Stone Ward began its work in 2007 to support Sport Clips Haircuts’ first Help A Hero outreach when the fundraising goal through 400 stores was $30,000. Fast forward to 2016, where more than 1,500 stores led Sport Clips’ this week to a record-breaking donation of $1M to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Foundation to support Help a Hero Scholarships for active duty service members and veterans.

 

It’s an honor to work alongside this veteran-founded franchise to see the Help A Hero program grow from sponsoring phone calls home for hospitalized and deployed military to now help returning service members in the next steps of their civilian careers through scholarships and education.

 

Understanding the unique business model of individually-owned franchised stores, and the challenges it can present in a corporate fundraising effort, is at the heart of Stone Ward’s creative and PR efforts for the Help A Hero campaign. Together with Sport Clips, we have partnered to:

  • Equip franchisees and team members with promotional and media outreach tools to communicate the program effectively in local markets;
  • Enhance national and local outreach efforts with advertising and an impactful television spot;
  • Provide broad-based national visibility for the program through a series of newswire news releases for web presence and national-level releases directly to hometown newspaper editors; as well as
  • A guerilla marketing effort to provide program exposure through network morning news programs.

Overall, Stone Ward’s work with Sport Clips has helped the franchise raise and donate almost $5M to the VFW Foundation since Help A Hero began.

We appreciate the great responsibility and teamwork that goes into this worthy effort and consider it a privilege to work hand-in-hand with Sport Clips to support our nation’s heroes.