West Colfax Community Association Passport

The West Colfax Community Association runs a shop-local passport across its member businesses, encouraging residents and visitors to spread their spending across the neighbourhood rather than concentrating it in one or two places.

The program

The passport was configured with around 40 participating venues, each with its own code. Rather than capping participation at a single completed card, the program allowed visitors to complete their passport more than once, earning additional grand prize entries each time — turning the passport into an ongoing reason to return rather than a one-off task.

The association also asked to sign participants up directly at community meetings, rather than relying only on people discovering the program in store.

Relaunched for a second season

The program was paused and relaunched for a new season. Because the passport is digital, that meant reactivating the existing program with updated rewards — not rebuilding it, and not reprinting materials for 40 venues.

Rewards were adjusted at relaunch, including extending the window members had to redeem what they’d earned.

What we learned from running it

Two things surfaced during this program that changed how we recommend setting these up:

Managing a large venue list is the hard part. With around 40 participating businesses, adding and updating venues was by far the most frequent request — more than anything to do with stamps, rewards or members. For any program at this scale, plan for the venue list to change constantly.

Asking staff for a code creates friction. Where customers had to ask a staff member for a validation code, some simply didn’t understand why — and the interaction became a barrier. Programs where the code is simply on display run more smoothly, which is exactly what the Customer Kiosk and printed venue codes are for.