This year has been one for the books. In 2018, Mediafly acquired Alinean, grew our employee count by 33%, won MarTech’s Breakthrough Award for Best Content Sharing Platform, was named to Inc. 5000’s List of Fastest Growing Companies, was recognized on Inc.’s Best Workplaces of 2018, was ranked 1st place on Crain’s Best Place to Work in Chicago for small business and #7 overall, and welcomed four new babies into the Flyer family (wow!).
Amidst the seemingly endless celebrations and excitement, “Mediafly Cares” was born as an internal philanthropy program dedicated to improving the community around us, elevating Mediafly’s corporate citizenship, and fostering cross-team collaboration and company culture. As Mediafly continues to grow and expand, we believe in counting our lucky stars and evolving the world around us by giving back. In the program’s inaugural year, we’ve chosen to focus on events that encourage the contribution of time, effort and talents as opposed to monetary donations and have made it a point to ensure remote employees are actively involved. Check out some of the awesome events we took part in this year:
On Thursday, March 22nd, Mediafly joined business partner Salesforce.com at their Chicago office for their quarterly volunteer day project with Together We Rise, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of children in foster care. The foundation has provided thousands of foster youth across the country with new bicycles, college supplies, and suitcases so that children do not have to travel from home to home with their belongings in a trash bag.
During our time at the Salesforce.com office, we decorated duffel bags for foster children and stuffed them with teddy bears, hygiene kits, and blankets. Children deserve more than to be living out of a trash bag, and each item in the bag helps restore a sense of childhood and safety.
On Thursday, May 24th, 50 Flyers put on Red Noses to raise awareness and funds for children in need. Red Nose Day is a national fundraising campaign to end child poverty and benefits Comic Relief USA, an organization that harnesses the power of entertainment to drive positive change.
Since its launch in 2015, Red Nose Day has sold 30 million of the campaign’s iconic Red Noses and raised over $100 million in the U.S., positively impacting the lives of more than 8.3 million children living in poverty. Money raised through the Red Nose Day campaign has supported programs in all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and 34 countries internationally. It has helped to fund numerous programs to ensure that children in need are safe, healthy, and educated, including providing more than 32 million meals for hungry American children. Both at home and abroad, Red Nose Day funds have also helped to deliver:
- Essential medical services for more than 6.7 million children
- Educational support for more than 850,000 children
- Care for more than 60,000 homeless children and young people
Allowing us to step out of the office, this annual event took place at Montrose Harbor on June 3rd in Chicago, and the weather was paw-fect. For our inaugural efforts, Mediafly had representation from many different departments and helped contribute to$265,000 raised at the event. We joined over one thousand pet lovers (and hundreds of dogs) for live music, food, giveaways, and some exercise too. Through their community efforts, Paws Chicago has reduced homeless pet euthanasia rates in Chicago by 84%. They also found loving homes for over 45,000 animals in 2017 alone!
This summer, we added writing sessions to the company calendar for Flyers to take a few minutes out of their day to write letters to our troops. We brought in Thank You cards, stickers, paper, markers, and more to create fun and thoughtful letters thanking our troops for their service. Remote employees were mailed card-making materials and took advantage of video conferencing technology during the writing sessions to participate alongside their colleagues in the office.
Since 2003, Operation Gratitude has sent more than 2 million Operation Gratitude care packages to deployed troops, veterans, new recruits, and first responders. The goal is to include several letters and colorful drawings in every care package, and tell our heroes “WE CARE!” Writing letters is a meaningful way for Americans to show support for all who serve.
Over the past year, Mediafly has supported Ronald McDonald House Charities of Chicagoland by collecting thousands of metal tabs commonly found on soda, soup, and other aluminum cans. These pop tabs are recycled by United Scrap Metal, and Ronald McDonald House receives the market value of the recycled metal plus a charitable match from United Scrap Metal. This is such an easy way to contribute. It’s a small action every day that builds up to make a large contribution over time. We have tab collection bars in our company kitchen, right next to the stocked refrigerator of La Croix and soda. We’ve even had some employees begin saving their tabs at home!
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