2020 was a challenging year with the pandemic, politics, social injustice – to name a few. In a year that left us all reflecting, growing in patience and gratitude, and staying still (that being harder for some of us more than others!), we took the time to also look inward at Strategic Philanthropy to say not only what have we done this past year, but also, what have we’ve done to impact our community over the years.
As a small business, we had no idea how the pandemic would hit our company. Were companies going to stop giving as commerce was slowing or closing down? When you shouldn’t be more than six feet from people, how would the companies we serve volunteer?
What we did know was that like many other business, we would figure it out, like we always do. We would become nimble and adjust quickly (no layers of bureaucracy in a small business!). We were extremely fortunate that the companies, government agencies, foundations and organizations we were currently working with stayed on board. Giving and volunteering are a part of these organizations’ culture so we were extremely fortunate they stayed on board and adapted certain giving and volunteering practices (had you ever heard of virtual volunteering before 2020?!).
But even more importantly, we looked at what we did well – which is helping companies, organizations, foundations and government agencies give away their money strategically to nonprofits, and said we could help governments help give away their CARES funding to individuals and businesses who were hurting. These municipalities were tasked with giving away millions of dollars in a short span of time. With limited staff resources and /or infrastructure to disperse this kind of cash so quickly, we were approached to help and we took on an unconventional opportunity.
So when someone says, what did you do to help when the pandemic struck, we can say, we dispersed $2.1 million to local residents to help with their mortgage, utility and businesses expenses. Was it a busy fall – beyond, but we kept pushing toward to goal line of trying to help as many people as possible who qualified for funding.
As we enter a year of hope with the vaccine in motion and we get ready to launch our 10th year in business next year, we always like to look up from our emails to see what have we really accomplished to date? We are so incredibly proud that we’ve managed:
- $9.5 million in budgets
- Partnered with over 600+ nonprofits
- Given away 340,000 in-kind items with a value of $2.5 million
- Managed over 18,000 hours in employee volunteerism which has had over $700,000 in economic value to our communities
- Collected 8,500+ lbs of food
Check out our infographic below to see what all we’ve done!
While 2021 won’t be as easy as we all had hoped for, we have hope for a better tomorrow!
