Bane-Welker Equipment's 2022 toy drive was a major success. The entire Bane-Welker complex with nine stores in Indiana and six stores in Ohio collected 5,556 toys for children in their communities. This is a significant increase from the 1,800 collected last year.

It was a shared labor of love. Everyone from friends to employees and customers were in the spirit.

"This was such a rewarding project for everyone," said Jason Bane, president of Bane-Welker Equipment. "We had so much community support this year. And for the second year in a row, we even had customers and employees use their Red Zone Rewards points to buy more toys for the children."

This type of project aligns well with the Bane-Welker mission of making a positive impact on the communities it serves. The Toys for Tots project was initiated by Bane-Welker employee Justin Butler, a former Marine, who benefitted from the program himself as a child.

"My passion for helping grew from when I was a child and once received toys from this same program," said Butler. "It meant a lot to me then, and I wanted to help make a difference in children's lives now. I feel proud to be a part of a company who makes time for such important community efforts and am thrilled with the amount of donations we received. I can just imagine the look on the kids' faces when they opened those toys."

Bane-Welker was committed to collecting as many toys as possible this year and allocated a portion of their advertising dollars.

"We designated funds for radio and print and pushed this out on social media to get the word out to a more extensive audience," said Karl Locascio, marketing director. "We wanted to make a big impact this year and we couldn't be prouder of our customers, friends, employees and families for how they supported this effort."

The toys are distributed throughout the local communities and local FFA chapters helped with the effort. The Georgetown, Ohio, Bane-Welker location collected the most toys with 1,581 total donations. Pendleton, Ind., was second with 1,114 donations.

For more information, visit Bane-Welker.com and toysfortots.org.

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