Glympse Helped the Georgetown, MA, Fire Department Collect Thousands of Toys
In the spirit of the holiday season, the Georgetown Fire Department in Massachusetts has been spreading joy and supporting a great cause through their annual Santa Tour. This festive event not only brings smiles to the faces of local families but also gathers thousands of toys for children in need, all with the help of Glympse.
Here’s how the partnership of Georgetown Fire Department and Glympse helped firefighters make such a difference in their community.
How Glympse Helped the Georgetown Fire Department Collect Thousands of Toys for Children in Need
The Georgetown, MA Fire Department (GTFD) has been using Glympse and it’s “Santa Tracker” for years to power their Santa Tour. Volunteers, led by Santa himself, travel over 65 miles collecting toys for the Marine Corps Toys for Tots program.
The Glympse app, sometimes called the Glympse “Santa Tracker” allows residents to see Santa Claus’ real-time location as Santa parades throughout the streets. They can see Santa's location as he makes his way around town; no need to wait out in the cold or worry about missing out.
“We had some great feedback on the Glympse app, and it appeared every time I looked at it (several times that day) there were at least 30 people viewing our location”, said Brian Coolridge of GTFD. “One thing that made the event especially challenging in 2023, was the weather: we had rain showers and heavy rain all day long. But despite the weather, it was a success.”
Thanks to Glympse, families can stay indoors, track Santa, and know exactly when to bring their toys out for collection, regardless of the weather. With the help of Santa Tracker via Premium Tags, the GTFD ended up collecting over 4,000 toys for Toys for Tots which were distributed by the Marine Corps to children in need.
“We can’t tell you how much happiness it brings to all of us at Glympse to know that we are able to take part in supporting such an amazing cause,” said Chris Ruff, CEO and president of Glympse.
Enhancing Engagement Through Location Sharing
Glympse Premium Tags provide more than just tracking capabilities—they allow customization and personalization. For the Santa Tour, the Georgetown Fire Department used features like:
- Custom Branding: The department added their logo, event details, and cheerful messages from Santa.
- Multiple Routes: With up to seven routes pre-loaded, the team could seamlessly update locations and keep the event running smoothly.
- Community Interaction: Residents could follow the event and get live updates from their smartphones, fostering a greater connection with their local fire department.
- Predefined headers and icons for Santa: It’s easy to configure, as Glympse has predefined headers and icons to choose from in their web configuration manager tool.
Who is Glympse?
Since its inception over 16 years ago, Glympse has continuously evolved while staying true to its core mission: providing a simple, effective way to share your location in real-time. A cornerstone of Glympse’s appeal is its temporary location sharing feature. People can share their real-time location with anyone, regardless of device, for a duration of their choosing, up to a maximum of twelve hours. This temporary nature ensures that privacy is maintained, as the location data automatically expires after the set time. Additionally, Glympse never harvest or sell your location data to 3rd parties like competitors.
Glympse Premium Tags & Santa Tracker: Making the Season Bright
The Glympse Santa Tracker experience makes use of the Glympse app’s Premium Tags feature in the Glympse app to show Santa’s real-time location in holiday parades or events, branded to your town or organization. With the Glympse Santa Tracker experience, local fire departments, city leaders, and community organizations can create a custom Santa experience to delight their communities.
Santa Tracker is easy for community members to use: all they have to do is tap a link to track Santa at the local parade, festival, Santa caravan, or other event. They don’t even need to download the Glympse app!
Santa Tracker also allows you to create a unique name for your Santa, upload your city’s logo and brand colors, save multiple Santa routes, and share the holiday cheer with your entire community. There are options to promote your organization, recognize sponsors, promote future events, and more. You can even add personal messages from Santa, such as cheerful greetings to community members or instructions about your event in the header or footer of the location sharing screen.
