5 Ways Embrace Gave Back in 2019

Mixed in with all of the consumer “holidays” of the season, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is one day that truly matters — Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is a global generosity movement and it happens every year on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Instead of being pushed to buy things, we’re encouraged to do good.

At Embrace, giving back to the community all year long is extremely important to us. In fact, one of our seven corporate values is “Community.” On this Giving Tuesday, we wanted to take a look back at 2019 and share ways our company and teammates tried to do a little bit of good in this world. We hope some of these acts inspire you to give back not just on Giving Tuesday, but every day, in any way that you can.

1. Orange Week 2019

Orange Week is a company-wide tradition that everyone looks forward to. Every year, to celebrate our birthday, we engage in a week of volunteering and serve our local communities. Individual departments and branches choose non-profit organizations to support and get out there to do some hands-on work. This year, our teammates cleaned up beaches and cemeteries, created birthday boxes for hospitalized children, volunteered at animal rescues, painted historic ballparks, and so much more.

2. School supply drive

A great education is among the best gifts one can pass down to future generations. To ensure that children in our local communities had what they needed to start the school year, our Embrace teammates in Middletown, RI spent a few weeks before the start of the 2019-2020 school year collecting supplies. We were able to deliver the donations — including 35 boxes of markers, 29 boxes of colored pencils, 34 notebooks, and countless scissors, pens, index cards, glue sticks, stick notes, lunchboxes, and highlighters — to Forest Avenue School and Claiborne Pell Elementary School.

3. Embrace Spectacular

Embrace Spectacular is our version of “Take Your Kids to Work Day.” Children were split up into groups and participated in a variety of activities throughout the day focused on building a successful lemonade business. The purpose of the day was to encourage, inspire, and introduce girls and boys to the workplace and empower them to dream without gender limitations and think imaginatively about their family, work, and community lives. At the end of the day, the winning team was the Sunny Lemons — they raised almost $275 for Hasbro Children’s Hospital, which Embrace matched. The other teams raised money for Animal Rescue Rhode Island, The Tomorrow Fund, and The Jimmy Fund.

4. Helping out teammates and their families through all of life’s curveballs

We’re a family at Embrace, so when one of our teammates encounters a difficult situation, we’re there for each other. Whether there’s a medical emergency, illness, family tragedy — anything — we do anything we can to help. In 2019, we had “Jeans Days” (a $3+ donation and you can wear jeans for the day), a fundraiser BBQ benefit, and donated sick days to each other — to name a few.

5. Embrace’s matching gifts program

Embrace offers a matching gifts program in which Embrace will match eligible donations made by employees to eligible non-profit organizations. The program is designed to encourage and support employee contributions to charitable organizations. In 2018 alone we matched close to $58,000 to charities for our teammates!

Some individuals who already use the program regularly include Pat Holland, Leanne Rutter, Kirk Hutchings, Greg Peele, and Frank O’Donnell.

Frank says the matching gifts program is one of his favorite Embrace benefits because he loves being able to double his personal donations to 501(c)(3) organizations. This year, the bulk of his donations have gone to Academy Players of Rhode Island, a theater group with which he is heavily involved.

Rita Maron, Academy’s Artistic Director, says the funds have “a tremendous impact on children, teens, and adults, giving them the opportunity to explore the arts on all levels.”

Give Back All Year

Embrace teammates: Don’t forget that you have 100 paid volunteer hours to use every single year. For 2020, make a resolution to use those hours and get out in the community to make a difference!