Originally posted on Franchising.com 

When Ginamarie Soto decided to open an Urban Air Adventure Park in Jackson, Mississippi, she was well aware of the issues confronting the city. Nearly a fourth of the residents live in poverty. Crime has been a persistent hot-button topic. About a third of the state’s homeless population is located in the Jackson metro area.

Still, Soto was undaunted.

“I put $5 million into that location,” she says. “After I signed the lease, I knew that, as a business owner, I was going to make waves.” 

Soto planned to use her voice to make a difference. After opening the Urban Air Adventure Park in early 2024, she turned her attention to the unhoused people who camped out on the backside of the property. She didn’t want them rounded up and deposited elsewhere; she wanted the city and other agencies to help them.

“I brought them food instead of having them jumping into my garbage all the time and finding food. I had the city pay attention. I said, ‘Hey, I’m a business owner. I have the homeless who are behind me in my dumpster every day, trying to find food. I can give them food, but you might need to step up the services,’” she says.

Soto knew that homelessness was a complex problem, but the lack of easy answers didn’t mean that nothing should be done. Her status as a new investor in the city carried clout with local leaders when she campaigned for more services for people who didn’t have homes.

“To me, it’s important that you raise some noise if something’s not right,” she says.

Soto is among the many franchise operators who want to be good business owners and good neighbors. Around the country, multi-unit franchisees sponsor school teams and community events, organize food drives, lead disaster relief efforts, give financial support to local shelters and other nonprofits, create scholarships, donate unsold goods, serve on boards, and allow time off to employees who volunteer. Like Soto, they push for solutions to problems plaguing their communities.

Such worthwhile endeavors make good business sense. Consumers notice good deeds, and strengthening the bonds in local communities helps operators and brands build customer loyalty. In addition, staying involved makes it less likely that customers will question a franchise operator’s motives, Soto says.

“Business owners can get a tax break if they donate to a nonprofit, but it has to be about more than that,” she says. “I really do feel like, as a responsible owner, you really have to put yourself into the community and find something you’re passionate about.”

Anyone can serve

Before Soto entered the franchising world, she worked in the oil fields of Texas. She owned a company that operated vacuum and hydrovac trucks. She sold that company when she and her husband decided to start a family. Soto, who majored in nonprofit administration at Arizona State University, began looking around for another business opportunity. She settled on The Little Gym, calling it the perfect “mom business.”

In January 2020, she opened a location in Midland, Texas, with 600 kids as patrons. Then, 68 days later, the Covid pandemic shut the business down. Parents had nowhere to go. Some children were undergoing physical therapy and needed to stay physically active, but they had no space for rehab.

It didn’t take long for Soto to decide she needed to make her facility and services available again—at no charge.

“I had a business that I was going to lose. I was going to go bankrupt. But at least I was going to open my doors, so physical therapists had a place to come work with kids, so that moms had daycare. Moms who were pregnant still had to go to the doctor’s appointments, and they couldn’t bring their other kids to the doctor’s office,” she says.

Soto didn’t go bankrupt. The moms in her community decided they wouldn’t let that happen after Soto had extended herself.

“They would pay me even though I wasn’t charging. They literally would be like, ‘No, no. Take this and keep your doors open.’ I learned through Covid that if I was there for my community, they were going to pay me back. I get emotional thinking about it because it was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. But it was so obvious that this community needed us. And I still get praise nearly five years later. Moms will come up to me and say, ‘Thank God you opened up your gym during Covid.’”

Since then, Soto has opened another The Little Gym location, three Urban Air Adventure Park units, including the one in Jackson, and an XP League, a gaming league located inside the Midland Urban Air.

As with other Urban Air Adventure Parks, her locations reserve certain hours for sensory-friendly play for children with autism and other special needs. She works closely with the Boys & Girls Club of Midland and invites kids who participate in YMCA sporting events to come to the trampoline park for free after games.

“I just feel like everyone can be great because anyone can serve. That’s what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said,” Soto says. “I lived by that. It’s such an important thing. That’s how I kind of see my businesses.”