Community Vote #25 - what brands should we work with this year?

Hey everyone!

This is super exciting! Today we are conducting our 25th Community Vote!! LFGG!

For context, we are a community led organization!! We host what we call "Community Votes" to take in feedback from you and the rest of our members to ensure we are constantly growing our community with your best interest in mind. Your feedback is valued and this vote is quite important as it will have a large impact on the future direction of our organization!! If you have brands you want to see at our events moving forward, please take a minute to vote here.

In this vote we will be asking for your feedback on which brands you'd like to see incorporated into our community. We will take the results and reach out to the brands that are consensus favorites!

Link to the vote can be found here.

Context - Endorphins works with brands to help facilitate stronger experiences and connections in each of our respective cities! Additionally, Endorphins takes proceeds from brand partnerships that we can then use to invest into our local communities!!

How does this actually work?

An example of this comes from our ongoing partnership with New Balance (which was formed based on Community Vote #21)!! New Balance invests in paying for coffee / food after our events across the US. These coffees extend the duration of our standard experiences from ~45 minutes to 90 minutes. In this extended period of time, we are able to meet more people and create more meaningful connections within our community!!! It allows us to make more friends, which in turn is directly tied to our mission of spreading positivity and happiness!!

Another example comes from Race Weekends! Endorphins hosts race weekends across the US (basically every week at this point). We can use proceeds from working with brands to then pay local photographers and videographers to attend shakeouts and races. Our photographers and videographers capture amazing race weekend and day moments that are cherished by us all for many years. It takes the race day energy and the Endorphins energy and allows it to be memorialized! Additionally, these moments help spread awareness about the impact and our mission and help bring more members into our community! Also - in most cases the creatives we contract are also local members of the community which is an investment in each local community within itself!!! So cool!

Link to the vote can be found here.

How does Endorphins decide which brands to partner with?

We are quite selective about working with brands. In order to green light working with a brand partner, our city leads must believe in the product and the brand. If we open conversations with a brand, our city leads will be sent products to test them and evaluate them. Once the city leads all have had the chance to evaluate the product we determine as a group whether we would like to incorporate the potential partner at our events! This allows us to ensure we are only working with brands that best represent our community and our mission. In most cases, we end up turning down brand partnerships! We are quite selective in the best way possible!

We evaluate two types of partners. Global partners who can activate in all 12 of our cities, and local partners who can only activate on a one city or semi national scale.

Last year we only got to yes with 5 "global" brands. New Balance, Shokz, Kodiak, Smart Water, and Celsius. We turned down dozens of "global" brand partnerships due to a lack of fit.

Our local communities had small activations with local retail shops, coffee shops, stores, or semi national brands that could only support one... or a few of our cities! These activations are bespoke and typically coordinated as see fit by the local city leads!!

Is the brand safe?

If we are approached by a nutrition brand, we lean on our Head Dietitian - Emily Kaley - to help us determine if the product is 3rd party tested, and using safe ingredients to ensure we are not incorporating harmful products at our events. Safety is one of, if not the most important part of our organization. If you are not safe at Endorphins event, we are not acting on our mission, and this is taken quite seriously. If a brand is deemed "not safe", we will not partner with them... period!

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Ultimately, brand partners allow Endorphins and our local communities to thrive. And in order for us to work with brands and create even more epic experience, we rely on you and the rest of our community to determine which brands we should incorporate in 2025. The vote should take about 3 - 5 minutes and your voice will dictate the future direction of the organization!

Link to the vote can be found here.

Only the best,

Tyler