Today is Giving Tuesday, a recent addition to the holiday season calendar. It is a day that has become increasingly important for nonprofit organizations to reach their annual fundraising goals. The leading software platform for nonprofits, Network for Good, reports that the number of donors on their platform has grown from 7,000 on the first Giving Tuesday in 2012 to nearly 60,000 in 2017.
Earlier this year, we announced Coleman Insights joined the Pledge 1% movement, an organization that encourages corporate philanthropy via donations of 1% of equity, staff time, product and/or profit. Today, Pledge 1% is celebrating Giving Tuesday by featuring the stories of participating organizations and people worldwide that are giving back through Pledge 1%. We’re proud to report that we’re one of the companies being featured.
Below is our Pledge 1% story being highlighted today. As we reflect on an incredibly gratifying 2018, we encourage you to consider joining Pledge 1% as a way to integrate giving back into your organization. If you’re thinking about giving to specific organizations today, we can highly recommend all the ones mentioned in the story below.
Coleman Insights President Warren Kurtzman learned about the Pledge 1% initiative while attending the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, and began thinking about how he could implement it within the DNA of his organization. In early 2018, he shared with the team that Coleman Insights would pledge 1% of its profits, 1% of product services, and 1% of employee time to charitable causes.
The first order of business was the formation of a Coleman Insights Pledge 1% committee. The mission of this employee-led committee is to find and learn more about organizations in the company’s local community of Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Once per month, the committee invites a nonprofit organization to present its mission and needs to the group. These presentations inspire employees to volunteer and donate. At the end of the year, the committee will decide which organization will be the recipient of a financial gift from Coleman Insights. Organizations that have presented in 2018 include The Justice Theater Project, Lung Transplant Foundation, Donate Life NC, and the Exchange Family Center of Durham.
To help us keep track of our volunteer goal, we have implemented a visual aid: an empty fish tank that we drop ping pong balls into. One ping pong ball represents 1 hour of volunteer work. Our goal is to fill the fish tank to the top with ping pong balls. Coleman Insights employees have been filling up the fish tank with volunteer hours served at a large number of charitable organizations within the Research Triangle area.
Team members raised money by playing in the Exchange Family Center’s Pinwheels Mini-Golf tournament. The Exchange Family Center makes children’s lives better by strengthening their families, teachers, and communities through proven counseling, coaching, and training.
Team members regularly volunteer at the Urban Ministries of Wake County food pantry to help restock shelves and bring in donations. Coleman Insights maintains an ongoing food drive for employees to donate food to the food pantry. Since 1981, Urban Ministries of Wake County has responded to our neighbors in crisis by providing basic needs – food, medicine and shelter.
Coleman Insights Vice President of Business Operations Eileen Genna worked the registration table for the Lung Transplant Foundation golf tournament. The Lung Transplant Foundation’s mission is to provide confidential, compassionate, one-on-one support for lung transplant recipients and their caregivers at all stages of transplantation and is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina.
Team Coleman also volunteered with the Raleigh Department of Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources to clean up and mulch Nash Square in downtown Raleigh.
For Thanksgiving this year, team member Jennifer Donnelly helped to organize donations for Southport Business Parks Adopt-a-Turkey campaign. This campaign collects Thanksgiving Dinner fixins to benefit the families of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Triangle so they could have Thanksgiving dinner.
We’re looking forward to another exciting year proudly participating in Pledge 1%!
