“Camp Courageous is a year-round, recreational respite care facility for individuals with special needs. The camp is run on donations and is number one donation and number one fundraiser is the Manchester Garage Sale. It started back in 1976 and has grown just like the camp has grown over the years, and now with this donation of this beautiful building by the Norby family, it just opens up a lot more opportunities for the camp and for the future.
A number of years ago we were looking at changing the camp over from standard lighting to LED lighting in order to save a lot of money. We received word we were one of the top 5 users of electricity in the Maquoketa Valley. I don’t know if that is something we are too proud of and we were meeting with Ren from Sitler’s and completely redid the whole camp switching 3000 fixtures, going from the old style to all LEDs. We have saved lots and lots of money as a result of that.
Then for the fun of it, we contacted them again and said ‘We had this building donated, would you folks have any interest in helping us out with the electricity because it uses a lot of electricity.’ They said they would be more than happy to. Jason and the gang got behind it and Sitler’s donated all of the products, I mean thousands and thousands of dollars worth of fixtures and then all of the labor is Sitler’s and their friends. You can have a great company, but if you don’t have great people you don’t have very much.
The beauty of Sitler’s is that they have really good products and things like that but they have great people. Like any business, they are out there selling their products, exceptionally good products, but at the same time, they are very big into giving back.
This is just an example of one of the many projects they get behind. Me personally, I want to do business with people like that, that see the total picture, and that it’s not just a one way street about us and making a profit, it’s about giving back too. That’s the type of organization I would want to work for and also the type of organization I want to buy from too.”
Charles Becker, Camp Courageous CEO