Four years ago our employees got together and told the company that they didn’t want to do giveaways for airline tickets, TVs, iPads, gift cards or any gifts at our annual Holiday Party. They instead decided to take that money and give it to those in need. The first two years, the employees teamed up in small groups and went around the city and gave money/gifts to anyone that they felt could use it during the holiday season. Then last year, we took a different approach and decided to go as a whole company and donate our time and some gifts to the Burlington YMCA in North Kansas City. You can check out the blog post about last year’s event here. Fast forward to this year. We decided to do it again. This time we gave it a little twist and combined a few different things into one special day. Check it out!

We told everyone in the company to meet in our lobby by 8:45 am to board a bus. None of them knew where we were headed, but they all seemed excited to find out. We started our journey by heading down to St. Mark’s Child and Family Development Center. There, we were greeted by the amazing staff and teachers who give their all to the students and families they serve. We brought them supplies to help them with their day-to-day operations but that wasn’t all! We couldn’t just show up and drop off gifts and leave- we wanted to hang with the kids! The team was split into four different classrooms where each employee got to help a 3-5 year old create a holiday card for someone special in their life. Stickers, markers and lots of smiles were shared and the students left a lasting impression on our employees.

Each quarter we do an all-staff meeting and we decided to mix that in with this journey as well. So, from St. Mark’s we continued onto our next stop: Alamo Drafthouse. We all gathered in Theater 2 where we would host our meeting. The employees filled the seats as the leadership team took center stage in front of the big screen. The team running the meeting was really in the holiday spirit as they came dressed up like Cousin Eddie and Clark Griswold from Christmas Vacation. Unfortunately for them, they got literally zero laughs and their much anticipated entrance into the theater flopped right out of the gate. (Thank you, employees!) They were able to recover, the meeting went on and it didn’t appear that very many employees fell asleep, so that was a big win. And that should have been a wrap on the day right? Not so fast! The aforementioned flop during the entrance by Eddie and Clark had a hidden meaning, though. The company was about to watch a holiday classic together in the theater. Christmas Vacation was played on the big screen while employees ordered food and drinks and laughed the rest of the meeting away.

All in all, the day was a big success. The team got to Embrace Stewardship- a Core Value of ours that we value immensely. We got to talk about the current and future state of our business and got to have a little fun with the Griswold family. One employee was asked if she was surprised about the events of the day and she said, “If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn’t be more surprised.” We call that a success!

Happy Holidays from all of us at Pro Athlete! Cheers to an awesome 2018 and for great things to come in 2019!