My brother and I started an off-road apparel company called Dirty Left Elbow and at our first event to launch the company we chose a charitable event called Rocktoberfest over in North Carolina. It was in November of 2009. We, along with all the other vendors, were supposed to only donate “a portion” of our proceeds to the cause, not “all”., but for some reason we didn’t hear that part and went about our business as if all our proceeds would benefit the cause, which I think was the local Wounded Warrior Project. Most of the gate money and prize money for the competitors was donated as well…..but not all. At the end of the event we obviously came out way ahead of everyone else at the event and thus were recognized as the group donating the most amount of money that day….As Homer Simpson would say….”Doah!” We didn’t find out about the issue until after the show when we were talking with the event coordinator again. That’s what I call paying it forward because every show we went to after that people loved our stuff and thanked us for helping out the charity at Rocktoberfest.
JC