Giving Compass' Take:

• Timberland has a robust corporate service program that aims to serve local and global communities through volunteering events and charitable partnerships. 

• How does corporate service affect the well-being of a corporation's employees and local communities? 

• Learn about other models of corporate service that have seen success and also involve partnerships. 

In June 2016, 100 employee and business partner volunteers, organized by the outdoor footwear and apparel company Timberland, spent a bright and sunny day reviving the United We Stand Garden in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City.

The volunteers created 30 raised garden beds from recycled plastic lumber, built pathways to improve garden access, moved a shed, created a space for a mural, and built a performance space and benches. These efforts helped restore the area as a shared community gathering space and garden to support urban agriculture for local residents.

With the aim of advancing its values, Timberland has long worked to protect the outdoors and serve communities where it does business. For 25 years, the company’s Path of Service program has offered employees paid time to serve communities through individual volunteering, as well as global, company-wide service events and business partner events like the one in Mott Haven.

As service became integral at Timberland, the company recruited business partners to join events so that it could increase volunteer numbers and maximize community impact.

In addition to small-scale community projects in the United States, Timberland has encouraged collaboration on a global scale. In 2017, Timberland invited Vans (a sister brand, as part of VF Corporation) and Patagonia to support its work to re-introduce organic cotton farming to Haiti. The effort builds on Timberland’s successful partnership with Smallholder Farmer’s Alliance (SFA), which planted five million trees in five years in Haiti while improving the lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

Through Timberland’s efforts to engage business partners in community service and its Haiti cotton-farming work, it is proving that acting on company values can benefit communities and strengthen business relationships at the same time.

Read the full article about corporate service by Colleen Vien  at Stanford Social Innovation Review