Tapestry Gives: Employee Volunteerism
Originally published in Tapestry's 2021 Corporate Responsibility Report
In FY2021, we amplified our commitment to service through the launch of our signature employee volunteer program, Tapestry Gives. Tapestry Gives provides our employees with the tools and resources they need to serve in the communities where they live and work.
We aim to make volunteering simple and accessible and want our employees to give their time and talent to causes they are passionate about. The new Tapestry Gives program includes an internal platform where all global employees can find, record and join volunteer events in their local community. This allows us to track our volunteering efforts and measure their impact on a global scale. In North America, we also introduced a Volunteer Match tool, which connects employee interest areas to more than 65,000 local volunteering opportunities. After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed many of our volunteering options in 2020, new virtual volunteering, flexible scheduling and our new Volunteer Match tool provided employees with the opportunity to give back in ways that were safe, meaningful and worked best for them.
Building on our previous corporate volunteer program, we also announced Volunteer Time Off (VTO), which provides up to one paid volunteer day per year for all global employees, including part- and full-time corporate, field and distribution center employees. This new benefit reinforces our ambition to reach 100,000 volunteer hours by 2025. In FY2021, Tapestry employees volunteered over 32,000 hours, bringing our total hours to 42,150, nearly halfway to the 2025 goal Tapestry set in 2019.
GLOBAL VOLUNTEER AMBASSADORS
Through our Tapestry Gives program and support from our global volunteer ambassadors, our teams showed their commitment to volunteerism in a variety of ways including:
- Tapestry corporate and store employees from all brands participated in nine events with SuitUp, a nonprofit that increases career readiness for students of all backgrounds through business competitions. Tapestry volunteers mentored these underserved students over the course of three sessions for each event and helped them to create innovative solutions to address modern day corporate challenges. Through this initiative, we reached over 260 students and achieved more than 230 volunteer hours.
- In FY2021 our store teams showed an exceptional commitment to service, going over and beyond in their local efforts including:
- Hosted drives to collect nonperishable food, canned goods, toiletries and toys for women, children and families in need
- Protected the environment through beach, parking lot and park clean ups
- Collected blankets, towels and pet supplies for humane societies also volunteering at shelters to improve the health of homeless animals
- Wrote ‘Thinking of You’ letters and cards for hospice patients, children in hospitals and seniors experiencing isolation
- Employees from our Tapestry Asia Team traveled to a local school called Vinh Chanh A in An Giang province, Vietnam where our service provider, Thai Binh Shoes, is located. Together with Thai Binh Shoes’ employees, we delivered school supplies and classroom furniture to improve the learning environment for more than 400 students.
- In honor of National Mentoring Month, the Coach Foundation launched a volunteering campaign tied to its signature program, Dream It Real. 100 volunteers mentored 250 students through nine virtual events across five cities.
Looking forward, we plan to continue to grow our employee volunteering by implementing a company-wide day of service, expanding skillsbased volunteering options and recognizing and celebrating our employees’ efforts through employee volunteer awards.
At Tapestry, volunteering is supported by employee Volunteer Ambassadors who are responsible for leading their teams in our community programs, fostering a culture of service and driving localized community engagement. Our Volunteer Ambassadors are selected through an application process, nominated by leadership and serve in addition to their core roles at Tapestry.
In FY2021, we scaled our volunteering program through two major expansions: establishing a first-ever field Volunteer Ambassador program across all of our brands and expanding our Volunteer Ambassador Program globally.
Each of the Tapestry brands now has a designated program to help its field employees engage in their local communities: Coach Cares Ambassadors, kate spade new york: Give in Spades and Stuart Weitzman: Shine Brighter.
"From the moment I heard about the Coach Cares Volunteer Ambassador Program I knew I needed to be involved. Not only is it a very rewarding feeling for me knowing I’m helping my community but to see the store teams come together to support our local community is very special. It helps the community know that we are more than just a business — we want to help those most important to us and that is those around us." NICOLE ST. PIERRE, COACH CARES AMBASSADOR, ASSISTANT STORE MANAGER
