Cooking and Dancing from the Heart

How MagicLinks Employs a "Say Yes" policy for Community Service

As a small and fast-growing company located in the heart of Venice, we defined early on the importance of creating positive impact in our surrounding community. How the team at MagicLinks actually lives this out is important, as it can sometimes feel difficult to balance service within the fast-paced environment of a rapidly growing business. 

As we weave community service and engagement into who we are at MagicLinks, here’s the framework we’re using to decide where and who to engage with:

Our goal is to engage in ways that create experiences which align to our company values, contribute to the personal growth of our team members, and help make a positive impact in our community.

Stepping into Fear

As a team, we attended a “prom night” at Leisure World, a senior center in Seal Beach where the grandparents of one of our executives lives.  As part of the evening, I challenged everyone to ask a partner to dance. The pure joy of sharing a dance with a person 30 to 50 years your elder is hard to put into words. Everything is communicated in the shine of your partner's eye, with worlds of life experience befitting an elder glowing in that moment. 

One team member was uncomfortable with the experience and chose to walk outside and spend time on his phone, avoiding a situation which felt uneasy for him. The experiences engaging in community service should stretch our team to step outside of their comfort zone, exercising a muscle that is crucial for start-up success.  

Hands on Impact

Raising money for causes is important, and yet can often feel disconnected from the visceral, physical experience of getting involved. There is no substitute for the in-person, energetic experience that happens by getting your hands dirty. We joined Share A Meal and participated in a burrito making event for local homeless in Venice. One person on the team was uncomfortable cooking; another was afraid of the close proximity to the local homeless population. For all of us, the experience changed us, mostly by recognizing people on the streets as friendly faces rather than anonymous individuals.

 Local Community

Our world has become less physically connected as the rise of social media has become ubiquitous in our lives. We have led two events with S.P.Y., a local community shelter for homeless children. At our latest event, we cooked and served dinner for more than 50 youth.  Rather than purchasing pizza (as is common for company sponsors), as a team we selected volunteers to cook eight homemade lasagnas, along with garlic bread and salad. This way we were able to spend time together, use our hands, and infuse love and healthy ingredients into the service we provided. A connection was formed even before we met the youth at the shelter.

At a start-up, every team member must make an impact. Innovation requires stepping into fear daily, and learning from that experience. MagicLinks is fundamentally about creating and empowering community. While the time we take off of our “normal” work can feel expensive, in reality it helps our team and our business in multiple dimensions. Including the most important part: our time in service has more of an impact on ourselves than nearly anything else we can do.

On the fundraising front, we are raising $50K by March 31st, 2020 for a technology education center for the Ojiwbe tribe in Minnesota to help create hope and opportunity for tribal children.  You can learn more and donate here.  

Please share how your company engages in your local community, or the struggles you face in convincing your team that the time is worth spending.