But the reward - that warm and fuzzy feeling that supercharges a room - that’s what people need during a crisis. It takes courage to sign up, show up and risk the intense emotional experience of community connection. Overnight, volunteer rosters were wiped clean as we canceled our corporate volunteer events to comply with the directions we were given from cities, states, and CEOs. Those nonprofits are essential, yet the volunteer labor they rely on to provide essential services was not included in the official “shelter in place” orders. Corporate volunteer programs play a major role in supporting local nonprofits. This crisis has made the gaps in our safety nets painfully and inescapably visible. The lives and livelihoods, the educational, health, and nutritional needs of our residents have always been precariously balanced. Nonprofits work to solve the problems that our governmental policies haven’t fixed. I would like to see volunteerism recognized as an essential service. I’ve been thinking about the place of volunteers in public policy lately. Thanks to connections from the GPCVC, I’ve been able to confirm donation requests and get accurate shipping information to get them supplies as quickly as possible. Once an employee asks for a donation to be made, it can be difficult to get in touch with the overwhelmed administrators. Through the GPCVC, I’ve been able to connect directly with supply coordinators at local hospitals. People felt anxious and impotent, and providing these avenues to help their loved ones gave our employees a way to physically protect them, and, I think, gave everyone a little psychological relief, too. Whereas the bulk goggle donations we made took longer to pack and ship, the smaller Employee Purchases were able to be delivered within a few days. I sent a box of goggles and neoprene face masks to a friend who’s a nurse at HUP. Someone else ordered goggles for his wife’s team at CHOP’s ICU. Someone sent goggles to her brother-in-law, a police officer in Oakland, CA. We also created an “EP for PPE” program to allow employees to use their Employee Purchase discount to send gear directly to their friends and family working on the frontlines. Comoto employees across the country have requested goggle donations for healthcare and emergency response systems where their friends and families work. Through these communications, I was able to spread the word about our donations and connect with coworkers directly. For four weeks, starting Thurs., March 12, I sent a daily email to all employees to keep them informed about new practices and policies as directives changed across the country. Taking advantage of my dual role of communications and community relations, I then acted as liaison between our Business Continuity Planning team and our 1800 employees across the country. I worked directly with our executive leadership to quickly get buy-in for our proposed community outreach initiative. So far, we’ve donated over 4,000 goggles locally (to the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Jefferson Hospital, Washington Township, NJ and Temple University Hospital) and nationally (UCLA Health LAC USC Medical Center Banner Health, AZ Emory Health, GA and the Hoboken Fire Dept). Ken Murphy, our CEO, committed to donating $50,000 worth of inventory to hospitals and emergency management offices, and we reallocated $30,000 from the charitable giving budget to support COVID-19-related donation requests from employees. We pivoted Comoto Cares to respond to the PPE needs of the healthcare workers in our communities. We took the basic principle of serving the communities that our people live in and applied that to these new and unprecedented circumstances to take care of our communities and to help our employees help others. I was thrilled to take what had started in 2015 as RevZilla’s employee-driven ZLAnthropy program (including 16 hours of Paid Volunteer Time Off for all full-time employees) and roll it out to our stores, distribution centers and offices across the country.Ĭomoto Cares barely got off the ground before the pandemic started and everything changed. In February, we introduced “Comoto Cares” to all 1,800 employees in our new family of brands. Individual frontline workers, both in the Greater Philadelphia region (Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management, CHOP, Temple University Hospital and Jefferson Hospital Washington Township) and nationally. Nurses at Emory Health – John’s Creek Hospital, Georgia model goggles provided by Comoto HoldingsĬommunications & Community Relations Specialist, Comoto Holdings
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