Five Minutes with Shutterfly, Inc.

Companies that make philanthropic investments often reap lasting benefits. One of Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s corporate partners, Shutterfly Inc., is already experiencing the impact of its charitable investment. Founded in 1999, Shutterfly, the leading Internet-based social expression and personal publishing service, made a contribution of stock from its initial public offering and created its corporate advised fund in 2006. Motivated and inspired by the Redwood City company’s lead, a volunteer team of Shutterfly employees launched the Shutterfly Foundation and has made 30 grants totaling $300,000 to nonprofits in California, North Carolina and Arizona.

Starting a corporate foundation from scratch, managing grantmaking programs and involving employees in volunteer days can be challenging for any company. We spent a few minutes with Doug Galen, senior vice president, business and corporate development at Shutterfly, to find out how things went in the company’s first year of philanthropy, what lessons were learned and what he hopes to accomplish going forward as the Shutterfly Foundation continues to grow.

Describe the mission and vision of Shutterfly’s community relations work. 

The vision of the Shutterfly Foundation aligns with our company vision: to help people share life’s joy. We implement this vision through our mission: to help local organizations that focus on children’s education and family wellness. Beyond that framework, our goal is to engage our employees and allow them to make the decisions on how to better impact the communities where we live

What is the focus of Shutterfly’s strategic giving program?  

A big part of our initial focus was to get our employees involved as much as possible in running their foundation. In combination with Shutterfly executives, we outlined three principles. For starters, the foundation would be employee run and executives would not call all the shots. Secondly, it would benefit nonprofit organizations serving communities where Shutterfly employees live and work. Currently, these communities include the Bay Area, Mecklenburg County in North Carolina and Maricopa County in Arizona. And finally, foundation dollars would make a material impact on organizations funded, meaning that at least initially, smaller organizations would be invited to partner with Shutterfly.

Employees determined that the foundation would complete one grant cycle in addition to one large-scale employee volunteer opportunity annually. It was amazing to see our employees in action. Within four months of our first year, our foundation team managed, reviewed and awarded five grants and executed an employee volunteer day. In September of that year, grants were awarded and grantees were invited to an all company meeting to share stories about the foundation’s funding impact on their organizations. The event gave employees a chance to see firsthand that a seed grant of IPO stock can grow to impact communities on a local and regional level. The foundation team added another surprise to the meeting by selecting 10 employees at random to give $1,000 to an organization of their choice.

Less than 30 days later, our employees amazed me again. More than 30 percent of the entire Shutterfly staff participated in our first ever volunteer event. Despite the fact we were heading into our busy holiday season, Bay Area employees took time to give back to their community by painting and cleaning a local homeless shelter. Additionally, because Halloween was near, employees brought decorations, costumes and crafts for the shelter’s children to enjoy. That day we saw our true sense of purpose. Other employee activities that year included participation in the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge, Holiday Adopt-A-Family and a Thanksgiving canned food drive. It is incredibly rewarding to see our employees embrace the foundation’s purpose.

Who are your community partners?

Shutterfly partnered with Silicon Valley Community Foundation to help create our foundation structure, develop a grantmaking program and insure a fair and equitable process for awarding grants. The community foundation was instrumental in helping a small program like ours develop a great foundation structure to build upon for years to come. Other first-year community partners included City at Peace and Charlotte Right Moves for Youth in North Carolina; and Bay Area Video Coalition, Big Brothers Big Sisters Bay Area and Community School of Music and Art in the Bay Area. Our 2010 partners included Maricopa County, Arizona nonprofits Quest for Kids, A New Leaf and Phoenix Youth at Risk.

What were some of the big lessons learned for the first year?

No matter how busy their schedules, people want to get involved and make a difference in their communities. We had more than one third of our employees come out for our volunteer event in October.

What is on the horizon?

We encourage employee volunteerism and the practice of inviting artists, photographers and inspirational storytellers to meet with staff and inspire creativity, building on Shutterfly’s culture of innovation and employee participation. We expect to see even more employees this year out giving of their time in local communities.

For more information on the Shutterfly Foundation visit Shutterfly’s web site or contact foundation@shutterfly.com.  You can also link directly to the corporate giving or corporate foundation web sites of any of our 40-plus corporate fund advisors by clicking on the corporate partners page. 

A range of assets, including stock and real estate, may be used to establish or add to a corporate advised fund. Additionally, the community foundation is a pioneer in using pre-IPO stock to create corporate giving programs.  Click here for more information about corporate advised funds. To make changes or additions to your corporate advised fund, contact us at donate@siliconvalleycf.org or 650.450.5517.