ThisWeek CW 07/12/2012
Olan Plastics won’t make any net profit off new business for a year.
Instead, the money will go to Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Ohio.
“We make plastics and sell them for money, but making money just simply isn’t enough of a reason to do something,” Olan Plastics president Jim Long said. “This work provides us with a platform for giving.”
He has committed to donate 100 percent of the Canal Winchester company’s net profits from new work for a year to Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Ohio.
“I’m donating one year’s profits from any new job,” Long said. “Everybody knows the Ronald McDonald House, and there’s a huge networking system in place there, so I thought what if they could use that to generate new business for us and then we give back the profits?”
Long said the idea started to form while he listened to various businesses advertise charitable giving during the holidays.
“Many businesses use charities more to drive profits, promising a percentage, and I wanted to be clear I didn’t to go into this as that being the motivation,” he said. “So I decided the way to make sure this was about the charity was to donate all of the profits.”
Long said he and his wife have donated time and money to Ronald McDonald House over the past few years. His wife, who works at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, introduced him to the charity.
“When I first walked in there and met the staff and kids, I knew I had to be a part of this, both with money and shoe leather,” he said. “I don’t want to just be the guy sitting behind a desk writing a check.”
After a meeting with the Ronald McDonald House staff, Long committed to using a revenue stream to help fund the charity.
“We were having a conversation with Jim one day and he brought up this idea that anyone who starts a new job for plastics with him, he’d donate 100 percent of the profits to us,” Ronald McDonald House spokesman Ryan Wilkins said. “Of course, we thought this was amazing. It’s pretty remarkable for someone to say they’ll give up all of their profit to a charity for a year.”
Wilkins and Long both said the hope is that companies with a current need for plastics manufacturing will see this as an opportunity to get the materials they have already budgeted for while helping a local charity.
“So what if this works? What if we get this set up and it takes off? Why not get the machine shop next door, or any other business, doing the same thing?” Long said. “There’s no strings here and it’s money I can afford to give away because it’s money that I wouldn’t have had if we weren’t doing this.”
Long hopes to eventually create a foundation to manage these efforts. But for now, he and Wilkins are just happy to have launched this program.
“We recently kicked off the campaign and it’s exciting to see people taking notice of it,” Wilkins said. “The Ronald McDonald House here provides a home away from home for over 3,000 families a year. We’re the second-largest in the country. We’re grateful for Olan Plastics doing something so generous.”
More information about Olan Plastics and the Ronald McDonald House efforts is available online at www.olanplastics.com/rmhc/.