Fini Concierge Holiday Food Drive

During the next 6 weeks, highlights of the holiday season often include festive times with family, large group meals, gift giving, fun parties and travel. It is also an important time of year for us to remember those within our communities that may need extra help providing for their families and would greatly benefit from our generosity.

"In Eastern Massachusetts:

320,000 people or 7% of the population uses emergency food programs annually.

57% of the people served have to choose between food and rent, medicine, or heat."

This year Fini Concierge is hosting a dry and canned food drive and we are inviting the Fini Concierge community to join our efforts.

Individual Contributions:
Leave us a bag of canned or dry goods and we'll pick it up at no cost to you to add to our donations.

Company Participation:
Get your workplace involved - we know that the end of the year is a busy time for most workplaces and designating someone to organize a charity campaign can be difficult. Fini Concierge will do all of the organizing for you, all you need to do is promote the food drive to your team. Our staff will provide a collection bin and pick up donations as needed. We'll even provide a flyer that you can email and post with information on how to donate.

Our goal is to make giving easy for you and your companies this year - and together we believe that we can make a really big impact on our local communities. All participating individuals and companies will be named when donations are made.

Fini Concierge will be donating food collected to the follow organizations benefiting Greater Boston and Cape Cod:

Greater Boston Food Bank

“The GBFB is the largest hunger-relief organization in New England with a mission to help end hunger in eastern Massachusetts. Each year the Food Bank distributes more than 34 million pounds of food and grocery products to nearly 600 member hunger-relief agencies”. Please click on the following link for more information: The Greater Boston Food Bank

Lower Cape Outreach Council

The Lower Cape Outreach Council “provides emergency assistance of food clothing and financial support to individuals and families in Brewster, Chatham, Eastham, Harwich, Orleans, Provincetown, Truro and Wellfleet”. The LCOC has opened food pantries in each of the towns they serve. Please click on the following link for more information: The Lower Cape Outreach Council

Preferred Items for Food Donation

• Pasta/Tomato Sauce

• Soups and other canned goods

• Coffee

• Condiments

• Cereals/Rice and other boxed goods

• Turkey's for Thanksgiving

• Toilet Paper, Hand Soaps, Toothpaste, Liquid Laundry Soap

Please contact us to let us know how you would like to get involved. In advance, we appreciate your support of our holiday food drive!

Chantal, Eddie, Marissa and Allison

The Fini Concierge Team

Organizational Strategy #3

Get rid of stuff. Set a time frame that you are comfortable with -- 6 months or 1 year. If you haven't used or touched an item in this time frame, put it in the to be donated or to be junked pile. Ask Fini Concierge to help you by picking up clothes, books, toys or anything else accumulating in your space and we will drop it off to Goodwill or other non-profits that have a need for these items.

Did you find this strategy helpful? What areas are you having the most trouble with? Let us know and we can work with you on your specific needs. Also, please share your own favorite organizational strategies with us or let us know if you have questions about how to make any of our tips work for you.

Organizational Strategy #2

Never touch a piece of paper more than once (in some cases this may be impossible but if you practice this as much as possible you will end up saving yourself a lot of time and may naturally start to avoid procrastinating). Check off the to-do item that the piece of paper provokes -- whether that means making a phone call, sending an email, or putting it away in a file to be saved.

Did you find this strategy helpful? What areas are you having the most trouble with? Let us know and we can work with you on your specific needs. Also, please share your own favorite organizational strategies with us or let us know if you have questions about how to make any of our tips work for you.

Organizational Strategies

Sometimes just thinking about getting organized is overwhelming. What do you start with first? Computer files? Photographs? Closets? Your office? There are so many places to start and so many steps to take -- but even taking that one step can help tremendously. There are many strategies to use to get organized. Some we've heard along the way and many we have used ourselves. In the upcoming months we will be sharing our tips with you. Here is the first one:

Always keep daily items in the same place. Keys, wallets, sunglasses and anything else you take with you every day. Use a bowl or a valet that sits near your door. By creating a routine for these easy to lose items you will lose them less often and will save yourself time. Being more organized at the start of your day will lead you to a more productive day with less stress.

Did you find this strategy helpful? What areas are you having the most trouble with? Let us know and we can work with you on your specific needs. Also, please share your own favorite organizational strategies with us or let us know if you have questions about how to make any of our tips work for you.

Second Home Owners on the Cape

For the second home owners on the Cape the fall is not peak season to visit or rent, so instead use this time to your advantage to spruce things up at your home or vacation rental. It’s definitely time to “clean house,” whether it’s by finding a new housekeeper or tending to a project you’ve been putting off. The easiest way to start is to go room by room making a list of what needs fixing. Let us know if you need or want ideas, assistance or referrals.

As Summer Comes to a Close

As summer comes to a close, it’s time to put your swimsuit away and switch into another gear. When you think of Cape Cod you think of the beach and sun, but there are plenty of activities to do in the fall. Which in many opinions is the best time to visit the cape.

The Cape is full of fall festivals and art and craft fairs. The Harwich Cranberry Festival in September kicks off the harvest of the famous cranberry bogs, and the Oyster Festival in Wellfleet is one of the largest in the area. Provincetown also hosts many fall Arts festivals that welcomes local artists and musicians from all over the Cape.

It may be a little cooler, but you can still enjoy some of the same activities you enjoy during the summer. Bike trails, nature walks, sand dunes, and unforgettable sunsets are even more beautiful with the crisp fall air. Most restaurants and shops stay open during the off-season and offer some great discounts. And here’s a little secret: the public beaches are free and welcome dogs after Labor Day so dust off Busters leash!

Social Networking

Fini Concierge can now be found on both Facebook and Twitter! Like many other small businesses Fini has decided to jump onto the social networking train. But everyday, as we post new info and tweets we find ourselves asking: does business actually get done on these sites and can they actually help our business grow?

Apparently, each day 5 to 10 thousand new people join Twitter and current estimates of total users top out around 5 million. Now that’s a lot of potential To Do lists, right? We know they won’t all become clients, but it definitely is a lot of exposure. With every tweet our brand grows, and with every re-tweet Fini’s info is spread to new places that we might not have otherwise reached. This exposure also gets us thinking: should we put together a Twitter marketing plan (I have been told that there are tools to help create one) and schedule a certain number of tweets a day?

Being green to the Twitter “phenom” we are realizing there is much to be learned. Some of the best advice I have read is to find a peer in your industry and “follow” them and then check out who they are “following”...sure enough you will find a Who’s Who list that you must “follow.”

As we become more Twitter savvy by tweeting, re-tweeting, following, etc., our list of “followers” continues to grow day by day, and we begin to realize the full potential of this PR tool. We are betting that these new “followers” would not have stumbled across our info and website without the aid of Twitter. Therefore, Fini Concierge IS getting a lot of business done and we sure are growing! Consider It Done!