Good Neighbor: Building businesses and serving people in need

When Ginamarie Soto decided to open an Urban Air Adventure Park in Jackson, Mississippi, she was well aware of the issues confronting the city. Nearly a fourth of the residents live in poverty. Crime has been a persistent hot-button topic. About a third of the state’s homeless population is located in the Jackson metro area.

Still, Soto was undaunted.

“I put $5 million into that location,” she says. “After I signed the lease, I knew that, as a business owner, I was going to make waves.” 

Soto planned to use her voice to make a difference. After opening the Urban Air Adventure Park in early 2024, she turned her attention to the unhoused people who camped out on the backside of the property. She didn’t want them rounded up and deposited elsewhere; she wanted the city and other agencies to help them.

“I brought them food instead of having them jumping into my garbage all the time and finding food. I had the city pay attention. I said, ‘Hey, I’m a business owner. I have the homeless who are behind me in my dumpster every day, trying to find food. I can give them food, but you might need to step up the services,’” she says.

Soto knew that homelessness was a complex problem, but the lack of easy answers didn’t mean that nothing should be done. Her status as a new investor in the city carried clout with local leaders when she campaigned for more services for people who didn’t have homes.

“To me, it’s important that you raise some noise if something’s not right,” she says.

Soto is among the many franchise operators who want to be good business owners and good neighbors. Around the country, multi-unit franchisees sponsor school teams and community events, organize food drives, lead disaster relief efforts, give financial support to local shelters and other nonprofits, create scholarships, donate unsold goods, serve on boards, and allow time off to employees who volunteer. Like Soto, they push for solutions to problems plaguing their communities.

Such worthwhile endeavors make good business sense. Consumers notice good deeds, and strengthening the bonds in local communities helps operators and brands build customer loyalty. In addition, staying involved makes it less likely that customers will question a franchise operator’s motives, Soto says.

“Business owners can get a tax break if they donate to a nonprofit, but it has to be about more than that,” she says. “I really do feel like, as a responsible owner, you really have to put yourself into the community and find something you’re passionate about.”

Anyone can serve

Before Soto entered the franchising world, she worked in the oil fields of Texas. She owned a company that operated vacuum and hydrovac trucks. She sold that company when she and her husband decided to start a family. Soto, who majored in nonprofit administration at Arizona State University, began looking around for another business opportunity. She settled on The Little Gym, calling it the perfect “mom business.”

In January 2020, she opened a location in Midland, Texas, with 600 kids as patrons. Then, 68 days later, the Covid pandemic shut the business down. Parents had nowhere to go. Some children were undergoing physical therapy and needed to stay physically active, but they had no space for rehab.

It didn’t take long for Soto to decide she needed to make her facility and services available again—at no charge.

“I had a business that I was going to lose. I was going to go bankrupt. But at least I was going to open my doors, so physical therapists had a place to come work with kids, so that moms had daycare. Moms who were pregnant still had to go to the doctor’s appointments, and they couldn’t bring their other kids to the doctor’s office,” she says.

Soto didn’t go bankrupt. The moms in her community decided they wouldn’t let that happen after Soto had extended herself.

“They would pay me even though I wasn’t charging. They literally would be like, ‘No, no. Take this and keep your doors open.’ I learned through Covid that if I was there for my community, they were going to pay me back. I get emotional thinking about it because it was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. But it was so obvious that this community needed us. And I still get praise nearly five years later. Moms will come up to me and say, ‘Thank God you opened up your gym during Covid.’”

Since then, Soto has opened another The Little Gym location, three Urban Air Adventure Park units, including the one in Jackson, and an XP League, a gaming league located inside the Midland Urban Air.

As with other Urban Air Adventure Parks, her locations reserve certain hours for sensory-friendly play for children with autism and other special needs. She works closely with the Boys & Girls Club of Midland and invites kids who participate in YMCA sporting events to come to the trampoline park for free after games.

“I just feel like everyone can be great because anyone can serve. That’s what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said,” Soto says. “I lived by that. It’s such an important thing. That’s how I kind of see my businesses.”

Embracing a cause

Hani Halloun owns more than 40 Tropical Smoothie Cafe locations in the Midwest. The brand partners with No Kid Hungry, an initiative that focuses on getting children the food they need. For the past two years, Halloun has been the top fundraiser in the system. In 2024, employees at his stores collected nearly $100,000 for the campaign.

“It’s a great cause,” Halloun says. “We just asked every customer to donate, but we gave them incentive. We gave them a free smoothie or another product. Not only were the customers donating; I was donating.”

His employees embraced the annual fundraising effort. “It showed in the numbers,” he says. “It’s always nice to give back to the community. It is very important. People like to see that. I love to see that myself. I feel like the community supports us, and we need to support the community.”

Halloun says he’s fortunate to be a part of a brand that values community involvement. Tropical Smoothie Cafe has partnered with Camp Sunshine since 2008. Franchisees raise money for the nonprofit, which offers free retreats for families with children facing life-threatening illnesses. “That’s very rewarding too,” Halloun says.

He plans to launch an initiative for military veterans but is still working out the details. He knows a little help can go a long way in people’s lives. The pandemic highlighted the impact franchisees can have on their communities when there’s a need.

“At the beginning of Covid, it was a tough time for people,” Halloun says. “We donated smoothies and food to hospital staff. We went to Walmart and gave it to the staff working there too. We went to nursing homes. And that was a beautiful thing to do.”

Generating goodwill

Karen and Libby Lossing, a mother-daughter pair, consider themselves lucky to be able to see and hear stories of the transformations they facilitate at the 18 Mathnasium locations the family owns. But it’s special when it’s a scholarship student who attends the sessions at no charge because the family can’t afford the cost of tutoring services.

They shared the story of a fourth grader whose mother lobbied until he got one of the scholarships. “He came with a good spirit. He just didn’t have a lot of skills,” Karen Lossing says. “It started out as remedial. He couldn’t do anything. Then, he just became just an absolute rock star. He’s probably two, three years ahead of grade level now. I look at it as, if we can keep him ahead of grade level, he’ll hopefully earn a college scholarship.”

Their learning centers in San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Dallas, and Cincinnati produce similar stories. The math-learning franchise provides instruction for students ranging from prekindergarten to high school. 

“We’ve seen younger kids who were just completely failing in math. In Colorado, we had some eighth graders performing on a third-grade level,” says Karen Lossing, a former teacher and school administrator. “After scholarships were given, they were able to gain two years of growth within six, seven months. And it was life changing to them because they’re not walking around counting on their fingers about to enter high school.”

She says that few things feel better than watching a former F-student skip into the center to excitedly show off the B they earned. 

The Lossings are a family of four, including Karen’s husband, Steve, and son, Evan. All share ownership of the Mathnasium units. Karen and Steve purchased the first one near San Diego in 2013 when Libby was in college. 

“Then I came to love it in my own right,” Libby Lossing says. “It’s really easy to love something when it’s very results oriented. Multiple times a day, every single day, there are just success stories and happy parents and happy kids, and you’re alleviating a lot of stress in the home whenever kids are seeing success in school and starting to feel smart and starting to develop a growth mindset.”

Libby Lossing is in charge of community outreach. The Lossings and the staff at their learning centers are active in schools, taking part in Math Nights, STEM Nights, and International Nights. They set up booths at career fairs and help students prepare for job interviews. They judge science fairs and provide tutoring for foster kids. On and on it goes.

“What started off one way has gone in many directions based on one organization hearing about us and then another one reaching out,” Karen Lossing says.

At their learning centers, roughly 5% of customers are on scholarships. The Lossings work with the school systems to find students in need, usually those who participate in the free or reduced-price lunch program. The family doesn’t shine spotlights on their scholarship students or the students who come to them from foster care. They want to protect their privacy.

“Everyone just assumes everyone is there under the same circumstances, all paying the same,” Karen Lossing says. “The last thing we want to do is have somebody know that another kid is on free or reduced-price lunch.”

But that doesn’t mean their outreach isn’t generating goodwill.

“Schools are a great referral source for us,” Libby Lossing says. “So maybe a teacher recommended their free and reduced-lunch students for a scholarship, but then they also know that there are other students of different means who also need tutoring and are able to pay.

“And, of course, a Google review is a Google review, and it’s not like there’s any asterisk saying that this isn’t a paying customer. A positive word about our business is great, no matter who it comes from.”

Investing time

No one has to sell Mark Mathias on the importance of community involvement. He grew up in Westchester County, New York, and that’s where he’s raising his family. That’s also where he opened his first Lightbridge Academy in Scarsdale in January 2023.

A second Lightbridge Academy, a franchise that focuses on early childhood education, is under construction six miles up the road in Valhalla. He hopes to start construction on a third in nearby Rockland County next year.

He wants to invest his money and his time in the community. He’s chairman of Scarsdale’s Advisory Council on Youth and on the board of directors of the Child Care Council of Westchester. He coaches Little League baseball as well as third-grade and kindergarten basketball. He’s on the Business Council of Westchester’s Rising Stars Leadership Council.

“It’s really important for me to be involved in the communities that we serve, not to just run the businesses,” he says. “I have personal connections to each one of the towns that we are opening businesses in.”

Even if he had opened his businesses somewhere he didn’t have personal connections, Mathias says he’d still gravitate toward community service. “It just feels natural to me to want to be involved in communities, to understand the neighbors and community members that we’re serving with our childcare centers,” he says.

One of the primary reasons Mathias chose to become a Lightbridge franchisee is because the brand shares his philosophy. “Lightbridge Academy has always done a fantastic job with their circle-of-care mentality,” he says. “Bringing together children, families, the teachers, the owners, and the community really does encapsulate how franchisees can get involved with communities and prioritize relationships.”

A business owner’s role can’t be summed up in dollars and cents.

“I feel like so many times there are different perspectives on what being a franchisee is and what it isn’t,” Mathias says. “Sometimes, franchisees come in thinking it’s just a cookie-cutter operation. But being involved with the communities that you serve is such an important part of being a franchisee. I think that’s overlooked a lot. It’s something that maybe I undervalued when I started. Now, I realize it’s really my primary role as a franchisee.”