For Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, corporate social responsibility rests on four pllars – promoting responsible consumption, support education, cultivating diversity and inclusion, and local market giving. So how’s it doing?
The nation’s No. 1 wine and spirits distributor published its report card yesterday, in the form of its annual CSR report.
Of course, SGWS donated product – more than 50,000 cases – for events benefiting charities in the markets it serves. It’s VolunCheers program, which tracks employee volunteering and giving, grew to 5,840 registered users, creating of 303 volunteer events, more than 17,000 volunteer hours and donation of $56,600. The company notes that “Since the advent of VolunCheers Online, our employees have been able to regularly post and track their volunteerism, and in turn, we as a Company have gained greater visibility into the amount of time our employees are devoting to volunteer involvement.”
Employees selected Feeding America, Operation Gratitude and the Humane Society as recipients of SGWS’s 2019 Holiday Giving Campaign’s matching contributions. The three charities together received $25,000 in matching grants from the company.
To encourage volunteering, SGWS has a VolunCheer of the Month and of the Year program to recognize employees who “are not only going above and beyond to get volunteer events going in their communities but to leverage VolunCheers Online.
John Berry, the regional administrator for SGWS Louisiana, was named VolunCheer of the Year. He organized a volunteer event where teams sorted more than 2,000 pounds of beads for resale to support Arc of Greater New Orleans, which is committed to securing opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities. SGWS donated $5,000 to support the charity.
In terms of promotion responsible consumption, the SGWS-affiliated Youth Alcohol Awareness & Education Program brought AlcoholEdu for High School alcohol safety education course to 1,770 students in 28 South Florida high schools.
The company supported education by contributing $150 million to Step Up for Students, which provides scholarships so low-income students can attend the school that best meets their learning needs. SGWS’s contribution benefitted 21,552 pupils.
It continued its support of Florida International University’s Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management and inaugurated its sponsorship of the University of Miami Business School’s Distinguish Leaders Lecture Series with a $100,000 donation.
To promote diversity and inclusion, the company’s support of Women of Hospitality Mentor & Scholarship Program reached more than 260 female students in 10 South Florida high schools, who learned about hospitality career paths.
Through Step Up Dallas, SGWS provided on-campus career panels, college preparedness and career conferences, a hospitality field trip, mentoring sessions, and professional development opportunities hosted across four Dallas partner schools.
The company supported several charitable events, including the Food Network & Cooking Channel South Beach Wine & Food Festival, which raised nearly $2 million to support the Univeristy of Miami’s Chaplin Schoo. As similar effort in New York City.benefited the Food Bank for New York City and No Kid Hungry. In Las Vegas, the company entered its 45th year as host and founder of UNLVino, which raises scholarship funds for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ (UNLV) Harrah College of Hospitality.
In addition to its own signature events, SGWS partnered with its suppliers to support their charitable initiatives in SGWS markets.
Partnering with Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, the company sponsored Women in Leadership: Expanding Influnce & Leadiang Change program at Columbia University’s Business School. There were 17 graduates of the program representing eight WSWA member companies, including 10 from Southern Glazer’s.
Forty children of SGWS employees received scholarships of $1,000 to $3,000 each for post-secondary education.
In support of its sustainability initiatives, SGWS partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency’s SmartWay Transport Partner program to measure, benchmark and improve freight transportation efficiency. The company also implemented a number of steps to make its warehouses more energy efficient, inbcluding replacing propane-powered forklift with electric ones, reducing 60,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from the work environment for each forklift replaced.
All new warehouse designs will include installation of LED lighting and control technologies such as timers and photocells. SGWS noted that LED lights use about 75% less enegy and last 25 times longer than incandescent lighting.