Building Healthy Communities

I’m very glad to have returned to sunny Atlanta after spending a couple of days in rain-drenched New York this week.  Don’t get me wrong, I always enjoy time in Manhattan - for the people watching if nothing else - but fighting for a cab in a NY downpour is not a skill I’ve mastered as a native-born Georgian.  Despite the dreary weather, I had a series of productive meetings about a variety of aspects of the Foundation’s work, but what I keep thinking about is some time I spent in a Home Depot store with several intellectually disabled associates.  They were hired through a program called Ken’s Krew (a/k/a Ken’s Kid’s), named after Ken Langone, one of the co-founders of The Home Depot and  the person who originally funded the organization.  Through Ken’s Krew, The Home Depot employs associates who have a variety of intellectual and developmental disabilities in about 55 of our stores.  The Foundation is proud to be able to provide significant grant support to the organization to help fund the job coaches who train the employees when they are hired and then provide support as needed after they get settled into their jobs.

As I type the word “disabilities,” I can’t help but hesitate a bit.  The three men I met yesterday obviously had very different skill sets, but they were also very clearly employees who are valued by their managers and are making significant contributions to the teams in their stores.   “Andy,” was a tall young Asian man, who had just received a platinum award for providing outstanding service to his customers, having moved through the silver and gold levels of recognition.  If I had come across him while shopping as a customer, I doubt I would have realized he had been hired through any kind of “special” program.  “Michael” in the garden department, however, has more difficulty communicating and wouldn’t look me in the eye while we talked. He did tell me, however, that he has won several gold medals in swimming at the Special Olympics.  He knew, though, how to help customers find what they wanted in his department and was very proud (as he should be) of the way his aisle and the plants looked.  Michael told me his supervisor liked him because he was always there when he is supposed to be and would always do whatever needed to be done.  What more could any employer ask of someone who works for them?  My conversation with Michael was brief because he was anxious to get back to helping customers.  Finally, “Jim,” a six-year associate who helps customers out of the store with their purchases.  He came across as a real New Yorker - a little gruff, a little cocky - picture Danny Devito with an orange apron.  He recently visited the Home Depot store where he was originally hired before he transferred to this store, and they asked him to come back to work there.  He said he liked his current store because everyone was nice, and it was an easy train ride for him.  He lives with his parents, but was very proud that he got to his job independently.

The Home Depot is certainly not alone in hiring intellectually and developly disabled people.  Whenever we talk about these employers, though, the discussion is often about the service the companies are providing to individuals who wouldn’t otherwise be able to find employment or have a structured and productive way to spend their days.  I’m pretty sure, though, that The Home Depot and any other such employer is getting much more than it is paying for.  Not only is this a great community outreach program that shows that the company has a heart, it is also a way to build morale by showing the associates that they work for a company that they can be proud of.

More importantly, though, the company is recognizing the skills of someone who is defined by their lack of skills.  This may sound trite, but that may be because it is true.  Each of the associates I met had different strengths, ranging from having an engaging personality and enjoying helping customers to being dependable and keeping the racks of seed packets in order to having the physical muscle to help customers out with heavy products.  Because of that willingness to define people by what they can offer rather than what they can’t, we create a place where our associates and our neighbors can feel good about coming.  By any measure, I think that’s quite a return on the investment.

There’s quite a lot going on around the world - now and every day - that makes me pause and remember how fortunate I am to have a healthy family, live in a warm house and have a good job.  If you do a quick scan of the newspaper, and really think about what the reports are telling us about the lives other people are living - think about them in not in terms of numbers, but in terms of individuals with families, friends and emotions - it can get overwhelming fairly quickly.   All of this sounds cliche, I realize, but if you come at it rationally, you might come to the conclusion that whatever you do is never going to be enough.

Another way to come at it, as many have done for centuries, is to take care of your own first.  Often that means your family.  I think in many ways that makes good sense - a family takes care of itself and then doesn’t need to look outside for help.  You also know your family, so perhaps you are better able to see what will be most helpful to them.  At The Home Depot, that’s exactly what we do.  And we have a lot of people in our family, about 300,000 in fact.

Because we are so big, we had to create a structure for our home-grown charity, and we call it The Homer Fund after the company’s mascot, Homer (you may remember him - overalls and baseball cap with a big nose).  The Fund is an amazing demonstration of how a company’s values, such as providing outstanding customer service and giving back to our communities,  can remain core to its culture, even as it grows at an astounding rate.  Our core values include taking care of our associates, which means taking care of our family.

The Homer Fund provides emergency assistance to our associates when they need it - when they can’t pay their basic living expenses because of an unforeseen situation, like an illness or accident or a natural disaster.  Grants from the Fund provide a bridge for our associates to help them get over the rough spots they encounter.  To help illustrate what we do, imagine an associate’s husband or child becomes sick, she misses work, meaning she misses her paycheck, and has to pay for the doctor and prescriptions.  Maybe she also has to pay to eat and park at the hospital for a few days.   It can all snowball very quickly, and it’s not unusual for her to find that her rent money has been eaten up by these unexpected bills when the first of the month comes round.  That’s where the Fund can step in and help her get caught up on her bills and relieve the financial stress so she can focus on her family.  On top of that, if her co-workers pass the hat to help her out, the Fund will even match the amount raised $2 for $1.  It’s an amazing program - one that helped more than 7,300 associates and their families in 2009, with grants of $11.1 million.  Each one of the 35,000 associates who has been helped by the Fund since 1999 has a story - a very personal, often heartbreaking story - and because of the Fund, many of those stories had a far happier ending than they otherwise would have.

But that’s not the really cool thing.  The really cool - almost unbelievable fact - is that the Fund is a charity supported exclusively by associates of The Home Depot (The Home Depot Foundation contributes to the Fund by matching donations made by associates).  Fully 64%  - that’s 180,000 individuals - contribute to The Homer Fund.  They support it because they can see the difference it has made in the lives of their co-workers - their friends.  They understand the situations their friends are facing and know that a little help at the right moment will go a very long way.  The power of the Fund isn’t in large contributions or huge grants amounts, but in everyone coming together to give what they can to take care of each other.   Most are giving a dollar or two out of their paycheck every two weeks.  Some of them can’t afford more than that, but that’s what you do to help family.