by Erik Haus
Like most startups, Zuora can be quite a hectic place. Whether we’re gearing up for a monthly product release, a new marketing launch, or the typical end of the month sales rush, there is always something to occupy our time. So it takes quite a meaningful event for the entire company to take time away from their jobs, especially this time of year. But when some mysterious barrels were delivered to our office, we had the catalyst for just such an event. We share an office building with Biz360, a social media monitoring company, and a Zuora customer. For the last few years, they’ve held a holiday food drive to support the Second Harvest Food Bank, the food bank for San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, serving over 200,000 people each month. Each year, Second Harvest brings them barrels in which Biz360 places their donations.
Well this year, the barrels were accidentally delivered to our office. While we didn’t know how they arrived, we here at Zuora were not about to let a fortuitous opportunity like this pass. As the saying goes, when opportunity comes knocking, even at the wrong door, be sure to answer! And so we did, and turned misdelivered barrels into our first annual Z-Food Drive.
To make the food drive both fun and productive, we divided the company into three teams, and made it a competition to see who could donate the most food. We divided the employees into three teams based on department (engineering, services, sales, support, etc), but marketing quickly turned our three teams into Team Ralphie, Team Red Ryder, and Team Leg Lamp, based on the classic holiday movie A Christmas Story.
Our food drive was a resounding success. As you can see from the photo, each team more than filled their respective barrels. Not only was this a fun competition that company could rally around and allow us to take a breather from our event filled work schedules, but it was also a great way for Zuora to give back to our community.
Needless to say, from the success of our holiday food drive, we’ll be following in Biz360’s footsteps, and making the Z-Food Drive an annual tradition. This goes to show you we can just as easily give back on a recurring basis, as we can help companies monetize on a recurring basis.
Happy holidays to all, and have a great 2010.
