Community service is part of Mazda store's workday

Employees of Capitol Mazda celebrate a volunteering award the store received from Mazda's philanthropy program.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Some people enjoy coaching youth soccer teams. Others prefer to volunteer at a soup kitchen or with Toys for Tots.

No matter the task at hand, it fits neatly into the schedule at Capitol Mazda, which logged twice as many employee volunteer hours as any other Mazda dealership in 2014, thanks to its policy of accommodating community service as part of the workday.

"My rule is: You're never allowed to miss a kid's soccer game," said Nick Corini, general manager of the store. "I tell my employees they have to go. That carries over to what we do with charity. People know they have the flexibility to go serve at a soup kitchen or whatever it is they want to do."

Corini staffs his store for flexible hours. Employees often arrive to open the store at 9 a.m. on weekdays, for example, leave in the afternoon to volunteer for a charity or coach a team and return at night to close the store at 9 p.m.

'What we live for'

Last holiday season, the dealership ran a toy drive, collecting $10,000 in gifts and delivering them to children during a charity breakfast with Santa Claus. This holiday season the store is going a step further, giving employees an extra day of paid leave to engage in the community service activity of their choosing.

In total, Capitol Mazda employees recorded 3,300 hours of volunteer work in 2014, equivalent to almost 50 hours per employee. That earned Capitol Mazda a surprise award earlier this year under Mazda's philanthropy program, Mazda Drive for Good.

"Mazda called it charity work," Corini said, "but it's just what we live for. This is a place where people don't live to work. We work to live."

That's not to say business moves slowly at Capitol Mazda.

The dealership sold 1,352 new Mazdas through September, put-ting the store on pace to sell about 1,900 for the year. Corini expects the store to crack the brand's top 10 dealerships nationally in terms of volume, and perhaps the top five.

Capitol Mazda's parent company, Del Grande Dealer Group, owns 14 dealerships; brands include Ford, Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru and Volkswagen. Del Grande ranks No. 52 on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., selling a total of 16,518 new cars in 2014.

The group's charity program, Del Grande Dealer Group Does Good, or DGDGDG, has given more than $300,000 to charity since 2012. President Shaun Del Grande said the group embraces its brands' service efforts, such as Mazda Drive for Good, Hyundai Hope on Wheels and Subaru's Share the Love.

"When the OEMs do this sort of thing, it's easy for us to get behind it," Del Grande said.

Sustained campaign

Mazda, seeking to make social consciousness one of the pillars of its brand, is pushing dealers to be more like Capitol Mazda. Robert Davis, senior vice president of U.S. operations at Mazda, visited the store this year to deliver its 2014 volunteering award.

Mazda has found that the service focus is good for business.

On surveys in past years, customers reported greater faith in the Mazda brand during the holidays, when the company was running Mazda Drive for Good campaigns, Russell Wager, vice president of U.S. marketing at Mazda North American Operations, said in an interview. In the spring, when Mazda redid those surveys, the trust score had dipped back down.

"That happened two years in a row," Wager said, "and the only thing that changed was Mazda Drive for Good."

Mazda now plans to advertise the Mazda Drive for Good campaign on a quarterly basis.

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