Zachary Harrison

Road to 30k
4/28/19
Road to 30k

Land of a Thousand Hills is a community driven coffee company that operates under the

principles of create, cultivate, and craft. Create purposeful work. Cultivate flourishing

communities. Last but not least, Craft beautiful coffee. Land of a Thousand Hills (LTH) imports

coffee beans cultivated by the kind and skilled coffee farmers of Rutsiro, Rwanda. Conducting a

needs assessment and viewing the conditions of the farming communities, the employees of LTH

bear witness to the lack of access to healthcare in the communities farming the coffee. A

501(c)(3), The Do Good Initiative, was applied for and granted with good faith towards a

passionate company with a will to do good. Hence, the trademarked motto appearing on

merchandise and mission statements, ‘Drink Coffee. Do Good.’. My internship was created to

assist the director of a newly created project of The Do Good Initiative called Do Good Health.

Do Good Health will raise funding to construct a medical center to provide health-care in the

aspects of emergency care, in-patient & outpatient services, pharmaceuticals, maternal & infant

wards, and full ancillary & kitchen services. Together, we aimed to accomplish two attainable

and measurable goals. Within fifteen weeks starting January 20th, Do Good Health will raise

$30,000 remaining funds completing construction of the medical center. We will assess our

progress on March 20th. Secondly, we aim to build brand awareness of Do Good Health. To

create organization and accountability in our pursuit of goals, we held to two main objectives.

The first was to hold five fundraising ventures, and the second was to increase the number of

donors by 50%. We would assess the objectives status on March 20th. Overall, we wanted to

continue to raise funds and create a buzz in the community! Relaying the message that every

individual, business, or company can take a philanthropic stand to do good. The director and I

brainstormed a list of avenues available to fundraise through: emails, business/organizations

partnerships, hosting events, good relations with existing donors, creating awareness, recruiting

passionate people. We would operate through these avenues in our attempts to raise money to

fully construct the medical center. To give perspective, the medical center will provide for a

community of 30,000+ people. Depending on location, the people in these communities will

walk between six hours and two days to get to a hospital. The distance often makes them not go

at all. Implementing a medical center in the heart of these villages is an opportunity to directly

affect the lives of those who make Thousand Hills possible. In our fundraising efforts, we would

utilize the fruits of LTH’s business to our advantage. LTH has multiple coffee shops in the

Atlanta area. Our email campaign was designed to contact local businesses to our LTH coffee

shops to join in on our mission to build the medical center. We were successful in our

fundraising goal reaching the amount we planned. Although, next time we should consider

reaching out to a higher volume of businesses. Referring to the business/organizations

partnerships fundraising avenue, a main coffee customer of LTH are churches. Churches are

renowned for their virtuous giving and we would contact the churches who have bought LTH

coffee to share our story. Philanthropy is beginning to have a larger impact on the manner in

which businesses operate. There is a rise of philanthropic mission in business. We want to

partner with these businesses that have taken to the humanitarian world. We had the pleasure of

partnering with a practicing chiropractor, large IT staffing company, a college, and multiple local

businesses. A role of mine in this Road to 30k project was to network relationships that would be

of mutual benefit with organizations that have the similar interest of doing good. Another major

role of mine as the intern was to take lead on planning fundraising events, we hosted a variety of

successful and fun to the community events. At the half way fundraising checkpoint of March

20th, we are on pace to attain our goal. The events we hosted are as follows: yoga on the lawn,
crossfit competition, rescue road, Atlanta streets alive, do good sweepstakes, Rwanda trips, do

good game show. The majority of materials needed to promote the event were flyers and posters

to be distributed online and in the community. Rescue Road required the most gathering of

materials. We set aside four days to plan the event. The venue was packed with around one-

hundred participants and volunteers, so the preparation was imperative. Furthermore, the

fundraising goal will be met if we keep in good relations with our existing donor base. Keeping

those donors in the loop without pestering them with emails was the challenge. Another

challenge was the wordsmithing of emails to reach the audience in the most creative and

transparent light. We wanted to make donating easy, fun, and transparent. Social media was an

ally in our fundraising efforts. It proves to be a true channel to the community, and we rely on

social media platforms to exhibit our good work inviting other people to join in our efforts to do

good. The Do Good Health social media accounts have doubled in size reaching our goals to

build brand awareness. We would allocate valuable time to create intriguing and informational

content to post on our social media accounts. Subsequently, we have recruited passionate people

through social media. Our mantra reflects that people make the world go around and attracting

like-minded individuals will be our most valuable resource to reaching our end game, building

medical centers. In retrospect, if we were given the chance to travel the Road to 30k again, then I

would contact twice as many people as we did before. Increasing contact volume would be an

intelligent strategy. The grand opening of the medical center is set for July 17, 2019. Do Good

Health will be proud to present the medical center to this community and always remember the

Road to 30k.