Southcentre and Kingsway, sister properties about three hours apart in Alberta, pride themselves on their community service. “It’s kind of built into our DNA,” said Bo Tarasenko, marketing manager at Oxford, which owns both malls. “The top item of our brand pyramid is building community, so just by [hosting community initiatives], we kind of achieve our marketing goals.”

In February 2022, during the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, thousands of families from Ukraine fled to Alberta. More than 9% of Albertans identify as Ukrainian, more than double Canada’s average, and the marketing team at Southcentre and Kingsway knew they had to do something meaningful to help the refugees feel supported. Tarasenko explained: “Building community and making the everyday memorable are the essence of Kingsway and Southcentre brand values.” The marketing team learned from contacts in the Ukrainian community about pysanky, or Easter eggs. Giant versions traditionally appear in city squares in Ukraine to support art and build community during the Easter season, but “with the war going on, the tradition would not be happening,” Tarasenko said. “We thought these familiar sights would provide comfort” for all these newcomers in a strange place.

The team planned to engage artists to paint six-foot eggs on-site at each mall and then to auction them off to aid charities that provide social services for the Ukrainian community. It was hard to know exactly what to expect from engagement — this was a new sort of initiative for the team, explained Tarasenko — so the team put what it thought were reasonable expectations in place: It hoped to raise $12,000 from the auctions, generate 5 million unpaid media impressions, boost traffic by 10% and achieve a return on investment of 250%, including unpaid media, in-kind donations and auction funds, Tarasenko said.

Contributing to the community isn’t just a noble pursuit; it’s also smart business. In today’s values-driven landscape, people increasingly choose stores and centers that make them feel good about shopping there. According to an ICSC survey of 1,006 U.S. consumers conducted in January 2023, 59% will be more aware of company/brand values and try to buy more from those businesses they feel are socially and/or environmentally responsible. “There’s a feeling of closeness and connection when people support a mission together,” said Josh Jacobson, CEO of Next Stage, a consulting company that helps nonprofits and businesses develop partnerships and collaborations.

Proving Jacobson’s statement, Kingsway and Southcentre vastly surpassed their goals. Alongside the $11,207 raised by the pysanky auction, an additional $115,000 poured in to support Ukrainian refugees. The malls also generated 17.4 million unpaid media impressions, surpassing the objective by 248%. Moreover, the campaign drove a 32% surge in traffic at Kingsway and 47% at Southcentre. It had aimed for a 250% ROI and reached 1,530%.

“At the end of the day, we’re a mall. We market in space,” said Tarasenko. Community service projects are great opportunity to entice people to physical spaces. Alignment with well-known community partners, such as Ukrainian support services, not only engages a property’s existing audience but also can draw in new customers. Such partnerships and service opportunities provide “good visibility if you are trying to stand out and differentiate yourself,” Jacobson added.

For Peterson Cos., the most meaningful community service projects transcend one-time efforts and stem from in-depth conversations with nonprofits that share its core values. “The partnerships we’ve curated and nurtured over the years are so meaningful to my properties, to the partners and to me personally,” said Peterson regional marketing director Laurie Yankowski, who oversees Gaithersburg, Maryland’s open-air shopping, dining and entertainment destination Rio. “Creating meaningful partnerships is really at the core of what we do,” she said. “To utilize our property in a way that helps their goals and also enriches the experience of [customers] on our property checks all the personal and professional boxes.”

Peterson seeks out entities that are actively contributing positively to the local community. “We aren’t merely pursuing partnerships in name alone,” Yankowski explained. One longstanding Rio partner is Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center. They’ve partnered on awareness campaigns from breast cancer to cardiovascular health and at the end of 2022 were talking about the next year. Mental health immediately rose to the top of their list. “Coming out of COVID, mental health was even more at the forefront for everybody,” Yankowski said. Indeed, ICSC’s The Rise of the Gen Z Consumer report found that 53% of Gen Zers are interested in supporting brands that prioritize mental health.

There is a spot at Rio that had served Yankowski’s own mental health. Along a lakeside trail, tucked away from the shops is a tree-lined enclave she always referred to it as “the road less traveled.” There, the partners envisioned a serene escape for those in the Rio community to pause, unwind, and simply breathe. “It’s a sanctuary from the hustle and bustle,” she explained. The partners envisioned art swaying with the wind, cozy seating and a mindfulness/meditation playlist accessible via a QR code and curated by Adventist HealthCare behavioral health professionals.

They unveiled the Serenity Spot on May 20, aligning with the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Montgomery County’s community walk at Rio. The timing aimed to raise awareness for NAMI’s cause and to generate funds to support its free mental health programs.

The Serenity Spot has been open for six months, though Peterson doesn’t have data on how much it’s used. “Typically, measurements are something marketers really hang their hat on, but for something like this, we’re not driving tons of people on one day to engage so a measurement for us is to hear from our partners how rewarding this is for them and to see the reactions from our customers.”

For Peterson vice president of marketing Joanna Rothermel, the potential impact is measured by the property’s traffic. “We have a little over 7 million visits each year at Rio,” she said. “We felt like we could make an impact from a mental health awareness standpoint, knowing the visitors that we get through the center and the fact that mental health is such an important issue.” Reach is also the reason Peterson and other open-air centers use their properties to raise awareness of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. The initial seven landlords kicked off their signage initiative in the fall hoping to reach as many as 251 million people.

Even when engagement isn’t or can’t be measured, there are tangible effects of serving the community. “You want to get to people’s heads, but you also want to get to their hearts,” said NewMark Merrill Cos. president and CEO Sandy Sigal. “We look at the sentiment of our customer and say: ‘Are the people happy when they’re here? How do they rate their experience?’ The more satisfied they are, the more frequent they come. We see it in the data, and it makes sense. You go to places that make you feel good. So yeah, it’s good business.”

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A culture of giving back also makes it easier to recruit and retain talent. Research from America’s Charities found that 71% of employees say it’s imperative or very important to work where the culture supports giving and volunteering. “Employees don’t really want [giving back] to be a one-time-a-year experience but something that they can live with in the walls of your company,” Jacobson said.

Community engagement attracts the kinds of people who share your values, too, said Sigal. “There are plenty of property managers and there’s a lot of a lot of a lot of leasing people and a lot of other marketing people who don’t want to go through all this aggravation” of putting on community service events,” he said. Those are not the people Sigal, a philanthropist at heart, wants at his company. Indeed, Sigal’s commitment to giving back stems from the first money he ever made. He didn’t grow up with a lot of money, he said, and the owner of a doughnut shop near his house would give him day-old doughnuts and told him he could take them to school and sell them to his classmates.

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All these campaigns help the community, but they’re becoming necessary for a business’ survival, too. “Humans are neurologically hardwired to chase their values,” said David Allison, founder of Valuegraphics, which studies why people shop. Those that really cater to people’s values will see larger returns on investments, he said. “People will be 40% more engaged with things that align with their values,” he said of his company’s research findings, and companies and brands prioritizing altruism stand tall among people’s fundamental values.