Take two! We are back at it again and giving even more money to local charities—$100,000 to be exact. All-in 4 Change 2016 has officially kicked off and we can’t wait to see which awesome organizations will win these cash grants!
Since we opened our doors in 2002, Harrah’s Resort Southern California has donated over $3.6 million in cash and in-kind gifts to charitable organizations in our community (and that’s not including the 90,000 volunteer hours our employees have contributed).
Prior to All-in 4 Change in 2015, charitable organizations would simply fill out a request form for a donation and our Communications and Community Relations Manager, Sheryl Sebastian would determine if they met our requirements for support. We generally take a special interest in helping organizations that serve the senior citizen community, promote health and wellness, aid environmental causes or education and most recently military and veterans groups.
After many years of serving our community in this way Sheryl was looking to find a new opportunity to give the areas we serve a litte more say in the process. While making the whole thing FUNNER. After getting some inspiration from the Cox Cares program Sheryl knew exactly what she wanted to do and All-in 4 Change was born (or as Sheryl lovingly refers to it as, “America’s Got Talent for nonprofits”).
So here’s how it works: local 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations have one month to go to HarrahsSoCal.com/ALLIN and submit and application for consideration. Once the application period has closed a team of Harrah’s Resort SoCal members narrow the participant pool to the top 25 most deserving organizations. There is then a two-week voting period where the community is able to vote on who they think is most deserving of the grant money. But the votes only make up half of the scores. A five-person committee of top Harrah’s Resort SoCal teammates meets in secret to rank the participants on a wide variety of topics. The committee ranking and votes are added together to create the overall scores and determine our winners.
All-in 4 Change 2015 was mostly a grassroots, word of mouth campaign—but we’re really stepping it up in 2016. We are hoping to reach nonprofits that we have never heard of and provide support to parts of the community that we have never gotten to work with. And what better way to make that happen than by giving away more money?
We have almost doubled the amount that we are giving out this year, with a grand total of $100,000 in grants on the line for 12 recipients. The top prize is $40,000! We believe that a whole lot of money can do a whole lot of good, which is why we are so excited for another year of All-in 4 Change.
So now it’s time for you to do your part! Tell your favorite nonprofit about All-in 4 Change and make sure they apply before 5pm on March 30. And don’t forget to come back and cast your vote for the nonprofit you believe deserves the $40,000 grand prize! Voting opens April 11 and closes at 5pm on April 25.
