Meet RockCorps – a social enterprise that lets young people “buy” their big concert tickets through “sweat equity” (volunteering) – and the man who is bringing it to SA – Matthew Karpinski.
RockCorps has a vision of getting as many young people as possible to experience volunteer work, and discover how enjoyable and rewarding it is to help out.
What RockCorps does is stage big music events and gives the tickets exclusively to those who complete four hours work at one of our community projects.
Our success oversees has been huge. We’ve had over 50 000 volunteers giving a total of over 200 h000 hours of their time to help over 450 charity and non-profit partners across the US, the UK and this year we launched in France.
Find out more about the model and the man with the SA plan, Matthew Karpinski…. (this is the click thru)
Rock Corps was started by seven friends in Los Angeles after the events of September 11th 2001.
All of our work is funded by brand partners who sponsor RockCorps, and for them it is a really effective marketing platform.
We’ve found a way of really connecting with young people and introducing them to the idea of helping out in their communities – we do this in a way with is accessible, fun and rewarding, and more than a third of the volunteers we recruit go on to do more community work on their own initiative.
Going forward, we’re taking the same model into sport, so we’ll use big sporting events as the hook to get people’s attention.
Now meet Matthew Karpinski – the man who’s putting everything he’s got (literally) into making RockCorps a reality in SA.
I learned about the concept whilst working overseas and thought it would be perfect for South Africa and so I’ve worked on the RockCorps activation in London to really learn the secrets of RockCorps’ success and been having meetings with partners back here in SA.
Right now, I’m meeting with potential brand partners to show them what a successful brand marketing programme RockCorps is – not as part of their Corporate Social Investment (CSI) activity, but as a full part of their marketing mix, equivalent to (or in my opinion better than!) their existing sponsorships.
I think RockCorps can help a new generation see that playing an active role in helping make your own community better can be really rewarding. I also believe that South Africa would be the perfect place to develop the RockCorps model in sport – we’ve always been leaders in sports sponsorship, and this can help us stay at the cutting edge.
I am passionate about RockCorps because it combines all of my 15 years event industry experience with making a difference in this amazing country. I have been looking for such a platform for years to firmly situate me back in South Africa.
I love the concept because it’s really win-win-win: help for the community, creating a new generation of community minded young people, and being a really great brand platform. There’s not many ideas like it out there.
The phrase I hear myself using the most is “RockCorps will eventually help change the world and our youth via making volunteering cool across the world”.
If only one thing, I hope to MAKE VOLUNTEERING COOL… and I would like to see big brands become more socially responsible with their marketing.
I believe South Africans are hungry, motivated, excited and willing to volunteer; they just need the RockCorps platform to action that drive within them.