(inspiring music) - Hello everyone, and welcome to a podcast panel brought to you by VCC. I'm your host for today, Gabrielle, and I'm so excited to be joined today by Derek Alley who's CEO of VCC, with Stacy Bruce who is President and Executive Director of Variety the Children's Charity of Texas, and also Eric Coleman who is Dallas Fort-Worth Regional Superintendent of KIPP DFW. Welcome everyone, and thank you for being here. - [Eric, Stacy, And Derek] Thank you. - Absolutely. Well, you know what? Of course. Let's go ahead and start by asking why is it important for large companies like VCC to give back to communities where they operate in? - Yeah, thanks Gabbie. And, it's a pleasure to be with everybody here today. And, you know, I think, obviously, being authentic about giving and being involved in community is critically important for all companies, regardless of size. But, in particular, I mean, large companies, sometimes, in the noise of your mission, of your business, you can get lost in the fact that, like, we're all still critical parts of the community, regardless of what industry you're in, community drives everything in our world. And, if you're not an active participant in that, whether it's at the local level or at a broader scale, you know, I think you're missing a great opportunity to not only fulfill a deeper mission, but also, you know, do real good that can be very much aligned with your corporate goals. - Oh, absolutely. And, you know, this is actually a great opportunity to dive in a little deeper, as we begin talking about, you know, real life examples of VCC giving back to the community. So, could you maybe just give us a little bit of information about VCC Cares? How did it all get started? - Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we are celebrating our 35th year in business as a company this year. And, we're really proud of, kind of, our history and embedded in our culture that all our employees are very thoughtful and active participants in giving back to the community. So, for 35 years we've been given back to the community. Back in 2014, we kind of took a step back and said, "you know," and our projects are spread out all across the country, and we have a distributed team, really, you know, across dozens of states. And we said, "there's there's a better way to tell the story of what we're doing, and actually being a little more coordinated in our efforts. We think we can multiply our impact, versus just, kind of, going about it, you know, in a more organic way," which we had done for many years. And so, in 2014 we founded the VCC Cares Foundation, which we thought it was important to have an outward facing brand that we could coalesce all of our, you know, our strategic missions that we believe are critically important, to make impact in, and, you know, get our team around, again, a cohesive mission. And so that, it's been, you know, a huge success. It's something we're very proud of. We were very focused, always focused on the fact that our giving, and the people that, you know, our friends and clients and vendors that help support our giving, all the dollars go directly to the nonprofits, and to the missions where the good work's happening. So, we're proud to have zero administrative overhead. All that's underwritten by VCC, and that the VCC Care's mission is really doing, you know, impactful and direct work in the community. - I'm so very glad to hear, cause it's very important to have that core mission at hand and, you know, thank you for sharing the story of how this foundation began. I guess the next natural question is just how does VCC Care see its role in creating community impact by supporting organizations like Variety and KIPP DFW? - Yeah, I mean, in some senses, like one of our main roles on its surface, can just be a facilitator. So, we find it's very rare to run across a person, a colleague, that doesn't wanna do good. I mean, I think at our, in your heart and soul, everybody wants to do a little bit of good, and especially if you can tie that in being around people that you either work around or you enjoy being around. And so, we're a facilitator, you know, through our events, our fundraising events, we think that, you know, by curating opportunities for people to give back. And then, we've aligned with, you know, great nonprofits, a couple obviously represented here today that, you know, otherwise, I think some of our friends and partners may not be aware of their missions, and so we wanna be, you know, a billboard of sorts for groups that we've aligned with, and that we think are really, you know, doing impactful work. - Well that's wonderful. This is a great opportunity to spotlight those missions. So, let's go ahead and talk a bit about Variety, the Children's Charity of Texas. Stacy, do you distinguish yourself as an organization serving children with special needs? And, could you maybe give us some examples of how your charity impacts your community? - Absolutely. First of all, thank you for having us, Derek. - Of course. - This is such an exciting day. - Variety the Children's Charity, is an incredible organization. We're actually an international organization, though we are federated, so everything that we do here in Texas, all the funds that we raise, stays right here in Texas to support kids with special needs and their families. And, one of the ways we do that is we're a greatly experiential organization. So, we have a summer camp and retreat center about an hour south of here. And, through experiential learning, we are working with kids to heal from tough trauma that maybe they have struggled with to heal their bodies, maybe from accidents, or from different types of disabilities that they live with. It's a great organization. We have a, our vision is that we envision a world without stigma and isolation for kids with special needs and their families, and it's corporations like VCC that are real, that allows us not only to provide the services by providing the funding, but also platforms like this to talk about our vision. We can't achieve our vision, without people like Derek and VCC Cares behind us. Again, not just providing funding, but also giving us a platform to talk. - Oh, Eric, let's go ahead and turn it over to KIPP DFW. Could you just tell us a little bit more about your mission, and how yours supports the community that surrounds it? - Okay, great. Thank you. So, thank you, so very much Derek and VCC for welcoming us to this space. So, KIPP DFW is part of a national network of high performing charter schools. And, our mission is we go into educationally underserved communities to try to provide options and opportunities for these families, educational wise. And so, our mission is to get all of our kids the opportunity for college, but not only college, but career and beyond. So, whatever choice for their life, it is that they want to do, we want to provide them the opportunity to do that. So, we try to provide joyful, academically rigorous spaces for our students to be able to be their best selves. And so, KIPP has the opportunity to do that, here in Dallas, in as I've learned what's called the Southern Sector of Dallas, not just necessarily South Dallas, because there's a whole different place, but we serve students in the Oak Cliff communities, and the Pleasant Grove communities. We currently have seven schools, serving over 3,500 students. - Oh, it's wonderful to hear. Well, you know, as we start wrapping up, this last question is for the whole group, and you know, that's what does corporate social responsibility mean to you and your organizations individually? Let's go ahead and start with you, Derek. - Okay, yeah. So, you know, I mean, corporate social responsibility can mean a lot of things. And, I think I would like to make the point that what's most important, you know, for us, and but as advice to anybody who's approaching that as a leader of an organization, again, small or large, is being really authentic about it. This isn't about virtue signaling, it's not about checking a box. If you approach your social responsibility. Again, we're part of a community, whether on a local, regional, or a national level. A community surrounds us all, and it's our responsibility to be in to be serving that community. And so, you know, from my perspective, and from our company's perspective, you know, we think about, just take our industry, we think about our industry, and we think about our country, and that we want to be creating opportunities for future generations and improving lives. And, that's why you see, you know, who some of the colleagues that are sitting with me today. I mean, we believe in the mission of children and supporting the families and really giving opportunity because we know that is gonna make our industry better. It's gonna make our company better, and it is gonna make our community certainly better if we're even a small part of, you know, being impactful, and creating opportunity for the future. - [Gabrielle] And, Stacy. - Corporate social responsibility have become so much to us as an organization, and to me as a professional, and it means several things, but I think most importantly it means that I'm not alone. That Variety the Children's Charity of Texas, is not alone, that children living with special needs are not alone, that Addie, who was born with cerebral palsy, who has very limited mobility, who can't communicate, that Addie's not alone, that with funds that are given to us through VCC Cares Foundation, we are able to purchase items and equipment that allows Addie to move alongside her siblings, that now allows Addie to to basically bike a 17 minute mile, when she couldn't even move as a child. So, in, addition to meaning we're not alone, it also allows us, again, to achieve our vision. So, that vision statement as a nonprofit, is that pie in the sky, this is what we want to achieve. It's almost unattainable. But, when we've got VCC Cares and other corporations that are so embedded in their communities, giving, again, this platform to communicate our need, we're not alone. That gives us one more leg up on achieving the goals that we need to achieve to, to meet our mission and our vision. So, thank you again, Derek. - Thank you. - [Gabrielle] And, Eric. - Yeah, so far for KIPP DFW, we look at CSR in two ways. Like one, I think as an organization, we have a social responsibility to make sure that we are providing opportunities in the communities that we serve, because we actually believe that education is liberation, right? So, and for corporations, this is an investment that we all are making. And so, one of the things that we, so that's a part on our end, I think for corporate partnerships and things of that nature, Like VCC companies, like medallion upstream, companies like Maverick Capital, who also support us in these things, they allow us the opportunity, again, to really give back to the communities that desperately need it. And, we should not, like, just rely on, like, family zip code should not determine their trajectory, right? And so, when companies like VCC invest and partner with us, that gives us an opportunity to make game changing, life-changing scenarios for our families and kids that we serve. - Well, thank you so much for joining us today to talk with VCC, Variety the Children's Charity in Texas, and also KIPP DFW. Thanks for tuning in. (inspiring music)
