Enterprise Philanthropy: Digital Tools Moving Brands Vision to Reality
Donations Raised
The Kendra Scott Foundation
November 1-30, 2023
Background on Kendra Scott
In 2002, Kendra Scott began designing jewelry and walked door to door selling it to stores on South Congress Avenue in her hometown of Austin, Texas. Fast forward 20 years and her company now has over 150 standalone retail stores and a booming e-commerce business. Further, her products are sold at Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and Bloomingdales.
As a fashion and lifestyle brand, Kendra Scott transformed women’s fashion using colorful and confidence-inspired designs of jewelry, home accessories, and beauty products. But the brand’s mission goes deeper than fashion trends, also being founded on “family and philanthropy.” Kendra Scott herself repeats the mantra “Doing good first and selling jewelry second.”
Founder Kendra Scott is a dedicated philanthropist with a strong history of supporting women’s and children’s causes. She has launched the Kendra Cares program in pediatric hospitals nationwide and hosted over 10,000 Kendra Gives Back events in her stores, generating considerable donations for local causes. And as an interesting side note, over 95 percent of Kendra Scott’s 2,000-person workforce are women, which has uniquely informed the company’s nonprofit commitments.
What is Enterprise Philanthropy?
Enterprise philanthropy uses multiple touchpoints to engage customers and employees in a brand’s philanthropic mission. Examples include workplace giving via paycheck, volunteer time for employees, donation capabilities for customers, and even creating a standalone foundation for grantmaking. In 2022 alone, Kendra Scott deployed an Enterprise Philanthropy strategy by pledging $1 million to Dell Children’s Medical Center Foundation, donating 42,000 pieces of jewelry to organizations in support of their fundraising efforts, and funding 4,067 research hours dedicated to improving the lives of those undergoing treatment for metastatic breast cancer through a grant with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. With the establishment of the Kendra Scott Foundation in early 2023, the team sought to deepen their investment to change the lives of women and youth and create a lasting impact for years to come.
Grant Making
Local Giving
Volunteering
Webstore & POS Micro-Donations
Cause Marketing
Grant-making is a percentage of our budget that’s being allocated to philanthropic gifts that we’re making.
Local giving is the community aspect where we’re meeting customers where they need us most, hosting give-back events in our stores, and making in-kind donations.
Also, cause marketing is extremely important. We have dedicated product suites with 20% of the proceeds going back to either our Kendra Scott Foundation or a designated beneficiary.
Finally we’ve seen huge success in introducing the opportunity for someone to round up their change both online and in-store.
Meet The Team Members Who Activated ChangeUp
As VP of Philanthropy and Belonging at Kendra Scott, Sheena Wilde is a visionary leader in corporate philanthropy.Sheena Wilde
Vice President, Philanthropy & Belonging
Kristi Carlson
Vice President IT Ecommerce, Marketing & EDW
Kristi Carlson is the Vice President of Ecommerce, Marketing, and Enterprise Data Warehouse Technologies at Kendra Scott. One of Kristi’s many responsibilities is helping the Kendra Scott philanthropy team integrate charitable efforts within their systems and technology.
Enterprise Philanthropy and E-commerce Working Together
The primary goal for the teams at Kendra Scott was to expand their Enterprise Philanthropy strategy in an exciting and new way: inviting customers to participate via donation-at-checkout prompts in POS and online. That’s where ChangeUp came in, and the top priority was ensuring customers could give back easily and seamlessly.
Kristi and her team also note that – because of how lightweight ChangeUp’s technology integration is – it impacts not only their customers but everyone at Kendra Scott.
Allowing e-commerce and philanthropy to work together quickly allowed customers to give back and make a difference through their purchases.
Customers Making an Impact: Micro-Donation Data and Reporting
It didn’t take long for the Kendra Scott team to see the impact of integrating ChangeUp. Their customers donated a total of $8,432.28 in April 2023 alone!
Here are other important data points to note:
- The average round-up was $0.64
- 13,108 customers elected to donate
- Customers had the option to choose between three featured charities: The Kendra Scott Foundation, The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and The Kindness Campaign.
April, 2023
0.64¢
AVERAGE ROUND-UP
13,108
DONATIONS
$8,432.28
DONATED
Hear the full success story in our LinkedIn Live session with Kendra Scott’s Sheena Wilde, Kristi Carlson, and ChangeUp CEO Robert Soderstrom Watch the recording here and schedule your personalized demo of ChangeUp today!
