Station Helps Pay It Forward

‘DRIVE-THRU DIFFERENCE DAY’ DRAWS HUNDREDS OF PARTICIPANTS

By Debbie Miller

Posted: November 21, 2009 at 4:20 a.m.

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SPRINGDALE — Asteady line of customers at Chick-fil-A in Bentonville pulled up to the drive-through window, all poised to shell out money for their meal.

Repeatedly, customers learned there was no charge. A stranger ahead in line had already paid for the order.

“It’s so nice to see someone else’s face when (they’re told a stranger has covered the bill),” said Joan Layne, shift manager for weeknights at the Bentonville Chick-fil-A location.

Layne said about 45 evening customers opted to “pay it forward” on Nov. 12. Twentytwo of those were in a continuing line of customers.

The shift manager participated as well, paying for someone else’s meal.

“It’s a neat thing,” she said of the concept. “It makes you feel good all over.”

Layne was one of the people taking action in contemporary Christian radio station KLRC’s “Drive-Thru Difference Day” on Nov. 12. Hundreds of individuals in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma participated. A Starbucks in Fayetteville reported a succession of 79 customers paying for the next guy’s order. Many of the region’s participants printed a message from the radio station’s Web site that the drive-through attendant could hand to the person on the receiving end.

“So ... you don’t know me,” stated the note, “but I decided to pay for your order! No gimmicks or anything - just something I wanted to do. I actually heard about people doing stuff like this on the radio station 101.1 KLRC. ...” The message continued with an invitation to call KLRC.

Keri Lynn, promotions director for the station, said the phone rang repeatedly.

Some callers noted that they opted to pay for the next person’s order. Many wanted the station to pass along a “Thank you” to the person who paid for their meal, Lynn said.

The drive-through project is part of the contemporary Christian radio station’s “Pay It Forward” campaign, now in its third year.

Helping others by paying fora $5 meal is perhaps one of the most visible actions of station listeners. But there are other components in what KLRC is calling its “25 Days of Pay It Forward” recognizing the 25th anniversary of the station based on the John Brown University campus in Siloam Springs.

KLRC, Arvest Bank and the Good Neighbor Food Drive project have joined forces to collect nonperishable itemsat the bank’s locations in Northwest Arkansas. One of the great aspects of working with the already well-established Good Neighbor program is that food collected in a community will go toward food pantries or nonprofit organizations in that location, Lynn said. For example, food collected in Bentonville will stay in Bentonville.

KLRC (101.1 FM) and Arvest Bank also teamed up to grant nine listeners $101 each to “pay it forward” for someone else. Listeners wrote notes about what they would do with the $101 and why they would choose that particular action.

Lynn said projects have included a Bella Vista resident who knew the fi refi ghters paid for the food cooked at the station during their shift. He chose to use the $101 toward purchasing foodand preparing a meal for the fi refi ghters.

Another listener wanted to send a neighboring family’s children, which included foster kids, to Fun City. In the course of talking about her project on air, the listener mentioned that she didn’t have a working car and the mom in the neighboring household had been driving her to work.

“The phones lit up,” Lynn said. A caller said he had a car that he wanted to give to the woman, Lynn said.

So it started out that alistener wanted to help someone else, and she, in turn, ended up a benefi ciary.

Sean Sawatzky, KLRC’s general manager, said the station’s grateful for the partnership with Arvest and what it enables caring people to be able to accomplish.

The Pay It Forward projects don’t rely on what the station’s staff alone can do, but through partnering with other organizations and relying on a generous community to act, much can be done, he noted.

The response refl ects wellon the people of the region, Sawatzky said. The noncommercial station’s audience averages about 60,000 listeners in the four-county area of Benton and Washington counties in Arkansas and Adair and Delaware counties in Oklahoma.

The drive-through project apparently touched a lot of people. Sawatzky said literally hundreds of people participated, and others’ generosity moved recipients.

“People called, and they were in tears over the simpleact of a $5 gift,” Sawatzky said.

Mark Michaels, the station’s program director, said people may have acted on the drive-through program out of varied motivations, but there is a strong faith component to everything the station does.

An action like paying for the customer in line behind you provides a way of showing to others “God’s love in a tangible way,” Michaels said.

Recipients and benefactors alike shared that they gleanedspiritual messages from the simple action, he said.

Some of the benefactors in the drive-through project had been going through some tough times themselves and the exercise in generosity strengthened them, Michaels said. He was told, “I learned something about faith and trusting God to do this.”

Many other benefactors expressed their thanks for offering an avenue. Michaels said some voice mail messages said it this way: “You helped me share hope.”

Religion, Pages 9 on 11/21/2009

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