When Delightful made the choice in March 2020 to shut our office doors and asked employees to work safely from home indefinitely because of the pandemic, we needed to rethink many ways in which we did business.
One big question was how we would continue to give back to our community – a core value for all of us at Delightful.
As we shared awhile back, central to our company culture is giving back to our community through volunteering and financial contributions to nonprofits and community organizations. While our in-person volunteering is largely on hold, we’ve found alternative ways to continue to support the important work happening in our community.
One of our principles is Surprise and Delight and part of that means that at Delightful we encourage team members to recognize one other regularly. We formalized our recognition program during the Covid shutdowns, and we call it Kudos.
It can be as simple as saying “Thank you for making me smile today” and that one act can easily brighten someone’s day. For every Kudos shared in a month we make a financial contribution to the Nonprofit of the Month. To date our Kudos program has raised $2800 for a variety of organizations – you can learn more about these below.
Through our company matching program – Delightful matches up to $1500 to nonprofit organizations per employee. While many nonprofits moved to a focus on virtual fundraising efforts, Delightful made the commitment to provide event sponsorships and co-marketing efforts for the organizations we’ve had longstanding relationships with including Birthday Dreams, Seattle Theatre Group, and WestSide Baby.
Not so easy to figure out was how to continue to give back through volunteering.
Up until March 2020, our team was doing group volunteering every 4-6 weeks. We also offer our team members up to 20 paid hours of time off to volunteer. In the past 18 months, as a team, we have hosted a Holiday Card Campaign for senior communities and online Wishlist fulfillment for families needing a little extra support. With the availability of the vaccine, we are encouraging team members to find safe ways to volunteer in their local communities. We now have team members doing a variety of volunteer activities again like running a Girl Scout troop, volunteering at school lunchtime, and volunteering as their event manager for the Resuscitation Academy.
Lastly, we are also committed to continuing to support BIPOC and women-owned businesses through our company gift purchases, team celebrations, and guest speaker program. Recently these included Paper Delights, Champion Wine, Belle Petale, Eighth Generation, and Refugee Artisan Initiative.
While Delightful won’t be returning to a traditional office environment as we recently announced we will be an #IntentionallyRemote company, we will continue to give back to our community and look to expand our impact through both financial contributions and volunteering.
Learn more about our Kudos “Nonprofits of the Month”:
African Wildlife Foundation (awf.org)
Alzheimer’s Association | Alzheimer’s Association
API Women | AAPI Women Lead | United States (imreadymovement.org)
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC (advancingjustice-aajc.org)
Breast Cancer Foundation | Susan G. Komen®
Byrd Barr Place – Supporting self-sufficiency in Seattle
League of Women Voters (lwv.org)
Mary’s Place (marysplaceseattle.org)
Northwest African American Museum (naamnw.org)
South Kitsap Helpline – Serving the needs of those in crisis (skhelpline.org)
WWIN – Empowering women to achieve economic stability
Ashley Seffernick – Director of Customer Learning and Success, Delightful Communications