Goals and progress
Community investment | From funder to partner
In order to reach our goals in the community, we collaborate with a diverse mix of organizations. We consider the organizations we support to be partners, not “grantees.” Likewise, we consider ourselves not as funders, but as social investors who believe in leveraging our company assets and linking our partners to assets beyond cash. We call this effort “link and leverage.”
These days, when we meet with our partners, we discuss what assets we can link to their organization, and how we can best leverage them. We evaluate whether we can provide a board member, additional resources such as volunteers, special skills needed for a project, job shadow opportunities, training materials, in-kind contributions — all opportunities to deepen the impact of our investment.
In 2009, we asked the organizations we fund to anonymously assess our performance as partners. Overall, their feedback was positive and highlighted our unique strategy of linking and leveraging our internal resources.
Through linking and leveraging, we have created added points of contact that allow us to deliver more to our partner organizations, engage more strongly, and in turn, make a greater impact in the community.
The following are some of our key partners, whose work aligns with our strategic focus of serving underserved youth and women.
- Boys and Girls Clubs, one of the country’s largest youth organizations. Its mission: to enable all young people, especially those in most need, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.
- Summer Search, a national leadership development program that helps low-income young people graduate from high school, go to college, gain successful careers and give back to society.
- The Posse Foundation identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential who may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes. Posse’s partner colleges and universities award Posse Scholars four-year, full-tuition leadership scholarships.
- CARE International, a global organization that works to expand opportunities for women. CARE International places special focus on the multiplier effect of equipping women with the resources to become empowered as they, in turn, help entire families and communities rise above poverty.
