PhilanthroFlexe: Ways to Support Community while Social Distancing

Like many businesses, Flexe issued a work-from-home policy in accordance with CDC recommendations on social distancing and Washington’s “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” Order. As we are all confined to our homes, it might seem difficult to get involved and help the community. However, there are still ways to get involved and support local organizations. For example, we’re headquartered in Seattle, and here’s a list of great local organizations that are in need of the community’s help:

Rainier Valley Food Bank
Rainier Valley is a local food bank with a mission is to nourish with good food, empower with knowledge, and serve with compassion. You can help them out by signing up to volunteer, donating food, or hosting a food drive.

Food Lifeline
Food Lifeline sources millions of pounds of food from farmers, manufacturers, grocery stores, restaurants, and retailers that would otherwise go to waste and distributes it to more than 300 food banks, shelters, and meal programs throughout Western Washington, providing the equivalent of 134,000 meals every day for hungry children, adults, and seniors.

Mary’s Place
Since 1999, Mary’s Place has helped hundreds of women and families move out of homelessness into more stable situations. They provide safe, inclusive shelter and services that support women, children and families on their journey out of homelessness. Across nine emergency family shelters in King County, to keep struggling families together, inside, and safe when they have no place else to go, providing shelter, services, resources, community, and hope.

United Way King County
Local non-profit organization focused on fighting homelessness, helping low-income students graduate, and breaking the cycle of poverty.

Volunteers of America Western Washington
Over the years, Volunteers of America has established itself as The Place to Turn for community’s most vulnerable individuals. Their programs and services focus on meeting basic needs and promoting self sufficiency by giving the families, children, seniors, and disabled adults we serve the tools and resources needed to be healthy and successful.

Bloodworks
Bloodworks is an independent, non-profit organization harnessing donor gifts to provide a safe, lifesaving blood supply to more than 90 Northwest hospitals. Right now they are working to ensure that blood stays available in our community as we weather this pandemic together.

Pike Place Market Foundation — Established in 1982 to uplift the charter of Pike Place Market, the Market Foundation has granted $31 Million to support low-income housing, culturally-appropriate health care, access to healthy food, high-quality preschool, an active community and to fund capital needs within the historic district.

At Flexe we have a program called PhilanthroFlexe that focuses on helping different local organizations throughout the year. As it became clear that COVID-19 was going to have a severe impact on our communities, we wanted to get involved.

PhilanthroFlexe, is used to getting out into the community and supporting local orgs. Every year, they choose three to five programs to support. Since that wasn’t an option for the foreseeable future, we tried to determine where we could make the biggest impact.

PhilanthroFlexe decided to focus on helping fight hunger as COVID-19 had an immediate impact on people’s ability to get food safely. Specifically, we partnered with Northwest Harvest on a donation drive. PhilanthroFlexe offered to donate 50% of its yearly budget and match Flexe employee donations up to that amount. In true Flexe fashion, we moved fast to ideate, push it through legal approval, and execute.

From the moment the initiative was announced during our morning standup it took just 32 minutes for donations to exceed the budget — resulting in a maximum match from PhilanthroFlexe. But even then the donations did not stop rolling in with final donations from Flexe employees exceeding the match by over 64%.

We know there are others in the Seattle community who share our desire to help and this experience has taught us that when we come together and move quickly we can make a difference. And while nothing is “business as usual”, we remain committed to keeping our workforce safe while supporting our customers and local community, as we weather this massive disruption to our lives and the supply chain industry we serve.