PROFILE
It began with a
backyard fundraiser...
How many planners can say their career
was inspired by Jerry Lewis? When Lucy
Eisele was in about fifth grade, she became
fascinated by the comedian’s Muscular
Dystrophy Telethon. Staying up all night,
phoning in money for a good cause, watching the statistics—not exactly every 9-year-
old’s fantasy, but for Eisele it was inspiring.
“So of course I sent in for the do-it-yourself
kit,” she recalls. “I had no idea what I was
going to do ... I put posters up all around
school saying, ‘I’m having this MD fair at
my house this Saturday!’”
Most parents receiving such news would
have a slight conniption, but Eisele showed
everyone, including herself, the stuff of
which true planners are made. In a few
days she organized a small carnival in her
yard, complete with food, games, prizes
and most importantly, an actual profit—a
solid ROI. “That’s probably when I got
the event planning bug,” Eisele says. “I
thought, ‘Wow, I can do this.’”
After a successful career as senior buyer
for Minneapolis-based Carlson Marketing
Worldwide and manager for travel, events
and meetings at St. Cloud, Minn.-based
Creative Memories, Eisele is returning to
the root of what inspired that backyard
carnival—a desire to do good. After leaving
Creative Memories, she earned her CITE
(Certified Incentive Travel Executive) designation and founded Integrity Incentives
in 2005. To earn the designation, which
is administered by the Chicago-based
Society of Incentive Travel Executives
(SITE), she had to write a research paper.
Titled, “Social Capital—Introducing Your
Achievers to Community Giving,” Eisele’s
paper presented her research on incorporating social service projects into incentive
trips, which is the idea underlying her
company. The many community giving
trips she’s planned have included such
projects as building a playground in a tiny
town outside a resort in Puerto Vallarta,
Mexico, building bikes for children in
need and helping a Georgia town revive
it’s community gathering space.
Though Eisele continues to face plenty
of obstacles in pitching such trips to prospective clients, she has placed Integrity
Incentives in good company. Over the past
few years, event management companies,
hotels and even travel bookers have taken
more unique steps to do more good.
HOW IT WORKS >
But an obvious question remains: why
would people want to work when they’re
on an incentive trip? Testimonials from
Eisele’s and similar companies consistently
extol the team-building benefits and all-around good feeling attendees gain from
the experience. But Eisele says it takes
research, building up trust and quite a
balancing act to achieve that result.
Take, for example, the team-building event she planned in tiny Buckhead,
Georgia. Marriott was holding a client
appreciation trip at a swanky Atlanta resort
but wanted to include some kind of project to give back to the local community
and serve as a team-building event. They
weren’t sure if any such opportunity existed
nearby, but if it did, Eisele would find it. “So
I flew out to Atlanta, got a car and drove,”
she says, which is how she finds most of her
projects—by being on the ground.
Eisele had done some online research
beforehand and stumbled upon an article
on the Buckhead Chamber of Commerce
Web site about a local artist. Taken with the
artist’s depictions of growing up poor in
the South, Eisele made her first stop at the
town’s Chamber of Commerce and asked
where she could find the artist, Eugene
Swain. She talked with the chamber’s
president for about an hour, explaining
the project she was trying to organize and,
even though she didn’t know what form it
would take, she knew she wanted to commission some art from Swain. This is the
stage in the process where it’s key to build
relationships with the people who will be
the recipients of the project. “As it is with
any business, you don’t just send an e-mail,”
Eisele says. “You have to present yourself,
let them get to know you ... all those gestures that say, ‘I’m real, I mean what I say
and I want to work with you.’”
In her search, Eisele also came across
a park with a fire hall and pavilion that
had fallen into disrepair. While the townspeople still used the space for social gather-
n Creative Memories employees work at a school
in a small town outside Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
ings, it needed landscaping and fixing up.
It was the perfect spot for the project and
was just the right amount of work that her
time and budget allowed. So several days
before the event, Eisele rented a truck,
loaded it with supplies from a nearby
Lowe’s and brought it all back to the site.
When the Marriott employees arrived, she
paired them with members of the local city
council and gave each group a job such as
painting, woodworking or landscaping,
according to each person’s abilities. Aunt
Oma’s Kitchen, located just down the road,
catered a lunch of fried chicken and ham,
and Eisele had Swain paint a mural for the
newly renovated building. He also created
individual paintings that awaited all the
participants in their hotel rooms.
