Business in Vancouver’s “How I Did It” feature asks business leaders to explain in their own words how they achieved a business goal in the face of significant entrepreneurial challenges. In this week’s issue, entrepreneur Cindy Graves says she never thought she would end up working for a non-profit organization. But her sales and business skills stood her in good stead when she was tapped to build the Vancouver chapter of Kids Up Front.
“John Dalziel had worked at Corus Entertainment for a number of years and was used to the radio stations getting a lot of tickets last minute that would go to waste. He was sitting at a Calgary Flames game at the Saddledome and noticed all the empty seats around him and thought there must be a way of getting people – better yet, kids – who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity, into those seats. So he had the idea for Kids Up Front.The founder is originally from Vancouver and wanted to start up an office here. We opened in Edmonton in 2003, Vancouver in 2004 and Toronto 2006. We had known John from when we all lived in Edmonton in the ’80s. He asked me if I wanted to get involved, to be the first staff person on the ground. I never imagined I was going to be doing this for a living. But looking back, my career experience, my life experience and my volunteer roles had really prepared me to lead a charitable organization. The majority of my business experience was in sales. I was not a professional fundraiser, but it lent itself well, because it’s a similar skill set.
“Starting a new charity in Vancouver was very difficult. It’s a very competitive market. It’s much easier to get people to donate tickets to Kids Up Front than it is to get financial contributions. We raise almost a third of our budget through our 19th Hole gala. Last year we netted $110,000.
“Finding a home was a challenge. We moved six times. Now we’re in our own office in Chinatown. We have a five-year lease and we have room to grow, and we now have almost four full-time staff. We partner with all the major sporting teams in town, all of the theatre companies, Live Nation. So we’re sending kids to arts, culture, sports and recreation. We connect the donor. The donor can be corporations or individuals, but the bulk of the tickets – more than half – come from the event organizations that have tickets and can’t fill the Pacific Coliseum or Rogers Arena or BC Place.
“One of the barriers for Kids Up Front is the challenge partner agencies have with getting to our office to get the tickets, because most of the tickets are copy tickets. At the beginning of last year, we found a partner – Churchill Armoured Car Service. It has a fleet of vehicles on the road every week. Churchill now comes in our office every day – two armoured guards – and they pick up our tickets and they deliver them.
“We spent two years building an online ticket system so that the agencies can now go online and view an event calendar and see which events are coming soon or which ones they can request tickets to now. It was all built by volunteers. Now we provide door-to-door delivery of the tickets, and now we provide this online ticket system. Since we opened in June 2004, we’ve provided 225,000 opportunities for kids at a value that’s surpassed $6.2 million. •
