Target Donates $300 Million to the Fight Against COVID-19

Target

Back in March, Target announced their $10 million relief effort as part of their $300 million commitment to their team. Since then, Target has been collaborating closely with organizations to align support accordingly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Part of Target’s $300 million commitment will go to directly benefiting employees and their families.  Target pledged to increase its industry-leading pay by $2 an hour for its frontline workers until at least May 2nd.  Additionally, frontline workers over the age of 65, are pregnant or those with underlying medical conditions have been given up to 30 days paid leave.  This comes on top of expanding back-up care for all team members, temporarily waiving its absenteeism policy and covering quarantine and confirmed illness pay.  Bonuses have been given to 20,000 hourly store leads who manage individual departments.  Finally, $1 million will be donated to the Target Team Member Giving Fund, which was established in 2018, to assist team members who are most impacted by coronavirus

In state and local communities, Target is dedicating $5 million to foundations that support nonprofits addressing the greatest needs in their area, particularly for vulnerable, underserved and under-resourced communities.  Foundations receiving funds from Target include the Seattle Foundation’s COVID-19 Response Fund, which supports local orgs deploying emergency resources such as financial support and childcare, as well as the Greater New Orleans Foundation Disaster Response and Restoration Fund and its network of community organizations taking care of the elderly, homeless and more.

As part of their national response efforts, Target is giving $3 million to support national nonprofits assisting with response and recovery for impacted communities. The Center for Disease Philanthropy is one national organization that has received support from Target to continue their work building nonprofits’ response capabilities in addressing needs of the most vulnerable populations. Another recipient is Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization with a network of more than 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries.

Target is also mounting a global response, committing $1 million to support organizations that help to provide critical medical equipment and supplies to regions worldwide. These organizations include Project ECHO, an organization providing tele-medicine capabilities to remote locations and vulnerable communities in India and throughout the world; and UNICEF, which is delivering life-saving health supplies, building water and hygiene facilities and keeping kids connected to education while contributing to efforts to stop the spread of the virus.

In addition, Target supports the United Nations Foundation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund. The company is also one of the participating partners of Global Citizen’s One World: Together At Home, the global special event to support frontline health workers and the World Health Organization. Target’s grant will support ongoing work to track and understand the spread of the coronavirus, provide care to patients and essential supplies to frontline workers, and accelerate efforts to develop vaccines, tests and treatments.

For more information, please click here.

Comcast’s Innovative Response to COVID-19

Comcast

COVID-19 has had a tremendous impact on nearly every aspect of our daily lives.  For this reason, Comcast, NBCUniversal and Sky are working hard to do everything they can to support their customers, employees and communities during this unprecedented time. Some of Comcast’s relief efforts are:

• Committing $500 Million: Across the business, Comcast has committed $500 million to support its employees through continued pay and benefits where operations have been paused or impacted.

• Keeping Customers Connected: Keeping the internet accessible and reliable is more important than ever. Comcast’s technology and engineering teams are working tirelessly to support the company’s network operations 24/7 to ensure network performance and reliability.

• Offering Internet Essentials Free to New Customers: Eligible new customers will receive 60 days of Internet Essentials service, the nation’s largest, most comprehensive internet adoption program for low-income households, without charge. Additionally, the company has increased the speed of this internet service for all customers.

• Increasing Access to News & Information: The enterprise’s NBC and Sky news teams are working around the clock to keep the world informed, bringing news and information to more people than ever.

• Providing Free Educational Resources: In partnership with Common Sense Media, the company has curated thousands of hours of free educational programming into an education destination for Xfinity video customers to support remote learning for kids K-12.

• Delivering More Entertainment: The enterprise is bringing great entertainment home to consumers in new ways – offering movies on demand on the same day as their theatrical releases and making more free content available to X1 video customers.

To learn more about Comcast’s response to COVID-19, click here.

Coca-Cola Relief Effort Encompasses Over $100M in Community Support

Coca-Cola

Supporting Communities and First Responders

The Coca-Cola system, with production facilities and franchise bottling operations across the United States, continues to make and deliver the essential beverages local stores and communities need during this challenging time. But the company, its local bottlers, suppliers and employees are doing more than delivering drinks in the communities they call home. Local teams are finding ways to re-deploy resources to help meet the needs of first responders, healthcare workers, community organizations and more.

For example, the company is redirecting some of its global advertising budget to support COVID-19 prevention and relief in markets around the world. The Philippines was the first of many markets to pause advertising for all brands and redirect media spending to help provide personal protective equipment and beverages for health workers, deliver food to vulnerable families, and support small retailers in affected communities.

Supporting Foodservice Partners

To help support the restaurant community – an industry that employs more than 15 million Americans – Coca-Cola North America is providing its more than 8,000 employees across the U.S. and Canada with a $100 delivery credit for either DoorDash, Grubhub, UberEATS or Skip The Dishes to place meal delivery orders during this challenging time. Coca-Cola North America plants also have implemented routines to order takeout meals from foodservice customers as a thank-you to associates working hard to produce Coca-Cola products. This effort adds up to an immediate injection of nearly $1 million into the restaurant industry.

Coca-Cola joined forces with industry peers to support #TheGreatAmericanTakeout initiative, which encourages Americans to support the restaurant industry by ordering delivery or takeout meals. Coca-Cola is encouraging employees, bottling partners and industry partners to participate, and using its social channels to promote the movement. On April 14, The Great American Takeout gave away $10,000 in gift cards to people who order takeout. One grand prize recipient won free takeout for a year in the form of a $5,000 gift card, while 100 more winners will receive a $50 gift card, all courtesy of The Coca-Cola Company. Learn more.

Coca-Cola also launched the Coca-Cola Rapid Response Resource online portal to give restaurants access to free information and resources – from tips for optimizing takeout and drive-thru operations, to updated COVID-19 safety guidelines, to information on third-party delivery services and more.

Together We Can: Using Social and Digital Assets for Good

Coca-Cola is taking several actions to use advertising and marketing resources to spread solidarity. On April 6, Coca-Cola used company and brand social media handles to promote a message of support and togetherness, and will use the scale of Coca-Cola brand handles to share helpful information and meaningful messages from partner community organizations like the American Red Cross, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Salvation Army and Feeding America, among others.

Providing Supplies and Transportation to Help Make Masks for Healthcare Workers and Frontline Responders

In the Boston area, thousands of face shields are being assembled for delivery to medical centers around the region, with more in the works. Ray Dube, sustainability manager at Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast, saw an opportunity to provide much-needed logistics and supply chain support to help nonprofit makerspace “MakeIt Labs” produce face shields to protect front-line healthcare workers.

Dube connected MakeIt volunteers with Coca-Cola plastic recycler UltrePet and packaging manufacturer EasyPak to donate and transport clean PET plastic sheeting to make the specialty shields. EasyPak donated approximately 6,000 pounds of clear PET sheeting, and Coke Northeast delivery trucks transported the Coke system’s first large-scale donation of PET sheets.

In partnership with MakeIt Labs and packaging supplier Sonoco, Coca-Cola also helped transport 6,000 pounds of plastic sheeting from Sonoco’s warehouse in North Carolina to Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Tech students and other groups will use the plastic sheeting to make 50,000+ plastic surgical shields for healthcare workers in the Atlanta area.

Another supplier, Filmquest, has generously agreed to donate 1,200 pounds of polyester film that will be assembled by MakeIt Lab volunteers into plastic surgical shields and donated to hospitals.

Helping Supply Hand Sanitizer and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

The Atlantic Coca-Cola Bottling Company is responding to an urgent request from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for hand sanitizer and for donations of personal protective equipment (PPE) by hosting a drop-off location at their offices and rewarding people who donate with free eight-packs of Coca-Cola’s new AHA sparkling water. The Coke bottler is producing hand sanitizer at its Atlantic, Iowa bottling facility and donating it  to the University of Iowa Hospital System.

Additionally, two suppliers – Western Container and Southeastern Container – are working with Coca-Cola bottlers and alcohol distilleries to create plastic bottles that can be filled with hand sanitizer solution and donated to healthcare and public safety workers. Western Container shipped two truckloads (over 200,000 units) of 500-ml bottles to Whiskey Hollow Distillery in Valley View, Texas. These bottles will be custom labeled by the distillery as donated hand sanitizer to Texas-area hospitals.

Providing Financial and In-Kind Support to Community Organizations

The Coca-Cola Foundation, the philanthropic arm of The Coca-Cola Company, is awarding $13.5 million in grants to five nonprofit organizations working on the front lines of the U.S. and Canadian humanitarian response to the coronavirus pandemic. The latest grants support organizations focused on providing relief to first responders and residents of economically disadvantaged communities, both in the company’s hometown of Atlanta and across North America. Read more about the organizations receiving the grants here.

For more information on what Coca-Cola is doing to battle COVID-19, click HERE.

ExxonMobil Response to COVID-19 Includes New Partnerships

ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil is working to help meet the needs of health care professionals fighting the COVID-19 pandemic on the front lines, as well as those socially distancing themselves at home. While those needs continue to evolve, the company remains focused on working to meet global energy demand. Below are just some examples of what ExxonMobil is doing to help fight COVID-19. For a more comprehensive list of initiatives, please click here.

Protecting travelers and TSA officers

To protect travelers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers during the COVID-19 pandemic, TSA needed thousands of gallons of disinfectant – and they needed it quickly. Thanks to close coordination between ExxonMobil, one of the largest producers of isopropyl alcohol, a key sanitizer ingredient, and Univar Solutions, one of the largest chemical distributors, the surface disinfectant was produced and distributed to TSA in record time, in just days, rather than the weeks it would have taken before the pandemic.

ExxonMobil is increasing production of IPA to help meet higher demand resulting from the pandemic. Its chemical plant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has recently been able to achieve an increased monthly production level which equates to enough IPA to supply a monthly equivalent of nearly 50 million 4-ounce bottles of medical-grade sanitizer.

The scale and urgency of TSA’s request required detailed planning and a finely tuned logistics supply chain to manufacture, package and rapidly deliver the product to airports around the country.

From the Baton Rouge facility, the IPA was shipped to Univar Solutions’ packaging plant in Conroe, TX. From there the disinfectant was mixed, bottled and swiftly shipped north to TSA’s distribution facility near the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

That disinfectant is now being distributed to airports nationwide, helping keep travelers, medical personnel and TSA officers safe. And ExxonMobil continues to maximize production of isopropyl alcohol and other important products needed to combat COVID-19 in communities across the country.

Maximizing supply of IPA—key ingredient in medical hand sanitizer

When it comes to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, it doesn’t matter the size of the company. Everyone has a role to play.

For ExxonMobil – one of the world’s largest producers of isopropyl alcohol (IPA), a key ingredient in medical hand sanitizer – it means getting the product to where it’s needed most. For E.T. Browne – the small, family-owned manufacturer of Palmer’s® personal care products – it means pivoting its business to make medical hand sanitizer for U.S. military personnel and medical first responders.

The decision to repurpose its factory in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, from making lip balm and body lotion to making hand sanitizer wasn’t the hardest part for E.T. Browne. It was obtaining key ingredients like IPA, which is in high demand due to the global emergency. Without IPA, E.T. Browne would not only be unable to make the hand sanitizer, but it also faced the prospect of shutting down its factory, which employs nearly 300 workers. That’s when ExxonMobil, whose Baton Rouge chemical facility is home to the world’s largest plant producing IPA, agreed to help.

ExxonMobil is maximizing its supply of IPA and other chemical products used in making a range of essential tools in the fight against COVID-19. ExxonMobil is also planning donations to other area hospitals. For ExxonMobil, supplying isopropyl alcohol is standard business, but doing so in this case required a swift response and a high priority.

Isopropyl alcohol is just one of many products helping to keep medical workers safe and people healthy. IPA, as an effective disinfectant, can be found in hand sanitizers, alcohol wipes and disinfectant sprays – products that are important in fighting the spread of COVID-19.

Thanking Houston-area COVID-19 responders with meals, masks

ExxonMobil is providing thousands of meals and medical face masks for Houston-area health care workers, police officers and firefighters responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, in a new initiative that brings total contributions for Houston-area relief to $450,000.

ExxonMobil is contributing $100,000 for personal protective equipment, such as medical masks, to Texas Medical Center member hospitals, the Houston Police Foundation, the Fire Fighters Foundation of Houston and the Spring Fire Department.

Another $100,000 will go to the TX Restaurant Relief Fund for the preparation and delivery of approximately 6,000 meals for frontline workers at these organizations. Prominent Houston chefs will participate in the effort that will enable participating restaurants to bring needed work to furloughed staff. The Texas Restaurant Association’s nonprofit arm established the TX Restaurant Relief Fund last month to provide immediate financial support to the state’s independent restaurateurs and their employees who have been heavily impacted by the loss of business due to COVID-19.

The support comes in addition to its recent contribution of $250,000 to the Houston Food Bank and Montgomery County Food Bank to provide about one million meals to Houston-area residents.

ExxonMobil, which has about 11,000 employees living and working the greater Houston area, remains focused on keeping its workforce safe and healthy to maintain its operations and maximize production of materials critical to the global response.