Five Minutes with Shutterfly, Inc.

Companies that make philanthropic investments often reap lasting benefits. One of Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s newest corporate family members, Shutterfly Inc., the leading Internet-based social expression and personal publishing service, is seeing early fruits of its charitable investment.  Founded in 1999 and based in Redwood City, Shutterfly made an initial contribution of stock from its initial public offering and created a corporate advised fund in September 2006. Motivated and inspired by the company’s lead, a volunteer team of Shutterfly employees launched the Shutterfly Foundation less than a year later.   

Starting a corporate foundation from scratch, releasing 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 learn a little about how things went in their first year of philanthropy, what they learned and what they hope to accomplish for 2008.

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 California Bay Area and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. 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 in 2007.  It was amazing to see our employees in action. Within four months, our foundation team managed, reviewed and awarded five grants and executed an employee volunteer day.  Last September, 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 in 2007 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.

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 for 2008?

We are excited to start again in 2008. In June, Shutterfly Foundation will award seven $10,000 grants in the Bay Area and Mecklenburg County. 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.