Starbucks encourages their partners (Starbucks calls their employees, “partners”) to get involved in community service. Customers are usually welcome to participate too.
This is the community service webpage, which looks like it recently went through a re-design:
The front of the page says, “Join us in reaching our goal of 1 million community service hours per year by 2015.”
Then I noticed that below that goal, there’s a running total of their progress towards the goal of the one million community service hours per year by 2015. As I type this, Starbucks has logged in 417,818 hours:
I have to admit that when I saw that number, my reaction was “They’re not even close. Maybe every two years, they’ll log in one million community service hours.” It’s November and Starbucks hasn’t made it half way to one million community service hours! Let’s hope that next year goes better!
And then I wondered why it is that Starbucks hasn’t made their goal? That’s the real reason that I am writing this article. Hopefully I can inspire you to find a project, join in, help out, and start a conversation about community service in your store or district. The holidays are a perfect time to give your time to others. The holidays are a giving season!
As to the reasons why Starbucks is so far behind their goals, but I came up with the following guesses:
Starbucks makes a big push to have people volunteer during the month of April – their designated “global month of service” but is less vocal about volunteering during other months.
It’s quite possible that many partners (and probably the overwhelming majority of customers) don’t even know that this website exists. Maybe the website could be printed on the receipts for a while?
It’s also possible that people might be more charged up about volunteering if Starbucks arranged a few large marquee events throughout the year – a constant reminder of using scale for good.
It’s also possible that there’s a lot more volunteering going on than what actually gets logged in on the website. I can imagine 3 or 4 partners working together on project – like volunteering at a food bank – yet skipping the step of logging in the project and hours.
And last but not least, I have heard a couple of partners tell me that the new website is harder to log onto as a partner from before – something to do with browser compatibility? I’m not sure if that’s a real issue, but it’s just one more thing I’d throw into the mix.
I don’t know why Starbucks is so far behind their goal, but those are my guesses.
I do know that I’d like to see all my readers create a profile, log in, and start volunteering. By the way, I too am very guilty of having volunteered during the April Global Month of Service, and then not really thought a lot about it since then! I need to sign up for a project!
Hopefully I’ve persuaded you to sign up! Here’s the website again – Starbucks Community Service website.
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This is a really good reminder about community service. Our lives get busy. We seem to get caught up in the daily dramas that we forget this important obligation we have as citizens to help those in need. I also am encouraged to keep this at the forefront of my mind this holiday season and remember those in need and do something for them. Thank you Melody for a nice article and reminder.
There is one store in my district that does one project per year. For the last 2 years, we were rained out and the event was never rescheduled.
My first year, I volunteered to help out at a local park but wasn’t given the time off.
I’ve managed to find volunteer opportunities on my own.
What a great article! I did not even know that this existed. I’m going to guess that there are a lot of unlogged volunteer hours. I bet if everyone had logged in their hours, they’d be beyond the goal. Thanks for sharing!
Maybe you need to work for Starbucks. It’s hard enough to get quality partners to work for pay let alone asking them to do something for free. I would love to go to a food bank and help but on my days off I am just to tired. And now with holidays I am working 6 days a week for a part time job. Just saying
I hear what you’re saying Jorge. I can only tell you that my experience has been that there is no secure magic job where you work 40 hours a week and don’t feel stressed for time and energy for outside activities. It’s hard to make volunteering a priority. That’s life, imho.
By the way, I think one thing that could cause confusion is that this goal is NOT one million partner hours.
It is one million hours logged through events created by Starbucks partners – regardless of if the majority of people there are customers. I think – though don’t quote me on this – that there has to be some minimum number of partners present (like 3 or 4?) for it to count as a partner-created volunteering event (and of course it has to be logged on the website) but there’s no doubt that Starbucks has consistently take the approach that “many hands make light work” — I haven’t seen any events that weren’t true community events – everyone is welcome.
Hello Melody,
Just wanted to let you know that we logged 48 hours yesterday afternoon volunteering during the distribution day for Tom’s Turkey Drive here in Spokane, WA. We had 10 company operated and 6 licensed partners and we worked our tails off to pack food so the 11,400 recipients could make it through the line as quickly as possible. It was extremely humbling and rewarding at the same time. What I find about volunteering for myself personally is I had to find the organization that I connected with and I had a passion for. Whenever I lead an event, I try to invite others who have not had the volunteer experience as part of our group. What I notice is once their minds are stretched around the idea of volunteering, they never really go back to the place they were before. It is eye opening the need in our communities. I just wanted to let you know that I read your post and while we were already scheduled to do this event before you wrote it, that we have lots of partners committed to achieving our goal of leading through the lens of humanity. Thanks for all you do to share the message and for your passion for the brand. We appreciate you.