World Wide First Launches in the Waikato

Halo™Biz’s search to find New Zealand’s favourite charities started in the Waikato – home of www.halobiz.co.nz. The hunt for Waikato’s Favourite Charity Competition was launched on Saturday 16 July 2011.

The online competition has been designed as a fun way for Members of the Halo™Biz Network to benefit as well as introduce the public to HaloBiz. This Favourite Charity Competition, as well as a few others it has up its sleeve, will be repeated in every area halobiz.co.nz launches into.
 

HaloBiz is the new online business directory with a couple of major differences to anything else on the market. As far as General Manager, Julie South, believes, it’s the first of its kind in the world.

With the catchphrase of “www.halobiz.co.nz - search here first - let your heart do the talking” Halo™Biz is all about polishing the halos of its Network Members. South’s research revealed kiwis want to support local businesses that support local community organisations (schools, sports groups, churches and charities) but there was no one portal containing all this information. “Trying to find out who supported what wasn’t always easy” she said.

Surprisingly, only approximately 34% of kiwi businesses have websites and those that do have one, don’t always detail their community involvement on it. For example, it’s difficult to find out which small businesses support which school unless you have a printed copy of the school’s newsletter in your hands, or went to the school’s website and downloaded a huge file. “In many cases, people put it into the ‘too hard’ basket simply because of the time involved” says South “all we’ve done is made it easier for both the businesses and community organisations to show how connected they are and for the public to see that connectivity”.

Search results at halobiz.co.nz detail the usual contact information but Halo™Biz has gone quite a few steps further and also details the community organisation(s) each advertising business member supports. In addition, it’s created the unique Halo™Biz way of searching which is to search by the community organisations to discover which local businesses support them. Understandably, the team at Halo™Biz is very excited about this exclusive feature because no other search directory functions this way.

As well as these two major search & result differences, Halo™Biz goes another huge, unique, leap further and gives at least 70% of all its advertising income to the community organisation(s) of the advertiser’s choice. “No other online business directory does this either” states South.

The Waikato’s Favourite Charity Competition runs for four weeks, finishing 14 August. Any registered Charitable Trust can enter at any time until it closes. The charity with the most votes wins $500 cash plus goes into the Halo™Biz Network Members’ Lucky Dip Prize Draw to have a chance at winning another $500 cash.

Any Waikato-based Charitable Trust can participate simply by becoming a member of the Halo™Biz Network. To receive a Community Organisation Information Pack send full postal and email contact details to community@halobiz.co.nz.

Voting is online only and open at http://www.halobiz.co.nz/profile/competitions