What would you do with $100,000? The question was raised as part of Stratton Faxon’s Community Builder Contest and new website launch on Monday. In an effort to award hard-working, grass roots organizations, Stratton Faxon Law Firm is giving $100,000 to All Our Kin, Billings Forge Community Works, Common Ground, or Gaylord Specialty Hospital—whatever charity garners the most votes from the public will win! Two-hundred thousand dollars will be given away in total with the three runners up—and one write-in candidate—also receiving $25,000 each.
The four charities automatically in the running were chosen by Stratton Faxon based on their strong commitment and overall benefit to the community. Each group was asked to submit an outline of new or existing projects that would greatly be impacted by a gift of $100,000. None of the charities even knew what they were being considered for at the time of submittal.
This “friendly competition” was orchestrated by founding partners Mike Stratton and Joel Faxon. As they prepared to go live with a cutting-edge new website, complete with a customized database in which referring lawyers can enter a unique user name and password and see up-to-the-moment activity in each case they refer, the trial lawyers asked themselves: how will we get the word out?
Accordingly, the Community Builder Contest was born—named after one of the three new blogs authored by Stratton Faxon—the Community Builder Blog features a news “cheat sheet” listing the top five local color stories of the past week, a “Hipster’s Calendar to the Universe” outlining fun, charitable and/or athletic events coming up throughout the state, “Do It Now!” volunteer opportunities so that others can get engaged, community stories and more. Currently, the blog features detailed narratives about the four contest charities and how they hope to spend Stratton Faxon’s funds in order to help site visitors make an informed decision.
“All four of these groups are considered cutting-edge concepts in their niches,” said Attorney Mike Stratton. “Our referring lawyers—who we consider our clients—all liked them when polled ahead of time. And they will all use the money on real programming, not bureaucracy. That was extremely important to us. Stratton Faxon supports many other groups in our state, but as we got ready to launch our new look we wanted to highlight these four in particular.”
The contest ends July 8th and the firm plans to host a celebratory end-event where they will announce live the winner of the $100,000. “These organizations are all winners in our eyes,” said Stratton. “They work hard every day to restore quality of life for folks in the community. It’s similar to the goal we as trial lawyers have for our victims of catastrophic injury—we can’t change what happened to them, but we can improve their lives going forward. We thought this would be a great way to get our message out. My hope is that more law firms and businesses follow suit.”
Vote for one of the four charities—plus your own personal favorite—at www.strattonfaxon.com.
For contest updates, like them on Facebook.
For more information contact, Christina Acampora at: (203) 624-9500 or cacampora@strattonfaxon.com
