Brighton Jones Named Small Business of the Year for Community Impact
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” – Dalai Lama
Last month, I was humbled to accept a special award on behalf of Brighton Jones. Seattle Business magazine named our firm Small Business of the Year as part of its Community Impact Awards.
Two Brighton Jones initiatives promote various channels for giving back and volunteering. With 1% for Compassion, we allocate one percent of our revenues to charitable causes. With Compassion in Action, we support our employees’ efforts to dedicate more time to volunteering and doing things for others.
Brighton Jones employees get unlimited time off for volunteering and donated hours volunteered are matched at $25/hour up to 40 hours per year. We also have a committee whose focus is to identify and organize service projects that employees can do in small groups throughout the year. More recently, we established the Brighton Jones Richer Life Foundation to give our broader network an opportunity to support both domestic and international projects.
Because of these efforts, our team volunteered 4,600 hours with 75 different organizations in 2017. And we haven’t slowed down in 2018—as an organization, we have volunteered more than 6,000 hours and donated approximately $300,000 to 93 organizations in which our employees and clients are involved.
We strive every day to align our clients’ time and money with their values and passions. Once we fully tap into that mission, we will unlock some serious impact in every community—local and global—we touch.
Day of Service
To mark our annual Day of Service, Brighton Jones employees, clients, and family partnered with Humble Design earlier this month to help organize, assemble, design, and paint items that will be used to furnish homes for families in need. Humble Design supports families emerging from homelessness by providing furnishings and design services to turn empty houses into clean, dignified, and welcoming homes.
Compassion Pods
We recently launched a new initiative, Compassion Pods, to promote internal philanthropy. Over the course of several weeks, small groups of Brighton Jones staff met to gain a better understanding of the causes their colleagues care about, learn about new issues and organizations, and consider some of the same questions our advisors guide clients through when they are deciding where to donate money.
The groups thought strategically and creatively about ways to leverage a charitable gift for maximum impact. The resulting contributions—to organizations ranging from Mary’s Place to Junior Achievement to Children’s Cancer Association—reflect the passion and purpose of our team.
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