Employee Volunteerism

We believe volunteering is a great way for employees to develop leadership skills, connect to their communities, and feel better about themselves and their work. Since 1993, we have provided paid time off for employees who want to volunteer for nonprofits in their communities.

CAFE Program
Through our Community Action for Employees (CAFE) Program, employees can spend up to 52 hours per year — 2.5% of scheduled work hours — volunteering in the communities during normal work hours. In FY ’09, employees volunteered over 9,300 hours of volunteer time in their local communities, valued at over $225,000.  We exceeded our goal by 17% and posted a 50% increase over FY ’08 results.

Dollars-For-Doers
We also continued support of our new Dollars-For-Doers program, which provides matching grants for employees who volunteer their time outside of work. Through Dollars-For-Doers, any employee who donates at least 25 hours of their time to a nonprofit during the fiscal year may apply to have the company make a $250 matching grant to the organization.

Highlights from our volunteer activities include:

National River Clean-Up: During the week of August 10-14, we held our 5th National River Cleanup Week. We spent five days on a 7.5 mile stretch of the Winooski River in Vermont.  A total of 126 volunteers contributed 664 hours of their time and recovered 194 tires, 2 tons of metal, and 1 ton of landfill waste.

GMCR National Sales Meeting ’09 - El Paso County Parks, CO:  We organized a group volunteer event at our annual GMCR National Sales Meeting in Colorado Springs, CO. Fifty-two people participated, helping restore hiking trails in the parks surrounding the city.  El Paso County Parks has been facing hard times due to the economic downturn and related layoffs.  Our volunteers helped with necessary maintenance of several trails that are used regularly by local schools for science classes and other park users. 

Grounds for Health Car Wash: The 3rd annual Grounds for Health Carwash fundraiser was another great example of what is possible when you combine the efforts of local business and community.  A total of fifty-four employees contributed 135 hours, raising over $8,000 in cash contributions to Grounds for Health (www.groundsforhealth.org). 

Stuff-a-Truck Campaign: In November, Vermont-based employees organized our second annual Stuff-a-Truck food collection campaign to benefit Central Vermont Salvation Army Emergency Food Shelf. This year we collected 4,000 lbs of food, a 33% increase over last year’s total.  Our total represented 14% of the total food collected during the campaign (14 tons of food).

Cradles to Crayons:  In December, one of our Sales teams went to work at the Cradles to Crayons Giving Factory in Quincy, MA (www.cradlestocrayons.org). They gained first-hand experience with the challenges involved in delivering on Cradles to Crayon's goal: to provide every child with the basic necessities to be safe, warm, ready to learn, and feel valued. Volunteers filled orders for local low-income and homeless children in the aisles of pre-sorted new and gently used donated items.

Salvation Army:   In December, two teams from our Human Resources/Organizational Development group volunteered at the Central Vermont Salvation Army. They organized and selected holiday gifts for families in need and prepared them for delivery to needy families.