We do well by doing more for others. Micron is reimagining our giving programs to align our giving even more closely with the priorities of our employees and accelerate our impact.
Micron has a well-established tradition of giving back to the communities where our employees live and work. And for the past two decades, the Micron Foundation has served as the heart of these efforts. Through the Foundation, we support and help develop programs to promote STEM education, address basic human needs, and align our giving practices more closely with the priorities and values of our employees and communities. Our giving programs support our first corporate value: People. The benefits of giving back to communities are easily understood, but it’s also important to underscore how important corporate social responsibility is to engage our employees and recruit the next generation of talent by being a responsible corporate citizen and creating a culture of giving back.
We continue to drive Micron’s new corporate values and goals to all aspects of the company — including our philanthropy and volunteerism. During 2018, we revamped our giving strategy and organized all volunteer and matching gift efforts under a new program called Micron Gives. The program encourages a stronger focus on volunteerism with new programs and improved resources for giving back to the communities and organizations that matter most to our employees.
To kick off the program, we set a goal of collectively volunteering 100,000 hours during the year. Employees reached the goal nearly two months ahead of schedule, and Micron has challenged employees to exceed this goal in 2019 with a goal of 150,000 hours. To help them contribute to this goal, we have put in place a global policy that allows full-time employees up to 16 hours of paid leave to perform community service, and part-time employees and interns receive eight hours.
Micron also matches employees’ donations to qualified charitable organizations, up to an annual maximum of $2,000 (USD) per employee per year and a companywide maximum of $2 million. With a giving campaign launch on Giving Tuesday in November 2018, the Foundation matched $1.3 million in donations in just three weeks.
Employee donations can include gifts to each site’s charity of choice. Through this program, employees vote on the charities that matter most to them and their communities. The site then focuses its volunteer efforts for the year and provides a monetary donation to the winning organization.
Deploy STEM outreach programs and partnerships to global sites in support of developing the STEM pipeline for the semiconductor industry, with a focus on underrepresented groups.
Distribute $13.5 million via our global grant program to support STEM education and basic human needs in the communities where we operate, and continue to support employee-selected organizations through the Charity of Choice program.
Build on Micron Gives program by achieving 150,000 employee volunteer hours and matching employee donations up to $2 million.