Like A Good Neighbor: Social Impact At State Farm

It's official–State Farm has held the title of "good neighbor" for over 100 years. Being a good neighbor can mean a lot of different things in practice, but State Farm hits it out of the park, whether they're striving to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, investing in teachers, or supporting their own team members facing financial burdens through their Employee Assistance Fund.

But beyond those broader initiatives, State Farm agents are especially intentional about giving back to the communities where they live and work, and Lemontree is lucky to have their support as we work to increase food access for our neighbors in need.

We sat down with Jennifer Young, Corporate Responsibility Analyst at State Farm, to learn about what being a good neighbor means. She shares strategies her team used to address the challenges of the pandemic and discusses the advantages of virtual volunteering. Check out the full interview below!

As always, if you're interested in learning more about volunteering with Lemontree, you can check out more info here. And, if you have suggestions for future guests, you can email me at Kasumi@lemontreefoods.org

Kasumi: I'd love to start off by hearing a little bit more about you. Can you tell me about your role at State Farm?

Jennifer: Sure, thanks for having me! I'm a Corporate Responsibility Analyst at State Farm. That means the priorities of my job are helping our State Farm agents be more engaged in their communities, with volunteerism and just being out there with the different organizations that we support. I also manage our grant programs as well as media relations in my territory, which is six states: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire.

Kasumi: And how did you get involved in the work of corporate responsibility?

Jennifer: I sort of stumbled upon it. I used to work in Human Resources at State Farm, which I loved. And then there was an opening for a Community Programs Coordinator, and I eventually became a Public Affairs specialist. And that title evolved into Corporate Responsibility Analyst. Well, the role evolved as well, throughout the years.

But, I started out with coordinating these community programs. State Farm used to do programs like teaching young kids how to dial 911, or these bike rodeos, which were basically bike safety programs, to being more focused now on financially supporting community programs by working with different nonprofit organizations and schools and other entities.

Kasumi: I think it's very natural for a role to evolve, especially throughout the past few years that we've had. I'm wondering if you can speak to how your role has changed, or how corporate responsibility at State Farm has changed throughout the pandemic?

Jennifer: We're actually celebrating our 100th anniversary at State Farm this year! So that was super exciting, back in June, but as you can imagine, we've been celebrating most of the year. Throughout that time, commitment to the communities where we live and work has been a focus along with, naturally, volunteerism. That's always been a huge part of State Farm. And because our agents are physically in different communities, no surprise, once the pandemic hit, we had to think about, how can we still be in our communities? How can we still support our communities, but without being physically in the communities and keeping everyone safe?

My role is to encourage our agents to be out there, but we wanted to keep them safe. So we really turned a lot to virtual opportunities, like Lemontree. Our partnership with Lemontree is, of course, a great example of that.

Another example, we work with a lot of different food banks. So a lot of agents were creating virtual collection drives that they could encourage community members to be a part of, which was cool. Our financial literacy programs, where our agents would be physically at a school, talking to high school students, or at a local community center, move to those presentations online. And I could apply that to a lot of different examples.

So that went on for a couple years, with the virtual opportunities, and then eventually, we started to morph into more of a hybrid. So I see a lot more people doing in-person volunteerism, but there's still room for that virtual because there's still a need. We can see where that's a benefit. Sometimes you have an organization that's looking to do a financial literacy program for low income individuals, but maybe they don't have the transportation to physically get to a community center. Maybe they don't have the child care to, you know, leave their child at home and go to this event. So in a case like that, the virtual piece is very helpful. We're just working with different organizations and communities and agents to see what makes the most sense and to be flexible with everyone's needs.

Kasumi: I think that's a great point. I think a lot of times, when we're talking about employee volunteerism and flexibility–because that's a huge part of Lemontree's volunteer program–we're often thinking about flexibility in terms of, will employees be able to get there? Can we corral them into this timeframe? But it's equally important to think about the neighbors on the other side of things. It has to be accessible and flexible for those people too, and I think that's not always considered.

Jennifer: I think what you what you offer at Lemontree really works well for our agents, because we're not necessarily talking about employees that are always in these big offices. These are agents that are small business owners, so they typically only have a couple team members. So it's harder for agents to get out of their offices. But if you have an opportunity for just half an hour, to volunteer with Lemontree, and connect with clients virtually and really feel a great sense of satisfaction, and they can just weave that into their everyday work schedule, I think that's really a win-win for not only Lemontree and your clients, but also our agents. And then on top of it, it's a great way to do team building, because it's tough–again, for an agent and all his or her team members to leave the office to go do something in person–but they can do that for 30 minutes or an hour, maybe on a Friday. It's a nice way to connect, to not have to completely leave the office, you could still man the phones if you need to. It just really works well for our agents.

Kasumi: I'm so glad to hear that! I'd love to hear from you, what makes employee volunteerism or corporate responsibility in general at State Farm special. What do you love about it?

Jennifer: Well, it's part of our culture. I don't know if that sounds cliche, but one of our slogans is "Here to help". And that's very much part of us, because we're everywhere. State Farm is all over the country. We have our agents physically in the city, in the suburbs, in the rural areas. A lot of times they grew up and still live in those communities. And even if those places are new to them, they really create a community around it. It's important to our agents, that they're not just working in their communities. They also want to support them and make connections and build roots in those areas.

At State Farm, we have specific philanthropic focuses: safety, community development, and education. Our agents focus on that. But then, of course, just like anybody else, they have areas that are really special to them. Maybe it's a food bank, maybe it's a high school, some sort of PTA program, whatever it may look like. Like I said, we're everywhere. And I love working with our agents because they're passionate, they're so committed to their community. So they make my make my job very easy, frankly.

Kasumi: That’s great! I didn't realize that “Here to help” was a slogan as well, because I'm familiar with the, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”, which is like already gives us a good signal of what you care about!

Jennifer: Right? And of course, the good neighbor. That slogan obviously fits well, with our volunteerism piece.

Kasumi: Okay, lastly, what have you done that has driven engagement, whether that's pandemic related or not?

Jennifer: Well, it's really being creative. So I'll use Lemontree as another example. This is our first year funding Lemontree, and this program is unique for us. We work with a lot of food banks, soup kitchens, those sorts of organizations, and I often work on rallying agents to go out to a food bank and sort food or hand out hot meals at a soup kitchen. Finding programs that are new, compared to what we've been doing in the past, I think is a good way to drive engagement. Also finding a variety of opportunities. There may be an agent who's passionate about Habitat for Humanity and affordable housing for low income families, which is really a great program. But this agent over here is really passionate about teaching their community members about disaster preparedness. So coming up with a lot of different opportunities, I think is important.

Another way to help drive engagement is finding the agents that are constantly volunteering, that are constantly in their community, and getting them in front of agents that may be new, who don't really know how to get out there. To have them serve as mentors, volunteer mentors, and encourage them to then encourage the others to get involved. I think that when you see your peers doing volunteerism or doing some cool activity, it's going to make you even more apt to do that, as well.

Kasumi: Yeah, I think that's a really great point. Again, we often think about volunteering as serving the community, which is obviously important, but it's also important to building community with your peers and the people that you work with. It's kind of an all-in-one experience. We've definitely found that champions, people who have the experience and enthusiasm go a long way in bringing in other folks who might be more hesitant to get involved.

Jennifer: Definitely.

Kasumi: Okay, that wraps it up! Jennifer, thank you so much for your time. It was awesome to zoom out from the day-to-day organization that we're usually doing to get folks volunteering and have this conversation.

Thank you Jennifer & State Farm for all you do to support our work at Lemontree! Learn more about their social impact strategy at https://www.statefarm.com/about-us/corporate-responsibility.