Key to the Community – giving back one card at a time
Most people feel a pull at some point in their lives to give back to their community; whether it’s picking up trash at a local park or beach, helping at an animal shelter, planting flowers, playing games with those in elder care, or buying raffle tickets that benefit a scholarship. Some people feel called to a life-long commitment to service, like business partners Tyrone Rolls and Jill Adamson. The duos latest venture is a “Key to the Community” discount card.
“I think when you’re born and raised in a community that you love and that you want to see get better, you have to. You can’t live here or be raised here and go somewhere else and say that you don’t like the place. You have to give back, you have to make changes. You have to love the place. There’s plenty of businesses and people that I’ve dealt with in my upbringing and it’s a reward to them that them caring when I was younger produced a person that I am now, so now I owe it to them to do it for the next generation,” said Tyrone.
Tyrone and Jill’s Key to the Community card is a local discount program. Shoppers buy a card, and have access to loads of discount offers from area businesses. The program launched over the 4th of July. They weren’t planning on starting their business during a pandemic.
“We’ve been working on this idea for a long time. The pandemic happened and we said, ‘You know what? We’ll actually go forward with it,’” said Jill.
The card can be used at over 60 businesses in Ocean City and the surrounding community. There are businesses being added almost daily to their page, www.keytothecommmunity.com, which also states the offered discounts. The businesses can change their discount at any time, allowing them to customize their discounts for the holidays.
“The cost of the card for one year is $25. When you purchase the card, you get directed to a list of charities. Five dollars from the card goes to the charity. It’s a win-win for a business. It gives them free advertising and potential new customers. I get emails all the time from local and national charities asking to be listed. It’s the customer’s choice. They can pick that charity. What’s great is that the purchase of the card is encouraging people to shop locally, and in the process, giving back to the charity,” said Jill.
The card is good through Labor Day 2021.
So far, it’s been successful. Some realtors are purchasing cards to give to their tenants, as well as some owners of rental properties.
“It’s in lieu of a welcome bucket,” said Jill.
Their motto is “Shop Local, Give Back, Save Big.”
“We just want to give back; we want to make a difference in this town and make it better. Make it better for everyone. The money isn’t for us; it’s for charities. It’s to give as much as we can back, education wise, sports wise, academic wise. That’s our main goal,” said Tyrone.
Jill and Tyrone chose charities that are important to them, but are open to learning about new ways to give back.
“Some charities that we put on there because they’re near and dear to us personally. We’re open to any business, they just have to honor the discount to the card holder. If anyone wants to suggest the charity to us, we’re happy to add them. I get requests every few days,” said Jill. “[Our] goal is to branch into our communities as well as the rest of the state and to other states. Have different arms of the business. We’re very new into the business, but our long term goal in the next year is to branch out into other states.”