Our employees raised $1,350 for non-profit Fighting Pretty in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
#GivingTuesday is here! Each year, on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving in the United States, RAND celebrates this day of global of giving and generosity and reflects on the work our RAND Gives Back volunteers have accomplished in the past year, as well as the initiatives we are currently involved in and those we are planning. Spearheaded by New York’s 92 Y in partnership with the United Nations Foundation, Giving Tuesday encourages global charities, families, businesses, community centers, students, and others to take collective action to improve their communities, give back in better, smarter ways to the charities and causes they believe in, and help create a better world.
As part of our RAND Gives Back program, RAND strives to contribute at least 1% of the firm’s gross billing through volunteering and charitable giving. Not only does RAND Gives Back benefit those in need, but it also connects our employees to the people and causes important to them. A look at some of our current and recent RAND Gives Back initiatives:
Coat Drive
This holiday season, we're currently running our in-office holiday coat drive and are collecting coats to be donated to New York Cares, who will distribute them to New Yorkers in need.
Winter Wishes
We're also beginning work on our Winter Wishes program with P256Q at PS43, an elementary and middle school in Far Rockaway, Queens. Since 2017, our RAND Gives Back volunteers have read letters to Santa written by underserved kindergartners through eighth graders of P256Q and worked to fulfill their requests, vetted by the school's staff, to help make their holiday season a little brighter, by shopping, and then wrapping the gifts. In our first four years we fulfilled over 400 wishes.
Virtual Food Drive
Through our virtual food drive with City Harvest, we've raised $1,265 to date for New Yorkers struggling to put meals on their tables and RAND is matching our staff contributions up to $500 through our RAND Gives Back program. City Harvest not only rescues food and distributes it to food pantries and soup kitchens across the five boroughs, but also seeks to strengthen our communities with access to nutritious food and nutrition education for those in need. It's not too late to donate to our drive or to City Harvest directly. Each dollar donated helps City Harvest feed two New Yorkers for a day.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month
In October, we wore pink for Breast Cancer Awareness. For each RAND employee who wore something pink, RAND donated $25 to Fighting Pretty, a non-profit organization who works with hospitals, cancer clinics and support groups to help woman feel strong and beautiful during active cancer treatment. Thanks to 54 of our employees who donned their best pink accessories and/or attire, we raised $1,350 for Fighting Pretty.
Led by a Volunteer New York! organizer via Zoom, RAND Gives Back volunteers assemble items to teach students about financial literacy and support math and financial skills.
Volunteer New York!
This year our RAND Gives Back volunteers also participated in several Volunteer New York! events, where we put together literacy kits, finance kits, and engineering STEM kits for students in need, and most recently personal care kits that were donated to the Westchester Continuum of Care Partnership to End Homelessness and given out during the Point in Time Count in Westchester County, an annual effort led by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to estimate the number of Americans, including Veterans, without safe, stable housing.
9/11 Day
As a part of the 9/11 Day National Day of Service and Remembrance, RAND joined 9,000 volunteers in 11 cities across the country with the goal of packing 2.5 million healthy, nonperishable meals for people facing food insecurity. Our two-hour morning shift packed 200,000 meals on the Intrepid Museum, which were then distributed by Feeding America food bank. A total of 2.7 million healthy meals were packed in honor of those we lost and those who rose in service on September 11, 2001. Watch our volunteers in action: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ciazw1wrJzH/.
Backpacks for NAC Kids
Our 4th annual RAND Backpacks for NAC school supply packing event was a success. During a lunch hour this summer, our volunteers filled 277 backpacks with much-needed school supplies for New Alternatives for Children’s (NAC) at-risk and underserved students. RAND is proud to work with NAC, who has been providing comprehensive health and social services for medically complex children and their families since 1982. If you’re interested in hosting a back-to-school backpack stuffing party, or would like to help in other ways: https://www.nackidscan.org.
Thank you to all the wonderful organizations we have worked with and also to our RAND Gives Back volunteers for your commitment to giving back to those in need in our communities.
Joanna Kuther is RAND's Operations Manager.
