If you run a Main Street organization, you have probably seen the Neighborhood Champion announcement by now. American Express gives you a free Shop Small kit and puts your district on the national Small Business Saturday map. In exchange, you commit to one thing most organizations are not sure how to deliver: hosting an event on November 28, in partnership with your businesses.

Main Street America has the program details. The short version: applications open mid-October and close mid-November or when spaces fill, members are pre-qualified, and you need a plan for the day when you apply. This post is that plan. A shop-small passport counts as your event, takes an afternoon to build, and hands you a report for your board when the day is over.

Why a Passport Is the Right Small Business Saturday Event

The event requirement is not asking for a stage and a sound permit. It is asking you to give shoppers a reason to go into stores on one specific Saturday. A passport does exactly that. Shoppers sign up on their phone, check in at each participating shop, and every check-in is an entry in a prize drawing. That is the entire event. No volunteers at a tent, no road closure, no setup at 6 a.m.

Here is a live one you can tap through: Small Business Saturday passport. Visit a shop, check in or snap your receipt, every shop is an entry. It fits on a banner, and it fits in the application box.

How to Build the Passport in Proxi

Add your stops. If your district map already lives in Proxi, your businesses are already there. Pick the ones participating and they become passport stops. If you are starting fresh, add them by address or upload a spreadsheet. Ten to twenty stops is plenty for a one-day event.

Set the prize and the rules. One entry per check-in, drawing at close of business, winner texted that evening. Set the window to November 28 only, or stretch it through the weekend if your shops want the Sunday. Proxi draws the winner for you from the entries.

Turn on the leaderboards. There are two. The participant leaderboard shows shoppers who has the most check-ins, which turns the day into a friendly race. The business leaderboard shows which shops are getting the most visits, which is the one your businesses will screenshot and post.

Five Ways Shoppers Can Check In (Pick the Ones That Fit)

How a shopper proves they visited is up to you, and you can use different methods at different stops. Proxi supports five:

• Receipt check-in. The shopper snaps a photo of their receipt. This is the one we recommend for Small Business Saturday, because it ties every drawing entry to an actual purchase. You approve or reject receipts in your dashboard with a tap, and you end the day knowing how many sales the event produced, not just how many visits.
• QR code. Each shop gets a code to put by the register or in the window. The shopper scans it to check in. Simple for businesses, no app required.
• 4-digit code. The shop owner gives the code to the shopper, who types it in. Good for businesses that do not want to print anything, and for stops where a QR code could be scanned from the sidewalk.
• Photo check-in. The shopper takes a photo at the stop. Use this for the holiday window display or the tree lighting, where there is nothing to buy but you still want people to show up.
• Geolocation. The shopper taps the stop when their phone is at the location. The lowest-friction option, best for shops that want zero involvement on their end.

For a Neighborhood Champion event, we would set most retail stops to receipt check-in and use photo or geolocation for the one or two non-retail stops on the route.

Use the Signup to Grow Your List

Every shopper who joins the passport registers with an email or phone number. That means the event doubles as a signup form. A passport with 200 participants is 200 new contacts for your holiday emails, your January restaurant week, and next year's Small Business Saturday.

Proxi keeps those contacts in the same place as your map, so there is no export, no spreadsheet, no second tool. On the morning of the 28th, send a text to everyone registered: the passport is live, here is the prize, go. Mid-afternoon, send another one with the leaderboard. People who signed up and forgot will come downtown.

Get Your Businesses on Board Without a Dozen Emails

The program wants the event run in partnership with your businesses. In practice, that means getting fifteen shop owners to say yes, put a sign in the window, and maybe chip in a gift card for the prize.

Proxi lets you message your member businesses directly from the platform, so one note goes to every participating shop with their QR code or 4-digit code attached and the ask spelled out. When the Shop Small kit arrives, you already know which windows the pendant banners and open/closed signs go in, because those are your passport stops.

For the prize, ask each participating shop for a $20 gift card. Fifteen shops is a $300 bundle that cost your organization nothing and sends the winner right back downtown.

What to Write on the Application

The application asks how you will bring the community together and encourage people to support local businesses. Be specific. Something like:

"We will host a Shop Small Passport on November 28 with 15 participating downtown businesses. Shoppers check in at each shop by photographing their receipt to enter a drawing for a $300 local gift card bundle. We will distribute the Shop Small kit to participating businesses and promote the event through our email and text list, social channels, and printed QR codes in every storefront."

That names the event, the date, the partners, and the promotion. It is a complete answer, and you can run it.

Report Out to Your Board the Monday After

This is the part that matters more than the kit. Most Small Business Saturday events end with a feeling that it went well. This one ends with a report.

When the day is over, Proxi shows you how many people signed up, how many check-ins happened, how many receipts were submitted, and which businesses got the most visits. Pull that into one page for your December board meeting: participants, total visits, visits per business, receipts approved, new contacts added to your list. Add the business leaderboard as a screenshot.

Then send each participating shop its own number. "You had 41 check-ins on Saturday" is a thank-you note that gets a business to sign up again next year. And when the Neighborhood Champion application opens again next fall, you have last year's results to put in it.

Start Before the Portal Opens

You do not need to wait for the application to go live. Build the passport this week, recruit your shops in October, and submit the moment the portal opens with the event already planned. Spaces fill, and the organizations that get in are the ones with the plan ready.

If you want more ideas to layer on top, we have a list of seven Small Business Saturday ideas. The passport is the backbone. Everything else is extra.