So Much Good News I Can’t Stand It
Hey folks,
These are crazy days and at Madison+Main we “feel your pain.” Sixty days of social distancing and 43 days of isolation is enough to turn any optimist into a pessimist. But not me. I’ve been scouring the deepest, darkest corners of the interwebs to find good news and share it with you in the Weekly Report.
At Madison+Main, we forge ahead and nothing gets in our way of drinking — so we decided to keep the date for our April Media Mixer. Global pandemic? We got the cure. On Wednesday, 53 team members, clients, and friends joined us for cocktails and virtual networking on Zoom. The only problem was everyone had to BYOB — Bring Your Own Booze. It was a nice break from the day-to-day workload and it was good to see so many familiar faces. Zoom works great, but I can’t wait to see people face-to-face, at our next mixer which we have tentatively planned for the third Wednesday of June.
Next, we wanted to thank you for responding and donating to several fundraisers mentioned over the past few weeks. Our face mask fundraiser for the Midlothian Rotary Club has raised $935 and is almost at our $1,000 goal. Aflac’s fifth annual Bobby Kelland Bike Ride still needs your donations for the COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund. We are also especially proud of the team at CowanGates, who will be participating virtually in the Bike MS Ride, benefitting the National MS Society. Click here to support the CowanGates team and help us ride towards a world free of MS.
I also wanted to put out a special appeal in support of local journalism. COVID-19 has affected many companies — and small businesses like the Henrico Citizen are taking it on the chin right now. Tom Lappas, the publisher of the Henrico Citizen, is a very good guy. He has worked hard to build a community newspaper that is informative and vital to our community. Tom made the difficult decision recently to stop publishing a paper edition temporarily, but the good news is you can support the newspaper here and your dollars will provide free advertising for a non-profit organization of your choice. Hang in there Tom, the Madison+Main-iacs are behind you and your team 100 percent.
Closer to home, my daughter Hattie reports some good news. On Wednesday, she dropped by the Harrisonburg Blood Donation Center and gave a pint of her purple blood (Go Dukes) and reports that the blood bank is now busier than it has been in over a year. My son, Jack, returned to online learning last week and he got a job with DoorDash on Wednesday. He has made $242 in two days and he is now waking up before 3 p.m. #WinWin
And now, on to more good news.
- Our clients at Housing Families First are busier than ever, taking care of those less fortunate in our community, which means they are hiring. HFF needs a new Executive Assistant and you can apply for this job and work with some really nice people here.
- Although my beloved VCU Rams didn’t get to finish their season, there are some very smart people working hard at VCU’s College of Engineering who have developed a very innovative process to decontaminate N95 masks. And they made the national news.
- Bernice Sims from Happy New Beginnings real estate team with RE/MAX Commonwealth is once again helping RVA by offering to donate their working commission once a month to one family/person who is buying a new home that has been adversely affected by COVID-19. You can contact her here.
And I wanted to add a few resources we have compiled from the last few Madison+Main Free Small Biz MarCom Webinars and share them with you:
- Facebook Community Grants are finally here and if you own a business located in Henrico County, you may qualify for direct monetary assistance from Facebook. Click here to see if your business is eligible and complete the application process.
- Good news for Yelp advertisers this week. The country’s largest crowd-sourced company review website has extended its support plan through Memorial Day and now will give an additional $100 in free ad credits to any restaurant that is forced to offer only takeout and delivery. Many of their upgraded features are now available to restaurants and bars for free.
Google has offered to help small and medium-sized businesses and has committed $340 million dollars in ad credits across all of its Google ad platforms. Click here to see if your company can benefit from this program.
“Bad news travels at the speed of light; good news travels like molasses.”
— Tracy Morgan