Businesses get chance to flex their muscles

Attention, local business people: Take off your suits and pick up your dodge balls. The Spokane Corporate Games are coming to town.

Next month, a nonprofit organization will host Spokane’s first business Olympics, a series of mostly athletic games that hope to raise money for Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital.

The concept of forming teams at area businesses or other organizations and having them compete against each other for charity is not new. Charitable Corporate Games, the Vancouver, Wash.-based nonprofit organizing the Spokane games, is modeling the September activities here after similar events in cities around the nation, including one in Kansas City, Kan., that draws as many as 30,000 participants.

Entry fees from the events — which include dodge ball, laser tag, billiards, a scavenger hunt, bowling, poker, a trivia challenge and miniature golf — will be combined with proceeds from an auction and donated to the children’s hospital foundation.

Mark Dominguez, president of Spokane Corporate Games, whose parent organization is Charitable Corporate Games, said participants elsewhere have reported the games improve employee morale and foster company pride. Also, organizers unexpectedly have found that small companies take part so their employees can hob-nob with people from larger companies, Dominguez said.

“When everybody’s throwing a red dodge ball at each other, it takes you back to childhood,” Dominguez said. “And lots of opportunities kind of spring from that, I guess.”

The nonprofit’s first effort in Portland earlier this summer drew only 500 people from 12 businesses and other organizations and lost about $2,000, yielding no money for area nonprofits, Spokane Corporate Games Director of Operations Josh Chandler wrote in an e-mail.

But organizers remain hopeful they can attract 1,000 to 2,000 people to participate in Spokane’s games and generate money for the hospital.

Before Portland’s games in May, organizers spent most of their time developing their first event and little time marketing it to businesses, Dominguez said. Some businesses have since contacted the group and expressed interest in next year’s games, he said.

This time around, organizers have added an auction in which all of the money will go toward the hospital, and they have contacted area business by phone, fax, postcard and e-mail, Dominguez said.

As of Thursday, eight local businesses have signed up to participate in the Spokane games, and 10 others have verbally committed to participate while they form teams, wrote Chandler.

Entry fees are $150 for a team event and $65 for individual events. The registration deadline is Sept. 1 and events will be held at different venues from Sept. 15-30. A closing ceremony and the silent auction will take place on Oct. 7.

Spokane Corporate Games and its Portland counterpart, Portland Corporate Games, are registered as for-profit enterprises in Washington and Oregon. Chandler said the parent organization, Charitable Corporate Games, is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that operates both entities.

Participants amass points and the winning organization’s name will be engraved on the Corporate Cup, which the winner gets to hold for a year.

One of those businesses, Shilo Inn Hotel and Restaurant, will set up several teams to compete in laser tag, the scavenger hunt and possibly paintball, General Manager Gus Wallis said.

“We are going to probably have at least half of our employees participate, so anywhere from 25 to 30 people,” he said. “We’re getting geared up for this one. We’re going to have a ball.”