Terry Lee Hyundai and Genesis is approached by a lot of different sports teams and organizations with requests for donations, and Internet Marketing Manager Julie Janssen said it’s difficult for a single-point dealership to award multiple sponsorships.
“We’re not Andy Moore or Tom Wood with multiple locations, so it’s really hard and you really want to give in your community as much as you can,” Janssen said. “We brainstormed, what can we do to try to bring awareness to different not-for-profits? Unfortunately, we can’t give to all of them.”
The brainstorming led to the establishment of the Terry Lee Cares Program in January 2020.
“We decided we would set up a program where at the beginning of the month, you can nominate a nonprofit and we narrow it down to three, and the last week of the month, we post the three on our Facebook, tell about the nonprofit, what it does, where it’s located, who it benefits, and whoever gets the most engagement is the recipient of $500,” Janssen said.
Last month’s winner was Janus Developmental Services in Noblesville. Janssen said there’s no requirement on where the nonprofit must be located to win, but many are from Hamilton County. Typically, there are six to eight nominations a month.
“We’ve been really excited about the awareness it’s brought,” Janssen said. “We have people who say, ‘We didn’t even know that organization existed.’ We get tens of thousands of people engage (with the posts) every month, and it really reaches a lot of people. That’s gotten to be the exciting part to us. Even if we can’t give everybody money every month, we are still bringing a lot of awareness to each of the charities every month.”
If an organization doesn’t win when it is nominated, it can reapply. Each organization can win once a year.
For more or to nominate a nonprofit, visit terryleehyundai.com/terry-lee-cares-program/.
