The company began incorporating service projects into its national meetings in 2005. Working with Team Dynamix, a Phoenix-based teambuilding company, LexisNexis contacts community organizations to determine what items they need and whether its employees can make them in the allotted two-hour period. Then Team Dynamix secures all of the supplies and delivers them to the meeting location.
For this event, organizers assigned employees to 35 teams of 20 to 25 people. During the two hours, each team assembled the same 31 items: one park bench, one adult rocking chair, one child's rocking chair, three bookcases, two beehives, four planters, two blankets, five bears, two bikes and helmets, four military packs, and six camp packs.
Within 24 hours after the event, Team Dynamix delivered the more than 1,000 items to the recipient organizations and schools. Some items went to an Orlando elementary school, while others went to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, the Salvation Army, a beekeepers’ association, and other community groups.
Last year at the same meeting, the community service project took place in the middle of the conference, scheduled between a speaker and dinner. Morgan said that caused problems because the speaker ran long. So while employees were still working, the banquet staff needed to get into the room to set up, forcing some teams to move their projects into the hotel’s parking lot to finish. That experience convinced them to make the service project the first activity on the schedule this year.
“Everyone was relaxed, and everyone got everything done,” said Morgan. “And they got to meet new people right at the start of the conference.”
