Franchise owners who spend their days painting houses, cleaning windows, and fixing garage doors are, in growing numbers, also spending their weekends painting classrooms, packing backpacks, and building soapbox derby cars for charity. That mix of trade skills and community care did not happen by accident. It grew out of a nonprofit called Kids-Lift, the charitable arm of Premium Service Brands, which now links dozens of franchise owners across the country with schools and families who need help closing the gap on everyday basics. In a recent conversation with Franchise Brief, Vivi Nellen, Executive Director of Kids-Lift, walked through how a corporate side project became a network of franchise owners giving back, and why the model keeps finding new ways to grow.
A Corporate Passion Project Finds Its Champion
Nellen’s path to Kids-Lift began outside Premium Service Brands entirely. While working in events and community engagement at a tech company in Charlottesville, she launched a golf tournament fundraiser aimed at closing the digital divide for local kids, helping connect them with technology access and resources they otherwise would not have. A colleague connected her with Paul Flick, who founded Premium Service Brands and has long been committed to helping kids in and around Charlottesville. Flick signed on immediately as a sponsor, and over the following years, he became something closer to a friend as Nellen kept organizing fundraisers for kids in the region.
Along the way, she noticed Kids-Lift itself had lost some momentum since the pandemic. So, she asked Flick if she could help expand it. After some nudging from Nellen, Flick said yes and created a new role that would oversee Kids Lift alongside him and pave its path forward. Nellen has now led Kids Lift for three and a half years.
From a Quiet Corporate Program to a Growing Network
Kids-Lift traces back to around 2015, when Flick began talking about the idea with his wife. He had the resources to provide for his own kids, and he recognized that not every family has that same advantage. For years, the effort lived mostly inside Premium Service Brands’ Charlottesville headquarters, where employees packed snack backpacks and helped local kids with food insecurity and basic needs.
Nellen’s arrival changed the trajectory. Several franchise owners were already doing their own community work when she came on board, and she began connecting them formally to Kids-Lift and helping them find the right local partners. That early momentum has since grown into a program with franchise owners participating from Boston to Washington State. Nellen keeps a map at headquarters marking every location with a gold star, a visual reminder of how far a Charlottesville idea has traveled.
Flick’s own framing of the opportunity has stuck with Nellen. Premium Service Brands has hundreds of franchise owners across its network, and Flick has pointed to the multiplying effect if even a fraction of them pitched in locally. That math is part of what keeps Kids-Lift growing, one franchisee at a time.
What Families Need, and When They Need It
Food security remains the most consistent need Kids-Lift addresses, particularly outside the holiday season, when giving naturally slows down. “Food is still a major need, especially in the times where it’s not so popular to give,” Nellen said. Spring break and summer stretch families the most, since kids lose access to school meals during those weeks.
A second, less visible need has emerged around the physical spaces where kids spend their time. Clubhouses and schools often lack the funding to keep classrooms, libraries, and teacher lounges in good shape, and Kids-Lift has started directing franchise owners toward exactly that kind of work.
Painting Rooms, Fixing Ramps, Filling Backpacks
Franchise owners have leaned into facility projects as a natural extension of their trades.
“Alot of 360 Painting owners go to schools and support in refreshing a teacher’s lounge or a library or something that is not going to get done that year because the school doesn’t have the funds,” Nellen said.
Sherwin-Williams has become a key partner in that effort. “Sherwin-Williams has been a huge supporter,” she said. “They provide paint for free when an owner is doing a project like this.” It’s amazing to see a supplier that teams up with a franchise brand and embark on a shared vision of creating an impact.
Building on that momentum, Kids-Lift launched a House Doctors project for the remainder of 2026, giving House Doctors owners a structured way to spend two to four hours at a school addressing small repairs that otherwise go unaddressed, doors falling off hinges, ramps that need fixing, and similar fixes that fall outside a school’s budget.
Franchise owners have found their own creative angles for giving, too. A Window Gang team spent a day unpacking donated backpacks inside a warehouse, while another Window Gang owner is power washing a school building at no cost. A House Doctors franchise in Georgia built a soapbox derby race branded with Kids-Lift and House Doctors, with proceeds going to a local charity. Next week alone, 360 Painting owners in Little Rock and Kansas City are both scheduled to paint at local schools.
What ties these projects together is not a mandate, it’s a trade skill finding a voluntary second purpose. A painter’s eye for a tired room, a window cleaner’s knack for making a building presentable, a repair crew’s comfort with a broken hinge; each is a skill that pays the bills on a weekday and shows up as a gift on a weekend. That overlap is worth noticing for any franchise brand thinking about community giving: the most sustainable programs tend to ask owners to give what they already do well, not something extra.
A Lesson in Gratitude at Oakland School
Listening back to the stories of franchisee-led projects, I heard just how much the field was giving to Kids-Lift’s mission. What struck me just as much, though, was how much Premium Service Brands’ own headquarters team quietly does, work Nellen never led with and only mentioned once I asked directly. That part of the conversation left me with two takeaways.
Twice a year, the Premium Service Brands support team, along with Kids-Lift’s leadership, travels to Oakland School, a Charlottesville-area school for kids with learning differences. There they work alongside franchise partner Rubbish Works to clear weeds, remove trash, and refresh outdoor spaces. Nellen still thinks about a visit where the team spent an afternoon pulling weeds out of gravel and mulching, work that felt minor to the volunteers but meant everything to the school’s lone landscape employee, responsible for hundreds of acres on his own.
“I just can’t thank you enough,” he told the team, according to Nellen. “The school looks so much nicer. The kids aren’t tripping over weeds, and potential for poison ivy.” That exchange has become something of a touchstone for Nellen, a reminder that school administrators often need the help nearly as much as the students do. That’s the first lesson: the need isn’t only in the classroom, it’s in the people trying to keep the building standing around it.
The second is about what these outings give back to Premium Service Brands itself. Nellen sees a benefit in these outings that has nothing to do with the school. They give corporate staff and franchise teams a shared project outside their daily routines, the kind of work that builds camaraderie back at the office and reinforces a company culture built around giving, not just service calls.
Franchise owners describe a similar payoff on their own teams. An Ohio House Doctors owner brings staff twice a year to fix up a local kids camp, and the feedback afterward is consistent. “This is the most meaningful day for our team,” the owner told Nellen. “It just brings us together. We know we’re helping, but it also brings us purpose.”
Planting the Seed on Day One
If giving back is part of the culture once a franchise owner is up and running, Kids-Lift makes sure it starts even earlier than that. Kids-Lift’s reach starts before a franchise owner ever opens in their market. New owners complete two weeks of online training, then travel to Charlottesville for a week of in-person instruction that includes a Kids-Lift bag-packing session for a local food pantry. Every month, that training-week event sends care packages home with kids in the community, stocked with healthy and fun snacks along with coloring sheets and other small extras.
Nellen sees the exercise as more than a feel-good activity. “I think that franchise owners start off on a great foot, it clicks for everyone that we’re doing this together,” she said. “It’s something they can take into their business in the future as they open their doors.” What owners see on day one, a packed bag and a room full of goodwill, is the visible end of work that starts long before any of them show up. Behind every local giving opportunity there is a slower, less glamorous process: cold-calling schools that have never heard of Kids-Lift, convincing administrators the offer is genuine, and building enough trust to get in the door. “Cold calling schools is very time consuming,” Nellen said, “and getting schools to understand that we’re legit and we’re not asking anything of them is a challenge.” Once that groundwork is done, she said, the payoff is immediate. “It’s so exciting for everybody.”
Throughout the process, Nellen positions herself as a resource rather than a rule-maker. There is no contract between Kids-Lift and any franchise owner; she simply helps each one find the right local partner and get a project off the ground.
Looking Ahead
With the House Doctors initiative freshly launched, Nellen’s next goal is straightforward: get more franchise owners actively involved. Corporate partners are part of that plan as well. Beyond Sherwin-Williams’ paint donations, The Print Authority supplies free Kids-Lift and Premium Service Brands shirts for volunteers. “The more we get, the more we can give,” Nellen said.
Asked what she hopes people take away from Kids-Lift, Nellen pointed past the organization itself. “I hope people want to help kids in their area, whether it’s with us or not.” Anyone interested in getting involved, whether as a franchise owner, a corporate sponsor, or simply a donor, can reach Kids-Lift directly through kids-lift.org, where a contact form routes straight to Nellen. Donations support supplies for kids in Charlottesville or help fund franchise owners’ local projects, keeping the same simple formula in motion: find the need, find the willing owner, and get out of the way while the two connect.
