Businesses’ charitable giving programs offer both customers and employees a chance to participate in improving the world around them. Many employers also establish paid volunteer days and set up opportunities for their teams to get hands-on with community projects. Here are some companies that give back by investing financial support and volunteer hours in initiatives that support art, education, small business and other areas of focus.
Companies That Give Back
- Toast
- SRAM
- CarGurus
- The Kraft Heinz Company
- The PNC Financial Services Group
- NVIDIA
- Uncommon Goods
- Bookshop.org
Companies That Give Back
Headquarters: New York, New York
Optimum is an American cable television provider, serving close to 5 million residential and business customers with pay television, internet access, telephone services and original television content. Optimum regularly partners with the robotics community FIRST to sponsor teams in the FIRST Robotics Competition. FIRST provides students with mentorship opportunities that help develop their STEM skills and Optimum’s sponsorship supplies the resources FIRST teams need to build out their robotics programs.
Headquarters: Stamford, Connecticut
Spectrum provides broadband connectivity solutions for residences, as well as small, medium and enterprise businesses. The company actively works to make a positive impact through various philanthropic initiatives, such as the Spectrum Community Investment Loan Fund, which supports small businesses in underserved communities, and Spectrum Community Center Assist, which supports physical improvements to community centers and job skills training programs in the locations it serves.
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
Strategic consulting firm tms offers technology, marketing and sourcing solutions to help brands like T-Mobile, Samsung and adidas deliver innovative customer experiences. The company employs more than 1,200 people who work across over two dozen countries. Each year, those team members participate in thousands of hours of community service, engaging in various projects across the globe for groups like Ronald McDonald House Charities and the American Heart Association.
Headquarters: Falls Church, Virginia
BAE Systems is an international tech company specializing in developing defense, aerospace and security solutions. Its Community Investment program partners with a variety of organizations that undertake initiatives to support current and former military service members, STEM education and other causes that align with the company’s values. Through the Community Impact initiative, BAE Systems’ employees can nominate nonprofit groups to receive funding.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Media giant NBCUniversal, which is a Comcast subsidiary, has an international family of brands that encompasses movie studios, streaming, network television, broadcast news and tourist destinations. Its social impact initiative known as Comcast NBCUnites is structured around three pillars: community, voices and access. It focuses on creating opportunities for employees to engage in volunteer service and partnering with nonprofit groups like Big Brothers Big Sisters, which facilitates opportunities to mentor youth, and City Year, an organization dedicated to closing education gaps.
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts
Individuals, families and businesses look to Liberty Mutual Insurance for policies that cover everything from boats and pets to commercial auto fleets and environmental risk. The company provides its network of more than 8,700 community partners with charitable donations and volunteer support. On top of its corporate giving efforts, Liberty Mutual also has an employee gift matching program and facilitates annual days of service so that team members can participate in community projects like stocking a food pantry or cleaning up a local beach.
Headquarters: Bagsværd, Denmark
Novo Nordisk is a pharmaceutical company focused on developing and providing access to treatments for chronic diseases such as type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Its commitment to corporate giving supports social and humanitarian causes through grant programs and corporate sponsorships. Novo Nordisk also provides employees with paid time off they can use specifically to participate in volunteer opportunities.
Headquarters: Bourne, Massachusetts
Convention Data Services offers an array of solutions for organizing live events like industry conferences. Its services cover everything from attracting attendees to transforming data into business intelligence that drives decision making. Each year, the company engages in corporate giving, providing charitable donations to various groups, such as nonprofit, education or humanitarian organizations. Team members also participate in holiday gift drives and volunteer through Big Brothers and Big Sisters.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Sojern is a tech company developing digital marketing solutions for hotels, airlines and other travel and hospitality businesses. As part of its perks and benefits package, Sojern has multiple employee groups, including Sojern Gives Back, which facilitates up to 40 hours of community services annually for each team member.
Headquarters: Woodland Hills, California
Golden Hippo’s direct-to-consumer brands populate the health, beauty and pet care space with expert-developed products that the company promotes through in-house marketing services. Every Golden Hippo brand supports a specific charity, and the company’s contributions to those organizations have topped $6 million.
Headquarters: Fully Remote
Bonterra makes software and IT products for nonprofits, public sector organizations and other “social good” institutions. Its products drive increased charitable activity by optimizing donor engagement, facilitating program management and upleveling corporate social responsibility. The company is working toward an ambitious vision to raise charitable donations from 2 percent to 3 percent of the U.S. GDP.
Headquarters: Cincinnati, Ohio
PatientPoint makes patient engagement software for healthcare providers and facilities. Its products handle patient acquisition, remote care, hospital management and physician office processes. The company’s charitable initiatives include giving 1 percent of its profits to its foundation, the PatientPoint Foundation, which directs funding toward health equity for underserved communities.
Headquarters: Munich, Bavaria
Personio produces HR software for businesses of all sizes. Its product covers functions like collecting employee feedback and managing payroll processes. The company committed to putting 1% of its equity toward making a positive social impact through charitable causes. That led to the 2021 founding of the Personio Foundation, which works with organizations focused on climate action and education, providing them with various forms of support, such as grant funding, strategic expertise and free software access.
Headquarters: Santa Barbara, California
LogicMonitor’s cloud-based infrastructure monitoring platform gives IT teams the capabilities to explore digital transformation and automate certain manual tasks so they can run more efficiently. The company’s community initiatives have included various volunteer opportunities like helping out at soup kitchens, food banks and animal shelters along with participating in beach and lake clean-ups.
Headquarters: City of Industry, California
Youth apparel retailer Hot Topic gained notoriety in the 1990s for selling band t-shirts and other pop, punk and alternative music apparel and accouterments. It has maintained a retail presence for over three decades. As a company catering to youth music culture, Hot Topic has established a foundation that improves youth access to mental health care and music education, where it supports work by nonprofits like Little Kids Rock and Mental Health America.
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts
Toast’s point-of-sale system and other technology solutions are used by thousands of restaurants to make ordering, food prep, service and payment processes run smoothly. The company engages in various community service activities through Toast.org, its philanthropic branch, which maintains partnerships with groups like No Kid Hungry and Project Bread. The initiative has gotten more than 1.5 million meals into the hands of people who need them, and Toast joined a pledge to invest at least 1 percent of its product, equity or employee time into bettering communities, according to the Toast.org impact report.
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
SRAM is a global company manufacturing components for both mountain and road bikes. Its Cycling Fund invests $1 million annually in organizations from Europe and North America dedicated to building and improving cycling infrastructure. The company also supports World Bicycle Relief, which was co-founded by SRAM’s executive vice president in the early 2000s. The nonprofit group provides bicycles to people living in low-income regions so they’re able to make it to school, work and medical appointments.
Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts
CarGurus is a tech company that functions as a virtual used car lot, operating a platform for buying, selling and financing consumer vehicles. The company has strong environmental, social and governance values — it donated nearly $700,000 to global charities between 2018 and 2021 and supports all its employees with funding and resources for learning and development. Despite being nominally in the car business, CarGurus is committed to offsetting its carbon footprint with its forthcoming headquarters, which will have public transit access, bicycle storage and EV charging stations.
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
The Kraft Heinz Company is a food and beverage industry staple producing condiments, macaroni and other popular brand-name food products. The company has pledged to deliver 1.5 billion meals by 2025 to people in need as part of a global mission to aid in mitigating hunger. The Kraft Heinz Foundation has initiated partnerships, made donations and engaged employees in volunteer opportunities to work toward this goal.
Headquarters: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
PNC provides banking services to individual, small business and corporate customers. Its commitment to philanthropy includes the PNC Grow Up Great program, a $500 million initiative focused on early learning and preparing children for school. PNC Arts Alive has also provided more than $20 million in grants to various cultural organizations since 2009.
Headquarters: Santa Clara, California
NVIDIA builds hardware for applications like artificial intelligence-powered robots and high-performance computing. The NVIDIA Foundation enables employees to give back to the community by making donations and volunteering through the company’s Inspire 365 initiative. As part of the initiative, the foundation matches employees’ personal donations of up to $2,500 annually. Another option allows employees to be connected with opportunities to tutor students in subjects like math and science. The Save the Children Federation, Foundation for Ecological Security and Marine Toys for Tots Foundation have been among the organizations to benefit from the NVIDIA Foundation’s charitable giving.
Headquarters: Brooklyn, New York
Uncommon Goods is an online marketplace that sells items designed by independent makers and artists. The company’s Better to Give program, which began in 2001, has donated more than $2.8 million to various nonprofit organizations. Every purchase made on Uncommon Goods’ site results in a $1 donation — $2 for Uncommon Perks members — to a Better to Give partner of the shopper’s choice.
Headquarters: Brooklyn, New York
Bookshop.org is an online bookstore that provides financial support to more than 1,600 independent, brick-and-mortar bookstores across the United States. Shoppers can select the bookstore that will receive the direct profits from their purchase, or the money can go into a profit pool that’s split between the Bookshop’s partner stores. Over 80 percent of Bookshop’s profits are given to independent booksellers, with more than $25 million raised to date, according to the company website.