2008 has been quite a year - I guess we picked a good time to launch our blog!
With the holidays in full swing and the ball getting ready to drop, we wanted to take a moment to say thanks to all of the FedEx folks who contribute to this blog and the readers who share their time (and opinions) with us.
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In challenging and uncertain economic times like the nation is currently facing, charitable giving is typically one of the first things to decline. In fact, when the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University surveyed fundraisers for its Summer 2008 Philanthropic Giving Index (PGI), 83 percent of respondents said the economy is having a negative effect on giving. Human service charities are likely to be especially hard hit, because demand increases while the funding tends to decline.
Have you ever thought about what a hungry child does over the weekends when she isn't at school to receive Title 1-funded breakfast and lunch? Unfortunately, hunger doesn't disappear over the weekend. Can you imagine how long those weekends must be? How can we possibly expect her to make good grades if she is missing meals? Recently, a story ran on the San Francisco/Oakland CBS affiliate about a great FedEx Backpack program in connection with the Alameda County Food Bank to deliver bags of food to students on
Once again, FedEx delivers! During this very tough economic time, FedEx exceeded their United Way goals both in Memphis, the headquarters of the company, and across the nation! The Memphis goal was $5.2 and we raised $5.4 million. The goal nationwide (from all of our OpCos) was $14.7 million and we raised OVER $15 million!! This is a tremendous accomplishment considering all that our employees and the nation are facing with increased costs and stock market failures.
Make no mistake, our advertising presence in 18 Super Bowls since 1989 has strategically allowed FedEx to establish itself as a household name. And it is indisputable that the Super Bowl is the only single event where an advertiser can reach a global audience of this size . . . last year almost 98 million people watched the game.
