Monster Uses Charity to Get Attendees to Booth
-- Tradeshow Week, 7/7/2008
Attendees strolling the aisles of the 60th annual Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Conference & Exposition June 22-25 at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers in Chicago may have noticed something different at the Monster booth. Instead of the usual tradeshow promotional fare, Monster was implementing its “Doing Well By Doing Good: Put Our Money Where Your Heart Is” program by handing out money for attendees to donate to one of 23 chosen charities.
Monster.com, the online employment-search Web site, donated $1 million by giving attendees donation cards, ranging from $25 to $10,000, and the opportunity to choose one or more charities to support. Charities included those focused on issues such as education and literacy, career development, health care, human services, military support, international economic development and environmental conservation.
“We decided that instead of ... investing in events or activities where only a few would benefit, ... we would try and do something that would really be more (of an impact on) people's lives,” said Lew Karabatsos, senior director of corporate philanthropy for Monster.
The donation cards were redeemable at kiosks in the Monster booth, but, for those who could not decide on a charity, online redemption at a Monster-branded Web site is available through July 11.
“They could step back and think about it and look at the 23 (charities) and ... the descriptions around what they do and redeem them when they went home,” Karabatsos said.
Steve Sylven, spokesperson for Monster, said it chose SHRM to launch the initiative because the show is seen as the single, largest event in terms of human resources trade functions.
“Monster's generated a lot of buzz and has a very large presence at the show,” Sylven said. “We wanted to ... leverage that traffic and buzz that we get through our booth.”
Karabatsos said Monster partnered with JustGive.org, using the nonprofit organization's infrastructure to get the funds directed to the proper groups.
“It's the power of connection,” he added. “Their whole purpose in being is to connect people with charities, to make donations to charities.”
