Christmas Cash 2007 promotion starting Oct. 15

Interest generated each year by the Hillsboro Business Associations’ Christmas Cash campaign is enough to make any snowman melt.
Or so a person would think.
We hope not, say HBA members, who this year have enlisted the help of snowmen to help promote the annual holiday campaign that means thousands of dollars in revenue to member businesses every year.
Last year, for instance, more than $161,000 was spent with HBA member businesses.
It was a record year, one of many recently.
Records have been set every year for the last five years, according to Neil Nelson, HBA president.
Snowmen, in fact, were part of the team selling the Christmas Cash campaign two years ago. Santa’s elves took over the job single-handedly last year.
Santa’s reindeer were the front men selling the promotion one year.
The season’s snowmen have taken over the reins this year. The 2007 Christmas Cash promotion starts Monday (Oct. 15).
The selling of Hillsboro’s hugely-successful Christmas Cash campaign remains a challenge, despite the recent record-setting years.
“We seemed to hit a plateau of around $75,000 around 1999 and 2000,” said Nelson. “We said then, ‘This is good,’”
Then it literally took off, Nelson explains. But there are no guarantees, he added.
“We’ve become a little more aggressive in selling the concept of the interest-free loans.”
In selling the business community and the Christmas Cash campaign, Nelson said, we were, in fact, selling the Hillsboro community as a whole, “telling everyone how the business generated at Christmas impacted the community in a positive way.”
It’s the old adage, said Nelson. “What’s good for the business community is good for the entire community.”
The old trickle down theory works here, too, said Nelson.
“Every dollar spent in a community turns over seven times, like they say. Well, it’s the same here, in Hillsboro, as in any community.”
Our businesses have payrolls to meet, improvements to make in their stores, overhead costs that never go away and payments to meet, just like everyone else, Nelson points out.
You have to ask the question: “If Hillsboro didn’t have the Christmas Cash promotion, what part of the $161,975 spent last year before Christmas would not have been spent here?”
The answer, Nelson is convinced, is a sizable portion.
“Trust us, when we say, the business community values the Christmas Cash campaign as much as the borrowers of the interest-free loans.”
The fact that the campaign is on a record-setting track proves that residents of the community are taking advantage of the loan program coordinated each year by the Hillsboro Business Association and made possible by Hillsboro’s banking community.
“Obviously, without the banks’ participation this would never fly,” said Nelson.
“Our banks deserve much of the credit for the program’s success.”
The Hillsboro Economic Development’s involvement is crucial to the success of the campaign, as well, added the HBA president.
HEDC gives each borrower 10 percent of their respective loan in basically free money, Nelson explains.
Sure, you have to pay back the principal on the loan, remember there’s no interest to pay, Nelson continues, but the “10 percent you get from HEDC is yours free and clear.”
Pennies from heaven.
Rather, Dollars from HEDC, in the form of Christmas Cash, Nelson tells.
“But it all spends the same in our HBA stores.”
Much of the holiday cash is spent on home projects, appliances for the home and on bills, HBA members understand.
Which is all good and well, they say.
“But people are still buying groceries, gas and prescriptions with the Christmas Cash. It works for subscriptions to the Banner, too,” hints Nelson.
Christmas Cash last year heated, carpeted and painted homes.
It purchased wine for the holidays.
All around, according to Nelson, “it lifted spirits.”
What better way to say Merry Christmas than with HBA’s Christmas Cash? he asks. Add HEDC’s Christmas bonus and it’s an offer you can’t refuse.
Said Nelson: “In part, it’s the merchants’ way of saying Merry Christmas to the Hillsboro community.”