Page 182 - The Starbucks Experience

Leave Your Mark

outlined in Principle 1, Starbucks challenges its staff mem-
bers to make their individual mark right where they live. In
support of this, Starbucks makes a $10 per hour contribu-
tion, up to $1,000 per project, to the qualifying organization
where the partner volunteers.
Lara Wyss, a Starbucks partner in the media relations
department, affirms, “For every hour I am in my school read-
ing to my daughter’s class, Starbucks is making a cash con-
tribution to the school. They aren’t paying me to volunteer.
They are enhancing the impact of my volunteerism in my
community.” An added benefit of such programs is that
employees feel that their company truly cares about what
they care about, and, in turn, they feel more loyal to the com-
pany and more engaged in their work.
As Starbucks executive Sandra Taylor suggests,
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Often people think that corporate social responsibility
means that you have to have a lot of money and that
you have to be prepared to give a lot of money to the
community. But when people ask me how to get started
as a community steward, I tell them they need to think
about mobilizing their people as volunteers. If a group
of employees decide to clean up their street or park,
that’s engaging in the community, and that’s a real exhi-
bition of how much they care, as opposed to the com-
pany just handing out cash. For us, it’s proof that you
can do good and do well at the same time.

Grandview Elementary School in Vancouver, Canada,
knows the good that can come from the involvement of Star-
bucks partners. Grandview is an inner-city school that nearly
closed in the mid-1990s as a result of increased violence in
and around the school. In the late 1990s, Starbucks partners
began to tutor students. This once-failing school is now a