Lockaway Storage: Stuff The UNIT Event

Back in May of 2018 there was so much support from the community and enthusiasm from each of our facilities, we checked in with some of the managers and assistant managers, towards the end of the event, to see how much progress they had made towards their goal of providing 100,000 meals to the residents of San Antonio, Texas. In addition to this team goal, each facility was also trying to win the distinction of raising the most out of 30 Lockaway Storage locations!

The manager at Lockaway Storage - Babcock, was a great example of one of our most motivated food drive participants. “We're all about the food drive. We were leading the pack until yesterday. But we're not worried because we know what is ahead, we're highly competitive.”

2018 was the second year that we had partnered with the San Antonio Food Bank to raise donations.

For Lockaway Storage - Babcock, seeing CEO Don Clauson’s passion for the food drive has made all the difference in the facility’s performance in the fundraising competition. “We're much more motivated, because in the past year we were made more aware of how important this is to Don. Also, we had a speaker come out to our team meeting, and she shared some stories that were very inspiring and motivating. Some of us went down and did some volunteer work at the San Antonio Food Bank too. Then we got to see hands on what they were doing.”

What

Stuff the UNIT Event and Donation Drive

When

June 2nd, 2018

Where

Lockaway Storage - Culebra

8034 Culebra Rd

San Antonio, TX 78251

Who

Anybody who wants to participate!

Why

Because Lockaway Storage believes in helping those who could use a hand.

The manager at Lockaway Storage - Babcock said that their experience at the San Antonio Food Bank made them realize how important their participation in the food drive was. “I saw the rows and rows of empty shelves. There’s a huge need right now, especially for children and senior citizens who are raising their grandkids on a fixed income.”

The assistant manager at Lockaway Storage - Culebra and Lockaway Storage - Huebner, said that their locations did pretty well with a combination of cash and food donations.

Their strategy? Reaching out to local businesses. One business made an anonymous cash donation. Another one filled their office with many packages of food.

“We have the office pretty stacked with a few different food items. There’s a whole bunch of cereal, macaroni and cheese, there must have been at least a case for each one of these items, maybe two. The office is basically filled up with all this stuff, so people coming in here are asking about it, which leads to a dollar donation. I think we might be on our way to winning this thing here."

The manager of Lockaway Storage - Woodlake, said they weren’t getting as many food donations, “…but we’ve gotten a pretty good amount of people with payments. After I sent out a mass email out to all of our customers, I got quite a few calls. It’s not as good as it was last year, in 2017, but it’s starting to pick up a little bit.”

Even with the growing donations, Lockaway Storage - Woodlake said that they wished they could do a lot more, “We wish we could get a lot more people involved. We wish it would go a little bit longer that way we could get more donations in, but we had to have everything ready for when the kids got out of school.”

Lockaway Storage - Woodlake makes receiving cash donations from customers look easy. The assistant manager at Lockaway Storage – Shaenfield, said that while they were receiving a pretty good amount of food donations, money donations were more difficult to come by.

“At Shaenfield, we do U-Hauls, so we have a lot of walk-in customers. The good thing is that a lot of them are already moving, which means they are wanting to move less stuff, so they’ll come in and bring canned food they would otherwise have had to move.”

A dollar donation can provide seven meals, so it’s understandable why facilities were encouraging their communities to make cash donations in addition to individual food items.

Of course we loved the competitive nature that helped reach that goal. The event was open to the public and all facilities who attended gained extra points for attending and donations made that day!