but it says quite a lot about how the programme is treated. Community involvement is introduced while new owners are learning how the franchise works, rather than appearing later as a marketing initiative they are encouraged to support.

Kids-Lift has now been operating for 18 years, while Premium Service Brands has grown to more than 1,000 franchise units across nine brands. Its work includes support for schools, food pantries, foster-care organisations, youth programmes and other local groups.

The projects differ because the needs differ. One franchisee might be helping a school prepare for the new term while another is supporting families through a food pantry. That flexibility is probably one of the reasons the programme has been able to continue as the franchise network has grown.

There is already a community network sitting inside most franchises

One of the things franchisors sometimes forget is just how much local reach they already have.

A franchise network is made up of business owners living and working in individual towns and cities. They employ local people, know other businesses, use local suppliers and deal with customers in those communities every day. Long before head office creates a national charity strategy, much of the infrastructure needed to help is already there.

Premium Service Brands has an obvious advantage because its franchisees work in home services. Vans, equipment and people capable of practical work are part of the business. Other franchise systems will have different resources available, from kitchens and food to premises, logistics or professional skills.

The important part is working out whether any of those resources solve a problem somebody actually has. Kids-Lift does that by starting with schools and community organisations rather than deciding centrally that every location should deliver the same thing.

For franchisees, that can also make community involvement feel more personal. Helping a school a few miles from your business is very different from contributing to a national campaign whose beneficiaries you may never meet.

What We Can Learn From This

Franchisors looking at community programmes should begin by speaking to organisations in the towns where their franchisees operate. Local owners already have staff, vehicles, supplier relationships and contacts that may be just as useful as money, but the contribution needs to match what people are actually asking for. Giving franchisees some freedom to respond locally also means a programme can grow without every location having to do exactly the same thing. Kids-Lift shows how a large franchise network can organise nationally while still allowing the useful work to happen one community at a time.

Continue the Conversation

Looking for more innovative franchise brands? Explore our Franchise Brands Directory to discover franchise opportunities and inspiring brands from around the world.

Have a franchise brand, founder or business story worth sharing? Submit your article to be featured in The Franchise Entrepreneur.

Interested in sharing your expertise with our readers? Become a contributor.

Looking to connect with franchise founders, investors and operators? Partner with us.