Second Annual “Week of Engagement” Day 5 – Non-Profit

This is our second annual “week of engagement” and our Day 5 discussion is with Tom Davis, owner of Flight To Remember. Through the lens of their drones, Flight To Remember transport hospice patients to places they may never see again.

Tag your favorite non-profits (big or small) on your socials and use #engagesmall so we can follow along.

Find out everything about Flight To Remember on their website and connect with them on Facebook and Instagram.

Transcript

Brandan: Hey, this is Brandan Baki from Engage Small, and today is day five of our Week of Engagement, and day five is non-profits. It’s the easiest group of all of them, it’s just any nonprofits. It doesn’t matter if they’re big or small, if they’re doing good things in their community, support ’em, tag ’em. Don’t forget to use the hashtag Engage Small when you do so, but this can be any nonprofit that you support in any way. If you don’t have the funds to support them, tag them and try to engage with them as much as possible right now, and also if you have time and you can volunteer some time, that’s really helpful too. And so don’t forget if this is your first video that you’re watching this week, we’re just tagging small businesses, freelancers, nonprofits today, include in the hashtag Engage Small. If you wanna see more or learn more about Engage Small, you can go to engagesmall.com. And our nonprofit today, we’re going to be hearing from Flight To Remember and the person who started it all is Tom Davis. Hey Tom, how are you doing today? Thanks for taking the time.

Tom: Hey, Brandan, I’m doing great, thanks for having me, looking forward to it.

Brandan: Absolutely. So, tell us a little bit what is Flight To Remember?

Tom: Yeah. So, Flight To Remember is a nonprofit organization. We’re a very unique organization, we provide a life enriching service to hospice patients using drones. And what we do is we work with hospice organizations, and when a patient is near end of life, we work with the hospice organization to determine what their most meaningful locations are and if they would like to see again. And we’re able to source a pilot, a drone pilot all over the world. We’ll source a pilot, they’ll go to the location, get some really great footage, they submit that to us and we have editors that’ll create a momento video or, you know, a nice little video collection of the location, so, that they can get the experience of being in those places one more time.

Brandan: That’s amazing. So, is this a service that’s like free to the patient?

Tom: Totally free to the patient and the family. We have hospice organizations join as members and that’s how we cover some of the costs. We primarily focus on nonprofit hospice, community-based hospices, but we we serve non-profit hospices all the way up to, you know, your for-profit large hospital systems. And even profit individuals call and they want something done, they’ve heard of it, we’re more than happy to do that as well.

Brandan: That’s great. So, what kind of locations do these people request?

Tom: Oh, man, it is the full spectrum. So, you go from the Las Vegas Strip, Paris, you know, downtown Paris, the Grand Teton Mountains, you know, the cliffs on the shore of Wales, all the way down to 109 Wheaton Street in Decomen, Idaho where they just wanna see a backyard and the bench that they used to sit on in the backyard, and hang out and the flowers are there. So, it’s the complete spectrum, the famous, you know, big locations are cool, but when you get someone’s yard and you, know there you fly a drone up their driveway so, they can experience that one more time, like those are the most meaningful I would say.

Brandan: Yeah. That’s really cool. So, where did this come from? How did you start this ?

Tom: Yeah. So, in 20, I don’t know, maybe 2015, my mother-in-law actually showed me a YouTube video of a drone and people getting footage, and I loved it, I thought it was the coolest thing. Went on eBay and bought one cheap and was gonna be, you know, start a company that did movies, and real estate and construction and all the stuff with the drones that everybody’s doing. So, I did some stuff, I made some… you know, I did some real estate stuff and construction, and I got into it and even got more advanced drones. And one day I was talking to one of my real good friends and his cousin, her daughter had a rare leukemia, was in and out of the hospital, and at one point it was like a Saturday morning we were talking and he was telling me that she was bummed because her whole class was going to a special trip on a Saturday down at the beach, and I said, “Hey, you know, these drones can live stream “from the air and get the view.” And I said, “why don’t you see if they wanna do that, “and we could go out there fly it so she could “you know, kinda be there?” It turns that they had stuff going on and we were unable to do it. But that night I was sitting on a couch with my wife, and I just said, “this would be great for folks in hospice “that, you know, are gonna be confined to their home “or their facility and we can virtually take them there.” And so, I emailed, just went on the contact page of a bunch of hospice organizations, and said, “Hey I got this idea for a drone service.” And so Hospice of the Western Reserve here in Cleveland replied, they were the only one that replied. And they said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about “but come on in and we’ll talk, we’ll figure it out.” And from there, I met with them, met with their board and their CEO, Bill Finn, who is now on our board, just loved the idea, he said, “let’s make it work.” So, we did one and it’s terrifying, my wife was with the patient and their family, I was in a state park in the middle of Ohio and the whole thing worked, it was great. And then from there we said, you know, I think we’re onto something, let’s make this happen. And we formed the nonprofit and grew our board with a bunch of great people. And now we’ve got 20 or so hospices and we’re doing this all over the world.

Brandan: That’s super cool. Usually people are like, well, you know, there’s this thing, I slowly did this. They’re like, you had such an instant it was like a switch, you know, like I had this idea and then hours later you were like, no, that idea is the idea and this is how we’re gonna do it. Like that’s really amazing.

Tom: So, and this obviously isn’t the only thing I do that way, and my wife loves it and hates it sometimes so. Yeah. You’re absolutely right.

Brandan: Sometimes you’re right though, you know, sometimes it works .

Tom: Yeah, exactly.

Brandan: Tell your wife that .

Tom: Yeah exactly so. Yeah, I’ll let her know.

Brandan: So, what do you know now that you wish you knew then when you were just starting out?

Tom: Yeah. I think there’s a lot of… when it comes to building a nonprofit, there was a lot of things that I didn’t know, so, you know, similar to your point before, I was like, “okay I’m gonna doing nonprofit.” And I just figured out how to submit the app and do all the things, and write the board book and just, you know, put my head down and did it through several nights obviously, it took a while. And then we grew the board. But I think having some… And I got some good advice along the way, but I think if you’re gonna start something, you can save yourself a ton of time and some headaches, you know, if you seek out and find individuals that have experience in those areas, I think the downside of my kind of hard charging attitude is we get there and then I can look back at these things and I have the people to help me re-evaluate and adjust. So, I think a little more foresight in my experience would have been very helpful.

Brandan: Yeah, I feel like the nonprofit path, it’s just all different and the same, like it’s a small business but it’s just a whole different gamut of everything, you know, the legality of it all and the paperwork and everything.

Tom: Yeah. And I think the idea around forming a nonprofit was, we don’t wanna do this for a profit, you know, I’ve got a job and we’re doing okay, this is a service that we just thought would be a great thing, but it takes funding to run a nonprofit. And one of those things, you know, we’ve been very lucky, I work at Hyland Software and as part of their employee, you know, corporate responsibility, they support and that has gone a long way. We’ve got board members from KeyBank and, you know, we’re able to get smaller donations, but we just now have brought on the board members and the team that is gonna focus on development, you know, and doing those things the right way and getting grants and all that so we can run the business. So, I think another thing I learned was that that’s something you wanna focus on upfront. Even if you don’t think it’s a priority to make money, the key to that is the funding so that you can build your organization and provide the service. So, getting out in front of that a little bit more would’ve been really helpful as well.

Brandan: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Nothing is free. Even if you’re not making money on top of stuff, you still have overhead, you still have all kinds of… there’s a lot of things that you need funding for absolutely.

Tom: Yeah, absolutely. And part of it, you know, when you say nothing’s free, I think there’s absolute truth to that, but I think when you’re doing something like this where I found a lot of success was connecting with the right people, you know, I’ll use you for example. You know, we connected somehow a year or two ago, met up, had a coffee, and you’ve made a production version of our messaging video that everyone can use. And in your spare time out of the goodness of your heart. And there’s a lot of people that will do those kinda things, if you just connect and take the time to do that and they’re all around you. Here we’re… You know, the big piece to our business is the video editor, so, timing is key in our service, you know. We don’t have a lot of time to collect footage and then get it edited so, that we can produce the final piece, so, we’ve partnered with local career institutions, even our local Avon High School, we now have a Avon High School senior who’s going in the media production. Who is helping out doing editing and he can turn it around quickly, you know, and then we’re gonna start to grow that channel right here in Cleveland, in Avon and Cleveland. And, you know, we’ve got some very video production technology companies in the area that we’ve partnered with and talked to that have provided a lot of help at no cost. So, you know, those are the keys and kinda along with the concept of engaging small, you know, you can engage small but there’s a big impact that you can find.

Brandan: Yeah, yeah. That’s great. And it’s finding that community to help lift you up and, you know, they’re all the people in your backyard who everybody wants this thing to succeed and it’s kind of on everybody to make sure that it does, you know?

Tom: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, and it is one of those things when you talk, you know, we do, we have a special service and everyone loves the idea, but if you really sit down with them and connect and take some action, that’s where you get the results. So, we’ve had a lot of success there.

Brandan: That’s great. So, how do you prefer to really interact with people you know, on social media? Where kinda benefits you the most?

Tom: Yeah. So, this is another area that we’ve started to focus on. So, we haven’t really put any effort over the last four years into marketing. Someone would catch wind of our service and we would get a call for an interview. So, we’ve got interviews from “The Washington Post”, the “Smithsonian”, the “Toronto Star”, all these big things. And some of them I still couldn’t tell you how they got our information, but we did an interview and they posted an article and then, you know, there’s other. That’s kinda the big thing that would launch a lot of activity, but we would also get like a small Facebook group. We have a couple of examples of let’s say a particular type of cancer support or a grief group, and unbeknownst to us they would post a link to our website and say a little bit about what we do. And we would get 20 volunteers signing up, you know, and it would go from there. So, Facebook groups kinda… you know, and we’ve gotten involved in a lot of drones Facebook groups, a lot of hospice Facebook groups, we’re on Twitter and Instagram and we’ve done some stuff there, again kind of a light focus that we really need to improve that. The other day, this was maybe a month or two ago, one of our board members went on Reddit and posted, and I think we had maybe 210 pilots that have signed up to fly for us across the world, this Reddit post in three days, doubled that. You know, just drone pilots who are on there and said, “this is awesome, “I’m gonna hit the link and sign up.” So, you know, the social media aspect is kinda what we need to focus on now, you, know, and those kinda things. But it is again, another small thing that can have a huge impact. So, it’s primarily been the social media avenues we’ve been using lately.

Brandan: Awesome. So, what, you know, being the owner of a business and having a full-time job on the side of this thing, so, you’re obviously very busy, but what do you do that has nothing to do with Flight To Remember? Like what do you enjoy doing that has nothing to do with Flight To Remember?

Tom: Yeah. Well, my latest, and this is another dumb example of put your head down and do something crazy, was I started a PhD in Psychology, like a year,

Brandan: What!

Tom: I don’t know almost two years ago, maybe now and I’ve only got like eight months left, but it’s crazy. So, that’s been awesome, you know, it’s learning those things and kind of applying it to work, to the nonprofit stuff. So, that takes up a lot of time, but I separated that, that’s the night shift, you know. Outside of Flight To Remember we have three kids and, you know, we do… we’re spending as much time as we can with them, you know, especially the last year and a half, bike rides, walks, I’ll take the boys and our daughter up to the football field here in Avon and we’ll throw the football around and run around on the field. And now they’re back into soccer and football and everything. So, we’re doing that. In the end of the last year we bought a tandem bicycle, so, I can get the kids on the back and we’ll ride around Avon, and they can’t go anywhere they have to talk to me. So, that’s some of the stuff I like doing. Yeah. Outside of that, I don’t know, I enjoy golfing, I have a motorcycle, I love riding a motorcycle, but yeah, those are some of the things I’m doing outside of Flight To Remember.

Brandan: I liked that you were like, you know, you’ve got your full-time at Hyland, you’ve got a nonprofit that’s flourishing, you’ve got three kids and you’re like, “yeah, I’ll grab a PhD while I’m there, you know, “no big deal.”

Tom: Well, I’m very lucky, I feel like with Flight To Remember we’ve kinda built the system, and my wife… you know, and that was through the help of our board and in some of the early advisors that helped out. And my wife runs Flight To Remember now, you know, she does everything from coordinating the flights, she’ll jump in and edit videos at midnight when we need to get it done the next day, you know, I kinda just still very involved but I’ll kinda give ideas and she’ll tell me not a good idea, and she just does her thing. So, I’m lucky there. And then obviously I work. I’ve got such a great team at work, and I’m able to focus most of my time on the work in Hyland, which is great.

Brandan: That’s fantastic. So, where can people find Flight To Remember?

Tom: Yeah. So, www.flighttoremember.org is our website. On the website, if you are a hospice organization, you can log in, contact us and get involved. If you’re a drone pilot, you can sign up to be a drone pilot. If you’re a video editor, you can sign up to be a video editor that participates and will take on projects when we need. So, that’s kinda your full, you know, how to get in touch with us area. We’re also on Twitter, Instagram, and I believe Reddit now, I don’t even know how that works but I think we have a Reddit account that posts, so, keep an eye out to that. But, the website and then the Instagram and Twitter are the big ones now.

Brandan: Awesome. Tom, thank you so much, I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us about Flight To Remember.

Tom: Yeah, sure thing, Brandan, it was great to catch up and always good talking to you.

Brandan: You too. Thank you for watching, and this is the last day of our Week of Engagement, and even though it’s the last day, it doesn’t mean that the engagement stops. We encourage everyone to continue to engage with small businesses all year long. Please include the hashtag Engage Small so, we can continue to see all of that growth and all of that engagement that everyone’s doing. We really appreciate everyone’s support. It’s been really fun and awesome to see people using this hashtag and reaching out to us. It’s been really cool. So, please, if you wanna learn any more, if you want to participate, or help out, or be featured on our website, please go to engagesmall.com. You can see us on Facebook and Instagram. We just thank you so much for everything that you’ve done to help us, and we’re going to continue posting. We have resources on our website for small businesses and freelancers, so, please check those out if they might be of help to you and let us know if we can help in any other way. So, thank you so much, and we will see you next year. But we’ll actually see you a lot sooner than next year, we’re gonna do other stuff too. But we’ll also see you next year.