What is The Rackspace Foundation?
The following is adapted from The New Corporate Citizen by Cara Nichols.
The Rackspace Foundation currently sponsors seven schools (the “Magnificent Seven”) and the neighborhoods that surround them. The schools — four elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school — are Title I schools, meaning they have a large percentage of economically disadvantaged children and receive federal funding to help ensure students’ success. In some of those schools, as many as 100 percent of the kids are on the free or reduced-price lunch program. A significant number of the kids are English-language learners. All seven schools are within about 2.5 miles of the Rackspace headquarters and, in total, serve almost 7,500 kids.
Because of the volume of kids and their proximity to Rackspace’s office, they’re very much on the radar of Rackspace employees. When Rackers come to work in the morning, they drive through the neighborhoods that house the kids they help. Walking through the parking lot into the office, the marching band can be heard next door at the high school they sponsor. In total, the Rackspace Foundation has invested over $6 million in initiatives and programs that improve the lives of students, all in its own backyard — school beautification projects, enhanced Teacher Appreciation Weeks, holiday food drives…the list goes on and on. In the Rackspace Foundation, the schools have an ally. A partner. A support system.
Such progress would not be possible without the support of Rackspace (the corporate entity, separate from the foundation), and Rackers themselves, who donate to the foundation and volunteer in its adopted schools. What is Rackspace, you ask? Let’s take a quick look.
The “Fanatical Experience™” Promise
Rackspace itself is a company that delivers IT-as-a-service to mid- and enterprise-sized customers across a variety of industries and locations around the world, in both the private and public sectors. In everything Rackspace does, the tagline is “Fanatical Experience™,” ensuring customers have a seamless, delightful experience with the company.
The vein of support that runs through Rackspace as a business also informs its charitable endeavors. For example, in a program called Rack Gives Back, Rackspace gives a portion of its corporate revenue to nonprofits that primarily serve STEAM — science, tech, engineering, arts, and math — initiatives for the K–12 population. The Rackspace Foundation itself is funded by individual current Rackers through voluntary payroll deductions, as well as others who believe in the mission of supporting neighborhood schools.
Rackspace would not be a $2 billion company if not for one of the founders and my personal hero, Graham Weston. A powerhouse entrepreneur, he took a teeny San Antonio-based startup and invested his time, money, and talent to help — along with many others — turn the company into what it is today, a global enterprise. Graham is a visionary leader, and even when he was chairman of such a large company (Rackspace’s office is literally a renovated shopping mall), he knew Rackers by name. More important than that, though, is his generosity. He is the heart behind so much of not only the business’s progress but also its community endeavors and philanthropic efforts.
Graham believes in Rackspace, and he believed in me when I joined the company in 2009. Throughout my ten years of service, I led the global Community Affairs programs for Rackspace and served as the President of the Board of the Rackspace Foundation. When I became a Racker, the foundation was just getting off the ground. When I left, it was a self-sustaining, employee-funded fixture in the community. And although I’m incredibly proud to have accomplished all that you’ll read about in this story, by no means was there a playbook for what we did or how we did it. And besides the start of my career when I briefly taught third and fourth grade, I definitely didn’t have the pedigree to do what we did. But step by step, and with the help of many, the Rackspace Foundation became the stake in the ground, the signal to the community that they had an advocate.
I grew up in San Antonio, went to college at the University of Texas at Austin, and made my way to New York after graduating. In an in-between time in my life, I decided to get my teaching certificate until I could decide what I really wanted to do when I grew up. I found my way back to Texas, and after those four years of teaching and a side hustle writing, I helped start a local lifestyle and culture magazine. In 2008, when the economy tanked, so did my publication. I reached out to Rackspace’s chief strategy officer at the time, Lew Moorman, whom I’d connected with in my editor days, and he offered me a contract position as a copywriter and blogger focused on the cloud. At the time, I didn’t even know what cloud technology was, but I went with it. Then I started coming into the office — and I never left.
A few months later, I was offered a full-time job at Rackspace, eventually leading copywriters and designers, but I always had my eye on the prize: leading Community Affairs and getting to work on the Rackspace Foundation. When it became available, I knew I had to go for it; I knew what it was like to be a teacher, have always been socially minded, and knew I wanted to give back to teachers, the kids they served, and their communities. The Rackspace Foundation and Graham gave me that opportunity.
To learn more about corporate philanthropy, you can find The New Corporate Citizen on Amazon.
Cara Nichols spent ten years helping San Antonio’s biggest and most important technology company redefine corporate philanthropy and community engagement. Perhaps what influenced her approach most was her early-on experience as an elementary school teacher both in the district where Rackspace resides and also in a rural district without access to critical programs and services. In that setting, she saw kids struggling with poverty and other adult-sized problems every day, yet she often felt powerless to help them. Through her work with the Rackspace Foundation, Cara brought different stakeholders together — businesses, nonprofits, and schools — to address many of the challenges facing their community and ultimately helped create a new model of corporate philanthropy. Today, Cara consults with companies and foundations to help them invest in their communities in more impactful, authentic ways. Find out more at www.threefolded.com.
