Why does he participate? “There are people out here trying to remodel homes who have no business doing it,” Shurian says. “We have a bit of a reputation to fight. Professionals have to fight the image of what people think of contractors.”
He adds, “We do it every year, to improve our image and gain exposure for the home builder’s association.”
This holiday season, however, he went a step further, coordinating his own reality TV–style project. “I wanted to do something within my company, something a bit more,” he says. Shurian identified a local family whose house needed some fixing up, sent them to Disneyland (with some extra spending money), and in less than a week, completely remodeled and furnished their home, right down to new towels on new towel racks, all new appliances, and wrapped Christmas presents under a fully-decorated tree.
Shurian estimates that 90% of the time and materials were donated and says his company picked up the tab for the rest. “They were expecting us to come in and make it livable,” Shurian says of the family. “Beyond it being livable, it was completely decked out. There’s no way they would have been able to do that for their own home. It never would have ended up this way.”
The press coverage the project received was tremendous. The local ABC affiliate got wind of the undertaking and interviewed the family, filmed them departing for the theme park, shot video of the project being built, and broadcast a tape of the family returning to their new home. Two local newspapers and one magazine ran long feature articles, complete with photos. Several radio stations also picked up the story, and Shurian received a call from an Extreme Makeover: Home Edition producer, looking to get an interview and footage for a special episode of the show.
“We’re motivated to help people,” Shurian says. “The media portion of it wasn’t a motivator but the fallout.” But what a fallout it has been. While Shurian doesn’t think he’s gotten any leads as a direct result, the community has taken notice. Shurian says he received an anonymous note complimenting his work, and some of his customers clipped the newspaper articles and sent them to him.
Moreover, the buzz generated during the project was also beneficial. Shurian reports that his wife and a few of her friends were in charge of decorating the house, and calls from neighbors poured in, wondering what they could do to help. Many people just dropped off money, telling Shurian to use it as he saw necessary. And the construction management program at BYU sent over about 50 people to help out on the Saturday the project was finished.
That kind of publicity goes a long way in the small town of Mapleton, where the family — and by Shurian’s estimation, another five or six thousand people — lives. You can bet that the community will remember this story for quite some time.
It’s hard to find a negative aspect of donating resources for this kind of project, but if there is one, it’s that you start to get asked to do this stuff all the time. “They come to expect you to do it every time they call,” Vivona says.
Saying “no” can be tricky and most remodelers abhor doing it, but it’s a skill that absolutely must be learned.
Tom Kelly, of Neil Kelly Co., an award-winning, well-established remodeling firm in Portland, Ore., says he, like Vivona, is asked to do much more than he is capable of. “We do a ton of this stuff,” Kelly says. But he turns down a ton, too, and, like nearly everything else in his company, he has a system for it. “You’ve got to come up with some good ways to say ‘no’ in this world,” he says.
People who inquire about monetary donations or other charitable contributions from Neil Kelly Co. are told, first and foremost, that the company receives more requests than they can comply with. Then, they’re told that the company, as a matter of policy, only considers programs that have a connection to children in the company’s area and to an employee or client. “If it meets those criteria,” Kelly says, “it’ll get into the queue to be looked at. If not, it won’t get that far.”
Kelly’s vice president of human resources gathers and processes all requests, with Kelly himself giving the final approval.