Lake Country, British Columbia, Canada-based Voyager RV Centre’s “Voyager Cares” initiative for 2023 is now in full swing, with more than $30,000 in donations made so far for local charities.
The campaign kicked-off late 2022 with the goal of raising more than $100,000 for local charities by the end of 2023. The first two donation amounts – $13,200 for the Central Okanagan Food Bank and $18,750 for the Canadian Mental Health Association – exceeded expectations, and the dealership said that puts it on pace to exceed its donation goal.
“Despite some headwinds in our industry, we thought it was important to bring back Voyager Cares for this year,” said Jason Friesen, Voyager RV vice president. “For me, it’s simple – there has to be more to this business than sales and servicing of RVs. While that’s important and will always be our focus, helping our community has to be just as important.”
Every Voyager RV employee got to vote for their favorite charities, and the top eight vote-getters were then selected as the recipients for 2023, with each charity being assigned a certain month (or months) where they will benefit. Then, for every RV sold during that time period, each Voyager RV department commits to making a donation to that charity.
“It’s a simple concept, but it works really great because the staff here are a huge part of it all,” said Friesen. “They picked the charities, and their hard work finding, selling, servicing and cleaning the RVs each month is what leads to these big donation amounts. Plus, we bring reps from each charity here for the cheque presentations, so that our staff can learn about what the donations mean to the charity and our community. It’s a pretty cool experience.”
During her presentation on Feb. 22, RayAnn Garza of the Central Okanagan Food Bank said they provide food assistance to more than 4,000 individuals in the Okanagan on a monthly basis, and that the donation they received from Voyager was very timely.
“I just want to thank every single one of you at Voyager who made this possible!” Garza said. “Right now, are serving double the amount of people than pre-Covid, an average of over 6,000 people in the community… so this (donation) is beyond our wildest dreams. With our buying power purchasing food on a wholesale level, this is like a $40,000 donation from Voyager RV in terms of what we can purchase for the community.”
The next beneficiary of Voyager Cares, based on RVs sold during April, is the Kelowna Hospice House.