This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
Empower your employees to give back at the individual level by downloading our new Virtual Volunteering Playbook, which includes ideas and best practices on how to excite and inspire individual giving.
By Jeffrey Rangel, Senior Director, Global Corporate Responsibility
The coronavirus pandemic has shaken the world. Widespread and deep economic devastation pales only in comparison to lives lost. We all know this is a very difficult time for so very many people. One major impact has been on charities serving the hungry. The food bank near our Santa Clara, California headquarters is reporting twice as much need as this time last year. We really want to be as impactful as possible and have therefore decided to significantly broaden our annual U.S. Food Drive and our support of employee giving in 2020.
On November 17, we launched our first global Hunger Relief Campaign. For four weeks (over Giving Tuesday), we are matching donations to charities identified as “Food, Agriculture, and Nutrition” up to $5,000 at 400%—if our employees give $5,000 we will match it with $20,000. Our goal is to raise enough to provide at least two million meals at food banks around the world.
Fewer than 72 hours into the campaign, we are well on our way: our employees have donated $50,000 and we have matched $200,000.
Historically, our food drives focused on one beneficiary near each of our four US offices. But we know the needs are far greater, and now working remotely, our employees are more distributed. So aligned with our FLEXWORK approach, which is centered on employee choice, we’ve expanded the hunger campaign to help enable our worldwide employees to support what is local to them.
The Hunger Relief Campaign is a part of our overall coronavirus relief efforts. In March, we set a goal to raise $5M for communities and colleagues impacted by COVID. We’ve raised $4M towards that goal benefiting 18 causes around the world. We believe this Hunger Relief Campaign will surely move us past our goal! This is certainly the biggest response Palo Alto Networks has delivered in the face of a disaster in our 15 year history, but it’s commensurate with the biggest challenges faced by our world in 100 years. It’s been inspiring to see our global workforce rally so strongly to support something so important, even as their own lives have been disrupted by the multiple crises they’ve faced in 2020. Through these efforts, we are proud to be living our corporate values and mission.
