Winner: JetBlue Airways - Community Connection through JetBlue
JetBlue started with a mission to bring humanity back to air travel. Because of this commitment and a culture of service, JetBlue crew-members have joined to inspire humanity through volunteerism.
JetBlue and its crew-members work together to reach company-wide goals of advancing STEM and aviation education, promoting literacy among under-served and low-income youth and creating a cleaner, greener planet as well as aligning with local projects in the cities it serves.
With that in mind, five years ago, JetBlue’s crew-members launched Community Connection—a crew-member volunteer program dedicated to aligning corporate giving with crew-member passions. Since its inception, more than 3,384 crew-members have logged 335,354 hours. It is the goal of Community Connection for crew-members to volunteer in their local communities to advance JetBlue’s mission to inspire humanity.
For every 25 hours a crew-member volunteers, JetBlue will donate a round-trip travel certificate to the crew-members’ charity of choice. JetBlue uses the rewards system as an incentive for crew-members to capture their hours as most volunteers serve for the sake of serving. As the crew-members discovered they had these reward opportunities, they began donating more than $1M worth of tickets to charities across the Americas.
During the fourth year of the program, 1,611 crew-members logged 105,272 hours for 1,964 non-profit organizations. Crew-members who participated in the program averaged 65 hours. In 2013, JetBlue had 344 Presidential Volunteer Service Award winners.
Honorable Mentions:
• AT&T - Aspire Accelerator
• Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide - Water Story