Vol­un­teer­ing Day: How John Deere links social engage­ment and core business

For the past five years, PHI­NEO has been the engage­ment part­ner of John Deere and the John Deere Foundation.

The Day of Car­ing was the first for­mat to emerge from this coop­er­a­tion in the field of Cor­po­rate Vol­un­teer­ing. Once a year, vol­un­teers at six loca­tions through­out Ger­many pack bags with food, dec­o­rate them and add greet­ings. These bags are donat­ed to eight local stores by Die Tafel and thus dis­trib­uted to peo­ple in need in their region.

Mr. Mitsch, chair­man of the local store in Mannheim, reports on the part­ly emo­tion­al reac­tions of his cus­tomers to this dona­tion: ​“The peo­ple here are real­ly hap­py about the cam­paign and ask our employ­ees lots of ques­tions about it. We know elder­ly peo­ple who grew up with the plant in the neigh­bor­hood before the war, even before it was tak­en over by John Deere. For them, the joy is espe­cial­ly great when they feel that such a tra­di­tion­al com­pa­ny is doing some­thing for them.

The pos­i­tive feed­back and the unbro­ken demand show that the CSR project has hit a nerve. Because tra­di­tion is an impor­tant key­word for many John Deere employ­ees: ​“In our region, every­thing you do three times in a row becomes a tra­di­tion,” reports an employ­ee from the Gum­mers­bach loca­tion with a wink, ​“so it is a mat­ter of hon­our that we are par­tic­i­pat­ing every year!”

• For years, a project team con­sist­ing of employ­ees from John Deere, the John Deere Foun­da­tion and PHI­NEO has been ensur­ing that every­thing runs smooth­ly on the big day. And the fig­ures show that the many months of prepa­ra­tion and good imple­men­ta­tion are well worth it!
• This year, 400 employ­ees packed 8,700 bags of food togeth­er. Over 30,000 kilos of pre­served food thus reached those house­holds that need­ed it most.

In cel­e­bra­tion of the fifth anniver­sary, this year the Day of Car­ing was even extend­ed: Out of three non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions in their region, all vol­un­teers were giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to choose one they would like to sup­port most. On their behalf, the John Deere Foun­da­tion made an addi­tion­al finan­cial dona­tion to the cho­sen organization.

“It is impor­tant to us that the employ­ees get the chance to get active­ly involved in the region. Our thanks go to each and every one of them and espe­cial­ly to our project part­ners from John Deere, the John Deere Foun­da­tion and Die Tafel! We are look­ing for­ward to fur­ther expand­ing the coop­er­a­tion and to firm­ly estab­lish­ing social engage­ment even more in the com­pa­ny through attrac­tive offers,” says Julia Kae­se­mann from PHINEO.

Are you inter­est­ed in how com­pa­nies can assume respon­si­bil­i­ty? Cor­po­rate Vol­un­teer­ing sounds excit­ing to you? How can one live Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen­ship beyond that? Please con­tact us at juliane.​hagedorn@​phineo.​org.

To the arti­cle: Five ques­tions that should be asked of all those who want to imple­ment cor­po­rate volunteering

To the arti­cle: Five tips for com­pa­nies and NGOs that are inter­est­ed in good cor­po­rate social responsibility