Sport Clips Help A Hero

Donating More Than $13 Million to Support Veterans is Big News

Stone Ward client Sport Clips Haircuts is a veteran-founded franchise that stands by its commitment to support those who serve our country. To honor that, throw it back to 2007 when Stone Ward first worked with Sport Clips to promote the launch of its Help A Hero program...originally set up to fund phone calls home for hospitalized and deployed military. The program transitioned in 2013 to support veteran scholarships for education expenses that extend beyond G.I. Bill coverage when preparing for post-military careers. The VFW’s Sport Clips Help A Hero Scholarship has become the brand's signature philanthropy and has grown to become the largest veteran scholarship program of its kind.

“It is important to us as a company to thank and support others, whether it’s professional stylists in our stores or the sacrificial service of veterans and their family members. We provide ongoing training for stylists and understand additional training and education are often needed by our military to pursue civilian careers. These Help A Hero scholarships are just one way Sport Clips team members, clients, and product partners help us express our gratitude for protecting our freedom and help provide for the future education and success of those who’ve served."

— Gordon Logan, Air Force veteran, VFW Life member and founder and chairman of Sport Clips

Sport Clips Haircuts donates $1.3M to Help A Hero for veterans’ scholarships. (L - R) Edward Logan, Sport Clips Haircuts CEO and president; VFW National Commander Duane Sarmiento and Sport Clips Haircuts Founder and Chairman, Air Force veteran and VFW Life member, Gordon Logan.

News worth sharing

Through the years, Stone Ward has worked with Sport Clips to engage a host of creative ways to launch fundraising efforts in October leading up to Veterans Day when the company commits an additional $2 per haircare service to close the annual campaign. Along with traditional news release and editorial content distribution announcing the start of fundraising, we've helped equip the franchise's 1,900 stores with tools and tips to generate local media coverage, hosted satellite media tours, and secured live, network "plaza" interviews and social media posts with some of the most popular morning shows and talent in the country.

Now that the campaign has crossed the decade point, we knew we had to work together with Sport Clips to find new and unique ways to keep fundraising robust and successful. With news feeds jammed full of pop culture and often gloomy headlines, we needed to cut through the clutter to share the ingredients of a positive news story about supporting veterans.

What’s in the secret PR sauce?

There's actually a great deal of planning and gut-checking by seasoned PR professionals that make up the recipe to generate stories around a good cause during very crowded news cycles. The team that worked on the project has a collective 100 years+ of communications practice and experience. It included pros on the client, philanthropic partner, and agency sides to devise a plan that would resonate and make news that would be of interest to local, national, and trade media and their audiences. The planning took six months to strategically develop and implement. The good news - it worked.

$1.3M donated by Sport Clips Haircuts for VFW Help A Hero Schola - KFOL (htv10.tv)

Jacob Dietz - Help A Hero Scholarship Recipient

America Luna - Help A Hero Scholarship Recipient

Josh Pickering - Help A Hero Scholarship Recipient

ICYMI

The plan was developed to announce the Help A Hero fundraising kick-off through a host of high-level interviews and podcasts along with a series of well-timed media alerts and news release distributions to targeted outlets. Included in the outreach were impressive results from previous years of fundraising as well as thought leadership, and details of what this year's campaign goal could afford. The outcome of our combined efforts, even with so much other headline-garnering news:

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Sport Clips Haircuts presented a check to the VFW Foundation for $1.3M toward veterans’ scholarships and offered free haircuts to veterans in January 2024. The donation event was held at VFW Post 7397 in Lenexa, Kansas, and marks the eighth year in a row for the franchise to donate more than $1M for the Sport Clips VFW Help A Hero Scholarship program.

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To date, the program has awarded more than 2,900 scholarships totaling more than $13 million.

With Sport Clips donated funds, 175 scholarships totaling nearly $800,000 were awarded by the VFW for the spring 2024 semester.

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Some 250 media placements generated more than 190+ million possible impressions for this worthy Sport Clips philanthropy.

Building good is what we're about at Stone Ward. It's rewarding to have clients who share that belief and invest the resources and work into building philanthropic programs that are making big news while positively impacting lives and communities.

We provide these services for Sport Clips Help A Hero on an ongoing basis:

Public Relations