Special Blog Post By: Alisa Tantraphol, Corporate & Foundation Relations Manager
How does a company create a culture of giving? Through vision and a lot of spadework.
Marvell's Tate Tran is our 9th Brocade and 49ers MVC
At Marvell Semiconductor, the vision came from Tom Hayes, Vice President of Corporate Marketing. As an executive at Applied Materials, Tom saw the power of bringing people together for the right cause – Applied Materials raises over $1 million every year to support global hunger relief efforts.
Under Tom’s leadership, Marvell became a platinum-level sponsor of both Second Harvest Food Bank’s Holiday Food & Fund Drive and our summer Share Your Lunch campaign.
Convincing employees to rally behind the Second Harvest cause was a harder nut to crack. Marvell’s employees hail from all four corners of the globe, and while Second Harvest serves people living near Marvell’s headquarters in Santa Clara, Santa Clara isn’t necessarily the first place every employee thinks of when they think “home.”
Another challenge was that, although the scale of the local hunger problem is huge – for the 25% of the local population earning less than half of what it takes to make ends meet in the high-cost-of-living Bay Area, their next meal is never guaranteed – the problem is as hidden as it is far-reaching. It’s a problem, by and large, hidden behind closed doors…the doors of parents skipping meals so that their kids don’t have to go to be hungry.
Marvell’s first drive in 2008 raised $100 and 680 pounds of food; not stellar considering there are thousands of local employees.
Marvell's Red Envelope tree
Last year, Tate Tran, manager of corporate communications, took over the reins of coordinating the Holiday Food & Fund Drive at Marvell. Tate was determined to build on previous efforts to make Marvell’s drive as competitive on the community front as they are on the technology front.
It wasn’t easy, but Tate worked the internal communications channels to educate her colleagues. She brought in an element of competition, tasking each business unit with coming up with a raffle prize and then pitting them against each other to garner the most raffle tickets. And she began to identify champions within Marvell. Champions like Sal Torres, corporate counsel for Marvell, who took up a collection among his employees to purchase a PS3 to be raffled off as part of an event that raised over $5,000 in one day. Champions like Eric Barnachea, who manages the campus cafeteria, who volunteered his time and his chef’s to cook a gourmet meal at the home of the lucky winner of a raffle that generated thousands of dollars from selling $1 raffle tickets.
This holiday, now a veteran with two previous drives under her belt, Tate began to see the fruits of her labor. At this year’s Food & Fund Drive Competition, the energy was palpable. The competitive spirit was delivering amazing results. The HR team incorporated the culture of many of their colleagues by putting together a Red Envelope tree, with each raffle ticket earning an employee the right to choose a red envelope that might be filled with an instant win ticket or the winning Grand Prize ticket. Prizes such as wine, jewelry, and a weekend stay in San Francisco were donated by employees and their friends.
Competition among Marvell employees pays off for local families struggling to put food on the table. Tate Tran (pictured above in the gray sweater) is credited with tugging at her colleague’s hearts “while opening up their wallets” for the community.
The Misfits, a cross-functional team led by Eric, put together an $1,500 Las Vegas getaway package complete with a two-night stay in the Cosmopolitan, limo service to and from the airport, and gift certificates to STK, Milo’s, and a day spa. It speaks to the changing culture at Marvell that the winner of the Las Vegas trip, Jim Rivas, donated to the value of the trip back to Second Harvest to allow us to feed a mother and her child for an entire year.
As one employee told me at the competition, “It’s almost as if employees were waiting for a cause to support.” They certainly seem to have found their cause – Marvell’s 2011 Holiday Food & Fund Drive brought in $94,000, allowing us to provide 188,000 additional meals to our neighbors in need thanks to employee contributions that were matched dollar for dollar by Marvell.
When talking about the success of the Marvell drive, everyone points to Tate.
“To a large measure, I attribute the continuing growth of Marvell’s food drive programs to Tate Tran’s energy, enthusiasm and commitment,” said Tom Hayes, Marvell’s vice president of Corporate Marketing. “Marvell employees are by nature caring, generous people but also very busy–Tate’s creativity breaks through the noise and tugs at their hearts while opening up their wallets.”
It may not be easy to create a culture of giving, but companies don’t succeed because business is easy, either. They succeed because they’re driven and results-oriented. The same drive and determination that makes Tate so successful in her day job ensures huge results for the community.
