Striking the coast near Wrightsville Beach, N.C. as a Category 1 hurricane last month, Florence downpoured as much as 40 inches of rain in some parts of the Carolinas, leading to extensive catastrophic flooding, the evacuation of more than 1 million people, and 42 related deaths.
With Florence projected to hit the Carolinas coast on Friday, September 14 and continue pummeling into the weekend, we reached out and spoke with a member of the N.C. State Tourism Office Visit N.C., an established Recover partner. Quickly putting thoughts together, the two talked about the set-up of a fundraiser for disaster relief. The vision was to make a Recover tee to support relief efforts with a design centered around “We share more than a state line” and #CAREolinas. The Recover team moved quickly, working all day Saturday to set up the web page, taking #CAREolinas tee sales live that Sunday. With the goal of providing as much support as possible, Recover committed that 100% of the proceeds from sales of the shirt would go to the North Carolina and South Carolina disaster relief funds.
When the shirt went live, the Carolina Panthers reached out to Visit North Carolina and Discover South Carolina, wanting to get involved. The Panthers immediately partnered with the fundraiser to show their support for relief efforts with the Recover #CAREolinas shirt. Taking urgent and compelling action, Panthers Head Coach Ron Rivera debuted the shirt during his Monday press conference, expressing the Carolina Panthers’ desire to help in any way they could.
The inspiration of joining together to contribute and support each other in times of need spread like wildfire. The Recover team worked around the clock to keep up with #CAREolinas tee Florence relief effort sales. By October 1, the team met its relentlessly growing goal, and fulfilled a rush on production and shipment of 10,000 individual orders of the shirts. In addition, the Carolina Panthers purchased 3,000 #CAREolina Recover tees to sell at the Bengals game and sold out. For every #CAREolinas Recover shirt sold, $10 was directly donated to the North Carolina and South Carolina disaster relief funds. In total, the Recover tees raised $130,000 for Hurricane Florence relief efforts in the Carolinas.
Regarding the effort, Recover’s President Bill Johnston describes, “From the standpoint of Recover, while the storm didn’t affect Charlotte to the extreme of other areas, it did affect and continues to affect friends, family, and neighbors- for us, the Carolinas are home. The goal of Recover is to use our products as a platform to contribute to positive impact. It goes without saying that supporting those areas that got hit so hard as much as we can is just the right thing to do.”
As a 1% for the Planet Member, Recover is committed to donating at least one percent of our annual sales to environmental causes, but we certainly strive to see the big picture and do much more. Through the work and partnerships of the Carolina Panthers, Visit North Carolina, Discover South Carolina, and the NC and SC Disaster Relief Funds, efforts, and volunteers, the #CAREolinas tee and effort created significant impact. The work is far from over, but there is no doubt that this effort is emblematic of the silver lining of challenging circumstances and the possibilities of what can be achieved when working together to achieve positive impact.
