Glen Raven believes that companies have a big role to play in community education.
The textile manufacturing company was founded in 1880 with a single manufacturing facility and has since grown to a global company. Headquartered in Burlington, NC, they produce a range of fabrics but are best known for their Sunbrella product line.
A privately held company, Glen Raven has long prioritized education, both for their own employees and the community. “Over the years we’ve responded to different employee and community needs,” said CEO Leib Oehmig. “Thirty years ago, we pioneered a program aimed at literacy because we knew it was a need among our own associates. Today those needs look different – and so does our response.”
In 2021, Glen Raven shifted its impact approach to focus on a single issue that impacted every single associate – as well as the health of their own business. Early childhood education, which Glen Raven defines as the elementary school years, became the company’s universal cause. And as longtime advocates of education, they aim to engage in a movement that drove other companies and community partners to make critical investments of both time and resources. They also want to lead a movement for education within their own company walls.
“Our biggest asset is the associates who work hard every day,” said Oehmig. “And we know that education for their families is an issue that weighs heavily on their minds. We also know that the success of today’s students will help secure the long-term future of our company. We want committed, educated employees to help keep this business successful for another 150 years.”
The company set an ambitious goal – a 100% rate of employee volunteerism by 2025. “We know that’s ambitious. But we believe that our children deserve our best ambitions,” said Oehmig. The community impact team set about building a movement both inside and outside of the company walls. To reach their goal, Glen Raven established an intentional plan that would galvanize an education movement through strong external partnerships and high engagement among internal associates.
Internally, the team focused on processes that would enable every single associate to engage. They built a Community Impact Committee with representation from every US-based Glen Raven facility. The HR team established processes for tracking efforts within their existing payroll system. Company CFO Christine Matthews joined the Impact Committee as a corporate champion. Most importantly, leadership hosted a series of interviews with associates from a range of locations and jobs within the company to ensure that the plan aligned with the passions and interests of associates.
One critical challenge was how to make it easy for 100% of associates to engage in volunteerism during the workday. As a global manufacturing company, Glen Raven associates work a variety of job types, both on the manufacturing floor and in corporate offices. It was important to the company to offer volunteer time while employees were on the clock – but this would look different for each employee.
“We knew that it would be a challenge for associates to leave manufacturing facilities during the workday,” noted Matthews. “We considered what it would look like to bring volunteer opportunities to them.” The company opted to experiment with simple activities, such as setting up note-writing stations for local teachers in facility breakrooms. “If a large part of the company couldn’t participate, we knew that this movement would never take off,” said Matthews. “We will continue to find new ways that every associate can take a volunteer role in our community, regardless of their job.”
Equally important were the company’s external efforts. “We’ve traditionally not publicized our impact efforts,” notes Oehmig. “We’ve done them because we believe it’s the right thing to do – but we also recognize that business has a strong community voice and the responsibility to champion impact.” Like internal efforts, Glen Raven focused its external efforts on listening and building relationships first. They engaged at both a grasstops level with community and foundation leadership, as well as at a grassroots level, listening to what individual schools, faith communities and volunteer groups were already successfully doing.
The result was a pilot program with an elementary school less than a mile from Glen Raven’s corporate headquarters. “We believe that movements start with the individuals and organizations that work with students every day,” said Matthews. “It is important to us to start with the needs of the community – then we hope to scale these efforts much more widely.”
The company hopes that in just a few years, this pilot will be a model for other businesses and civic groups across the community. Oehmig adds, “The future success of our families, communities and businesses depends on how we support young children now. We truly believe that investing in their dreams and success is leading a long movement to a bright future.”
