Read more: Local, Christmas Tree, Fundraising, Service Organizations, Missaukee County
MANTON AND LAKE CITY -- 'Tis the season for the corner Christmas tree lot.
You know, the one's many service organizations set up to drum up funds for various reasons.
But, a Northern Michigan business has come up high-tech way to sell trees, raise money for your non-profit and not have to set up the corner lot.
Believe it nor not, things are actually slowing down at Dutchman Tree Farms between Manton and Lake City.
With the Thanksgiving holiday over and the focus now on Christmas decorating, most of the 450,000 trees they hoped to ship are already at places like large home improvement chains right on down to the corner tree lot all over the country.
Now, packing and shipping of trees and wreaths is in full swing for a different kind of project Dutchman started this year.
Tt's called Green 2 Green, a program set up for non-profit organizations.
"The idea came about by wanting to use technology to promote Christmas tree sales," said co-owner Chris Maciborski.
Many non-profit organizations like service clubs set up christmas tree lots to raise cash for their various causes.
But, for some, it's getting more difficult to find the volunteers to man those lots.
Now, that same group can sign up. They can do their sales online," said Maciborski.
Each group that signs up is given a promotion number.
All they need to do is push their fundraising effort and give that number out.
Once the Christmas trees and wreaths are purchased, they come to another location near-by to be packaged up and then sent to customers all over the country and the non-profit organization they got the promo code from gets a portion of the purchase price."
"Five dollars for a wreath and ten dollars for a tree," said Maciborski.
And the nice thing about it is that the non-profit group never has to collect any money.
"All of the transactions are done through our website and Dutchman Tree Farms and they pay for the product. We send it out and at the end of the year, we send a check to the fundraising group," said Maciborski.
More than 100 groups signed up for the Green 2 Green program...which was Dutchman's target for the first year.
For more information about Dutchman Tree Farms and Green 2 Green program, click here.
