Deer Buzz

Baker bikes 1,500 miles to share bounty

Any child would like a house made of candy, but for homeless children, a gingerbread house must appear even more magical. On Friday at downtown Lancaster’s Transitional Living Center, sugar-hopped youngsters buzzed about carrying gingerbread houses on precariously balanced cardboard squares. But, with peppermint chimneys, gumdrop shrubs and raisins standing in for cobblestone sidewalks, these weren’t just any gingerbread houses. And Trish Karter wasn’t just any visitor to TLC — after all, she’d spent the day riding her bicycle from a Baltimore homeless shelter to TLC at 105 E. King St.

On top of that, Karter — a sort of modern-day Willy Wonka — shipped all the fixings for those gingerbread houses from her Boston-based bakery, Dancing Deer Baking Co., to 15 homeless shelters from Atlanta to Washington, D.C., to New York City. Karter, 52, wanted to bring attention to the 600,000 American families and their 1.35 million children without housing in any given year. The entrepreneur and mother left home April 22 for a 15-day, 1,500-mile bike ride stopping at no less than 15 of the country’s best-run homeless shelters. Today she heads to Philadelphia, then Trenton and on to New York City.

Read the full article at LancasterOnline.com

Run*Walk*Ride Success May 2009 Newsletter

For most of us, fundraising is the #1 goal of our programs, but the communications and advocacy potential of working up a sweat for a good cause should not be overlooked.
Case in point: Trish Karter, CEO of Dancing Deer Bakery, rode 1,500 miles from Atlanta to Boston recently to promote solutions to family homelessness, her company’s signature cause.
Along the way she visited 15 shelters, met with numerous public officials and generated ample coverage.  It will do your heart good to spend a few minutes reading about her journey—and you might pick up a few ideas along the way on using blogs and video.

David Hessekiel
President
Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council

Tracked Down: Fall Out Boy, Chris Evans, Patrice Bergeron & more…

Fall Out Boy Pete Wentz doing the meet-and-greet at Mohegan Sun . . . Sudbury homey Chris Evans, aka The Human Torch of “Fantastic Four” fame, dropping into the Foundation Lounge at the Hotel Commonwealth with a posse of pals . . . Mayor Tom Menino and wife Angela popping into the Lansdowne Pub for dinner after Hizzoner’s command performance at Urban Improv’s “Banned in Boston” . . . State Sen. Scott Brown, vintage Patriot Max Lane and a roomful of Grand Old Partiers at the Harpoon Brewery at a time for state Sen. Bob Hedlund . . . Boston Bruin Patrice Bergeron walking home with groceries from Whole Foods . . . Dancing Deer Baking Co. cheese Trish Kater meeting Sen. John Kerry in D.C., where she made a pit stop during her 1,500-mile bike ride to raise money and awareness for family homelessness . . .

Biking CEO comes to Lancaster

Trish Karter was looking for an interesting way to mark the 15th anniversary of the company that she founded, the Boston-based Dancing Deer Bakery.

And, the company CEO wanted to draw attention — and donations — to the company’s partnership with the Boston-based non-profit organization One Family Inc. With One Family, the company funds college scholarships for homeless mothers as a pathway to self-sufficiency.

An avid bicyclist, Karter knew she could reasonably ride about 100 miles per day.
That was how she decided to do a 15-day, 1,500-mile bike ride with evening stops at homeless shelters.

Today, Karter, 52, will ride into Lancaster. At 6:30 p.m., she will host a gingerbread house decorating party for families living in the Tabor Community Services’ Transitional Living Center, 105 E. King St.

“It totally rejuvenating for me. It is a very positive experience,” Karter said of the hand-on activity, usually undertaken with single mothers and children.
“I don’t know what to call it but person-to-person philanthropy,” she said.

Read the full article at LancasterOnline.com

Doing More Than Marketing

Running a company puts you in closer touch with your co-workers than you are with your immediate family. It connects you with your network of related customers, suppliers and service providers more closely than with your extended family. But sometimes it isolates us from our communities and people not involved with our day to day goals. At the risk of being self-serving I want to use the example of my sister, Trish Karter, CEO of Dancing Deer Baking Company, who is connecting with a larger community and also helping her company achieve its goals. She is riding her bike from Atlanta to Boston stopping at homeless shelters in 15 places to connect with the women living there, raise money for these shelters and create awareness for the plight of the homeless - http://www.dancingdeer.com/ride. She is also redirecting the discussion about her company to let people associate it with a broader goal. Paul Newman is our local socially responsible entrepreneurial hero. There are so many ways we can follow these examples to help our companies and connect to our communities in meaningful ways. I encourage you to think about one thing you can do each year to connect your company with a goal beyond its immediate constituency.