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.
Donating time and money is an important part of Spotlight’s culture. One thing that was important to the co-founders (Rick Nash and Andrew Hsu) as we started incorporating philanthropy into our culture was making sure the causes we were donating time and money to were important to the employees of Spotlight. Rick and Andrew have causes that are important to them, but they understand the employees of Spotlight have different things they are passionate about.
What follows is a serendipitous story about two separate philanthropic efforts Spotlight worked on that ended up being connected. Last Spring, Spotlight employee (and co-chair of our philanthropy committee) Jenni Keyes signed Spotlight up to help maintain 17 garden beds that were two blocks from our office. Jenni is particularly passionate about locally grown food, so she helped lead this effort by teaching us how to prepare the garden beds, plant the sweet potatoes we grew, weed on a regular basis, and ultimately how to harvest the sweet potatoes. It was a fun, dirty, gratifying process that resulted in 550 pounds of sweet potatoes donated to Harvesters (a local food bank) in October.
In November, a few Spotlight employees volunteered at NourishKC, a community kitchen that provides meals to those in need. NourishKC is devoted to the philosophy of “dining with dignity” which means the volunteers that come to NourishKC serve the patrons as if they were in a restaurant setting. The day Spotlight was there, Linda, the woman who helped guide the volunteers through what needed to be done, talked through what was to be served that day. On the menu was a side dish of sweet potatoes Linda said came from Harvesters. The Spotlight employees shared with Linda that there was a chance the sweet potatoes being served that day were the ones we had grown in the garden by our office. We all thought it was special that not only did we grow the sweet potatoes, we had the opportunity to see what ultimately happened with them, and meet some of the people those sweet potatoes fed.
We always planned on continuing our efforts with the garden and with NourishKC, but this fun turn of events helped solidify that plan.
We work closely with PrepKC to help prepare low-income high school students for college. For two years in a row, we have hosted 25-30 students at Spotlight for a day. We taught them about Analyst Relations, shared with them the importance of virtually working with our clients, and gave them a project which showed them a real-life example of how we do work every day. This mentor program also gives students exposure to presenting, creating presentations, and researching as a part of experience they can utilize in their studies and potential future careers. This event is always well-received and we plan on continuing this for years to come.
