I had the pleasure recently of volunteering with some Acceleration Partners colleagues for the Duplessy Foundation. It’s so important to me to leave a positive imprint by giving back to my community and empowering others to succeed. At Acceleration Partners, all employees are encouraged to volunteer and find ways to give back within our own local communities.
What is the Duplessy foundation?
The Duplessy Foundation is a non-profit organisation that supports women and minority entrepreneurs. To achieve social equality, the foundation teaches these entrepreneurs sales skills to help grow their businesses.
This is the first time Acceleration Partners had the honour of volunteering at the Duplessy Foundation’s annual WIM Summit. Acceleration Partners’ senior leadership team was particularly keen to get involved because they felt the organisation has core values closely aligned with our own.
The WIM Summit is a three-day sales workshop focused on helping diverse business owners understand and implement new or improved processes to drive success. Volunteer coaches share their professional business-to-business and e-commerce skillsets with attendees comprising women, immigrants and minority business owners.
Volunteering at 2020 WIM summit
In preparation for volunteering at the summit, we attended a video call with Derek Duplessy, founder of the Duplessy Foundation, to learn more about how the organisation gives back. The passion Derek displayed about what he does, along with his humble approach, was inspiring—I could not wait to be able to be a part of it!
Each Acceleration Partners volunteer was paired with a business owner they felt could best benefit from the volunteer’s expertise. As a volunteer coach, I was able to bring to the table my knowledge of how to drive sales via the affiliate marketing channel.
I was provided with some background information about my mentee’s business, how it currently operates and areas where they could use a bit more support and advice. This allowed me to do research prior to the event so that my mentee could get the best out of our coaching session together.
It was interesting learning more about the business owners’ backgrounds and how their businesses originated, but even more so, how tough times have been during the pandemic for small independent businesses and how they have had to adjust to survive.
It felt particularly important to be able to provide tangible, cost-effective advice for my mentee that could potentially help keep her business going through these unprecedented times.
During my coaching session, I provided my mentee with research-based feedback and three key elements to creating an affiliate marketing strategy they could easily start implementing on their own.
Finally, it was up to the business owners to take what they had learned over the course of the summit and weave the teachings into their own individual business plans.
My personal takeaways
This volunteer experience made me understand how we can often take for granted the skills we’ve developed, and that it’s important to share our knowledge with others.
It was extremely rewarding to be able to help someone else by explaining something I do daily, with the potential that passing along this knowledge could help them to enhance their own growing business.
However, the icing on the cake for me was the inspiration I felt from seeing someone put 100% into something that they felt passionate about and going against all odds to make it work. I got to see my business mentee implementing some of the tips I had given on their website and social media.
I caught up with my colleague Michelle Morgan, Director of Publisher Development, to get her insights on her experience volunteering as well at the Duplessy Foundation WIM Summit:
“It was great discovering more about the Duplessy organisation and how they teach and empower these businesses. I really loved learning about the company and founder I was paired with, and I’m grateful for Acceleration Partners giving us these volunteer opportunities.”
We wish the best of luck to all the businesses who took part in the 2020 Duplessy Foundation WIM Summit! We also strongly recommend working with and supporting this great organisation in any way you can.
To learn more about affiliate marketing, get in touch with our team or download our free guide: affiliate marketing 101.
