The real estate professionals at RE/MAX Elite in Hinsdale, Ill., are doing their part to spread some cheer this holiday season. The brokerage, located at 28 W. Hinsdale Ave., will hold a toy drive on Nov. 26 to benefit Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
The toy drive will take place from 4 to 8 p.m. in conjunction with the Village of Hinsdale’s annual downtown Christmas Walk. During the walk, RE/MAX Elite agents and administrative personnel will pass out Christmas cookies and hot chocolate to those who visit the office.
Ads placed in the local paper are encouraging all visitors to bring an unwrapped toy or a monetary donation, and those who do will be entered in a raffle to win a holiday gift basket. RE/MAX Elite will send all toys and 100 percent of all cash donations to the hospital.
“We thought that participating in the Christmas Walk and holding our own toy drive was an important thing to do,” says Wendy Freer, administrator with RE/MAX Elite. “It gives everyone in our community an opportunity to brighten the holiday season for hospitalized children. It’s easy to visualize the smiles that these toys will generate when they are distributed.”
This isn’t the first time that RE/MAX Elite has worked to help Children’s Memorial. Like many RE/MAX Northern Illinois real estate offices, it holds fund-raising drives each year for the Children’s Miracle Network (CMN), a non-profit agency that raises funds for more than 170 children’s hospitals across the country, including Children’s Memorial in Chicago.
Last year, RE/MAX Elite was one of 44 RE/MAX offices in northern Illinois named as a CMN Miracle Office. It was the third consecutive year in which RE/MAX Elite received that honor. To qualify, each agent in the office must donate to CMN during the calendar year. RE/MAX Northern Illinois has provided financial support to CMN for more than 17 years, raising in excess of $2.1 million during this time.
By participating in the Hinsdale Christmas Walk, RE/MAX Elite is also introducing itself as a member of the downtown Hinsdale business district. The brokerage moved from another location in Hinsdale to its new downtown address in September.
“This is proving to be an outstanding location for us,” Freer says. “We’ve already seen the benefits of being downtown, including more walk-in visitors.”