Throughout Button’s ten-year history, civic engagement and volunteerism have been central to our ethos. Pressing pause on important business initiatives may seem counterintuitive for a fast-moving tech startup that prioritizes “pace of play,” but we believe that giving back to our community is not only a vital part of being a corporate citizen, but core to our company culture. In fact, studies show that corporate volunteerism promotes feelings of community and belonging amongst team members. 

My connection with Button’s commitment to volunteerism started on my first day at Button, which coincided with a company-wide volunteer day. While I can’t say that getting sweaty with coworkers while cleaning up a park was how I had expected to start my new role, I certainly got “into the weeds” right away!

Last week, we held yet another Button Volunteer Day, our first as a distributed, RemotePlus team. Button’s RemotePlus workplace strategy embraces “work from anywhere” as our default style of work while recognizing that in-person collaboration is irreplaceable through a screen, and that, as a result, we should bring our team members together as often as possible. So continuing Button’s tradition of volunteerism meant reinventing the idea of a corporate volunteer event to fit Button’s unique RemotePlus culture.

Like all other employee initiatives, this necessitated a thoughtful and creative approach. Just under half of our employee base lives within commuting distance of New York City; another 15% lives in the Bay Area, with the remainder scattered across 16 states. Short of getting the entire team together, a major (and potentially disruptive) logistical undertaking, we held a day of distributed volunteer efforts– each Buttonian volunteering separately, yet, through the commonality of giving back to their respective communities simultaneously, together. 

Button Uniting for Impactful Volunteering

With a recognition of the intrinsic value of in-person collaboration, we brought our NYC-based team together to volunteer with one of Button’s favorite community initiatives, Billion Oyster Project. Outside of New York, we empowered team members to choose a way to give back to their community– with other Buttonians in the area, where possible. After a morning of volunteering, we then brought together the entire team for a “Coming Together as One” event in which each participant discussed how they volunteered and what their chosen cause means to them. The passion and pride our team members have for their communities was apparent–from cleaning up a local park or beach to helping to feed the hungry to building bicycles for those without a way to get to and from work.

So much of what we do at Button is about uniting our team around a singular vision to execute against a unified set of goals and metrics, giving our team members the requisite ownership and autonomy to do their part in contribution. Our RemotePlus Volunteer Day was no different, and it was so much fun watching our core objective– for Buttonians to give back to their community– materialize in such a diversity of approaches. Though we couldn’t all be physically together, the feeling of unity was palpable, and we are excited to build off of this event and continue Button’s tradition of giving back to the community moving forward in our RemotePlus world. 

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