National Clothesline

With the holiday season ending, the spread of goodwill and good tidings will inevitably fall to the wayside a bit. However, that does not necessarily have to be the case.

One drycleaning plant in Iowa aims to continue to instill a lasting, positive spirit even in the most cynical Scrooge, and not just during the month of December.

Crown Cleaners, owned and operated by the Anderson family in Des Moines, has instigated a program that randomly refunds customers’ drycleaning bills, provided they promise to use the money to help somebody who really needs it.

For about six months now, the company has randomly selected a period during one day every month to give approximately $600 worth of drycleaning bills back to its customers.

“So, if somebody comes in at that time and spends $60 on a drycleaning order, then we drop $60 into an envelope that kind of explains what the program is about and tell them they need to go use it toward their community or for somebody who is less fortunate than themselves,” said Zach Anderson, who runs the cleaners along with his father and brother. “Usually, people are pretty excited about that.”

The concept is similar to the one portrayed in the 2000 movie Pay It Forward starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment, where random acts of kindness are meant to inspire others to perform additional random acts of kindness.

So far, the idea has garnered a lot of generosity in the community, as well as a nice dose of positive publicity for the plant.

“We really don’t do a whole lot of traditional advertising with the newspaper or radio or TV. People talk about this a lot more so than they would if they saw an ad,” Anderson said. “I really like the organic-ness of it over just giving it to an organization. This way, it’s more like you know who is actually using it and what they are using it for.”

Not only do the customers have complete autonomy over how and where to donate the money, but they are also on the honor system to perform the charitable deeds.

“We kind of figure that once we give it to them, it’s really up to them to do whatever they want to do,” he added. “If they don’t use it, that’s really not our issue. It’s their issue.”

Most of the times, the customers are more than happy to come back to the store and share their stories.

One customer gave the $60 that comprised his drycleaning bill to a girl in a West Des Moines neighborhood who had recently had her purse stolen. Another West Des Moines customer chose to give her refunded $80 to a family in need at her church.

“One lady came in and had a really big order of $170 or so. We just gave her the $170 and she ended up giving it back to a little old lady she had met later on that day who needed to get hearing aides,” Anderson recalled. “There’s a lot of cool things that we hear back.”

A lady from Winterset opted to allay her $70 to a Hy-Vee food store that provides meals for families in needs. Unfortunately, there never seems to be a shortage of places for the money to go.

“There’s a lot of flooding here in Iowa, so a lot of it has gone to flood victims,” Anderson noted.

Certainly, positive word-of-mouth about Crown Cleaners has spread almost as fast as the redistribution of the refunded money. In fact, the company has recently opened a third cleaning location largely in part because of the program’s success.

According to Anderson, the pay-it-forward promotion has also generated another unexpected by-product: an extra dose of forgiveness from customers.

“If there is a glitch in the order somehow or something didn’t get done on time or something like that, I’ve heard several people say, ‘We really respect what you guys are doing here, so just don’t worry about it.’”