Pandora Backpack Drive
In the Summer of 2016, I interned at Pandora as a Software Engineer. I built out an Activity Log for Pandora’s Custom Content Management System as well as fixed some of its existing bugs. I started building out Stackd, an internal stack overflow. And in my free time, I, along with four other interns had the unique opportunity to help organize Pandora’s Annual Backpack and Supplies Drive.
Karina, pictured in the image above, runs Giving Back at Pandora. She organizes Pandora’s volunteering events and other corporate social responsibility efforts. Karina helped us every step of the way, from the initiative’s inception, to the distribution of the backpacks.
The goal was to provide the students of Frick Middle School a backpack and relevant school supplies to start off their year right. With a 1 month timeline this was how we broke down the time by weeks.
Week 1) Plan and Organize, Make promotional material
Week 2, 3) Drive, collecting donated backpacks
Week 4) Sort, pack backpacks. Deliver and distribute to students
We started with creating our marketing initiative. We drafted company wide emails, slack messages, created TV ads, and made a website. The biggest challenges revolved around getting to know how things are done around the company. Discovering the process for designing an email banner to sending an email to all employees in Oakland, we relied heavily on asking Pandora employees for help.
Once the marketing mediums were established, we tackled logistics. How many backpacks do we need, how do we get them, where do we store them, etc.? There are 230 students at Frick Middle School, we decided to round up our goal to 250 leaving a 20 backpack cushion in case we didn’t reach our goal.
We initially envisioned 250 employees going out to stores to buy backpacks and dropping them off at the office. We hung 300 backpack flyers in the kitchens around the the office asking employees to take them down and return the flyer inside a backpack. Recycling a design from last year, we added a backside with instructions and a shopping list style check off list to buy optional school supplies.
Going out and buying a backpack and supplies can be a time consuming process so we decided to offer an alternative means to help out. We utilized the website for informational purposes as well as collecting online donations. The website was only accessible for Pandora employees but has since been migrated here.
One week into the drive, we still had a lot of backpacks hanging in the common areas. We believed allowing employees to donate online so early into the drive discouraged employees from going out and actually buying a backpack. We had received more monetary donations than we expected. With each passing day, it seemed more and more likely that we would have to buy backpacks and supplies with the donations.
To further encourage donations, we rolled out an intern referral system. With every monetary donation or physical flyer, an employee was allowed to write down the name of an intern. The intern with the most referrals would receive swag!
We also reached out to members of Senior Leadership, encouraging them to support the drive by sending out an email about the drive. The day that Tim emailed the company, our monetary donations quadrupled!
At the end of Week 3, we had 78 backpacks and various supplies including 930 pencils! The last week was focused on counting the donated supplies and using the monetary donations to buy the remaining 152 backpacks and supplies.
Once all the new supplies arrived, we planned a backpack stuffing event. We invited employees to pack a bag and eat ice cream catered from CREAM. Within 45 minutes, 155 new backpacks were packed and ready to be delivered!
The next day, the 6 of us met at 8AM to move the backpacks from the kitchen into three vans and into Frick Middle School. We spent the day distributing backpacks and assisting in school registration! All those happy faces!
Looking back on the drive, it took a lot of time. I often stayed late or came in early, but it was all worth it. I learned the power of teamwork (asking interns to help cut, employees to help pack, and of course the backpack drive team) and that with asking the right people, anything can be done. I met new people, I learned new roles within the company, and I gained a greater sense of appreciation for how lucky I am to have worked at Pandora.
The opportunities that Pandora laid out for me, an intern, humbles me and inspires me to stretch my capacities and keep moving forward.
