Beyond The Register: Macy’s & BBBS Craft A Legacy Through Impactful Mentorship

Speaker A: Foreign. Makers. Welcome back to the Engage for Good podcast. I'm your host, ally Murphy. In 2022, Macy's launched its new social purpose platform, Mission M Everyone to create a brighter future with bold representation for all. In support of youth empowerment, which is a guiding principle of this mission, Macy's launched a multi year partnership with Big Brother's Big Sisters to serve young people through the power of mentorship, creating a path for future success and impact that lasts a lifetime. In the first year of partnership alone, Macy's raised 4.8 million for big Brother's Big Sisters to create more than 97,000 mentor moments for Littles nationwide by developing an integrated 360 degree cause campaign that engaged all stakeholders with their, uh, shared missions and a clear call to action. In today's episode, I'm joined by Sam Discipio, Senior Director of Social impact at Macy's Inc. And Deb Barge, Chief Development Officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, to talk about their incredible partnership. In today's episode, we'll explore the origins of this partnership and Macy's criteria for selecting a national cause marketing partner. How Deb, Sam and their teams created a foundation they could build on year over year. How the brand gracefully transitioned from one cause partner to another. Insights into building consumer facing campaigns. How to build an authentic year round partnership with youth, voice, choice and ownership at the center. And how the partners quickly embedded the partnership in both organizations, unlocking activation and integration opportunities. And with that, let's get started. This episode is brought to you by Macy's Inc. Hey, Sam and Deb. Welcome to the Engage for Good podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks for having us.

Speaker C: Hi Ali. Hi, Sam. Great to be here.

Speaker A: I am excited for today's conversation. Okay, but before we actually dive in, Sam, I want to start with you. We are all more than what we do for work, more than our job titles. So tell us a little bit about you and what you do at Macy's.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So I am originally, um, from the uk. Um, I've been in New York area Now for about 12 years, which is hard to believe. It was meant to be a short stint. But here I am, um, now, um, married and mum to Charlotte, who just turned four. So she takes up a huge amount of my time. Um, so when I'm not being mom or at work trying to build all these wonderful, exciting, meaningful social impact programs, I'm most definitely dreaming about the beach.

Speaker A: I like that. And what do you do at Macy's? What do you, what do you oversee?

Speaker B: Sure. So my role at Macy's is Uh, head of Social Impact. So I look after all of our social impact programs for the Macy's brands. So our customer facing cause marketing programs, our colleague engagement programs, so our giving and volunteering campaigns, and then all of our corporate grant programs as well.

Speaker A: Wonderful. Okay, thank you. Deb, let's turn it over to you. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do at Big Brother. Big Sisters.

Speaker C: I love this question. We're all so much more than our titles and our jobs. So, like Sam, I am a mom of two humans, one about to graduate from high school, which does make me a little overwhelmed at this next step of our journey in parenthood.

Speaker A: I can imagine.

Speaker C: Um, I am a daughter of two individuals who have been married over 50 years, which I feel is an anomaly these days. And both cultures define who I am. My mother was an exchange student, came from a little island in the Pacific. My father is Mexican, came from Mexico into the US with this family and their culture lives and breathes in me very much of who I am. And like Sam, when I am, um, my happiest, it is stepping away, ironically stamped to the water, but to the beach because I want to watch the whales. I'm a little obsessed and I'm out of the Seattle area, so I'm a little obsessed with the orcas and will stand on the beach for hours to watch them, get a little glimpse of them going by. It's a wonderful thing.

Speaker A: Well, I am also fan, a fan of the beach, but unfortunately that's not what we're talking about today. So we will, we'll talk about that in our free time. We are going to talk about something super cool though. So Sam, I'm going to kick this off with you. Macy's launched mission everyone in 2022. And for those who aren't familiar, would you give us some background on your social purpose platform to set the stage for a conversation?

Speaker B: Sure, absolutely. So, um, as you say, Mission M everyone launched in 2022. So we're coming up on our second year anniversary and if we start from the start. So as we were coming out of the pandemic, Mesa Inc. As a business had to really look at how we could build our financial health, become more agile and customer focused, bring forward new platforms to better serve divers customer base. So we were in that landscape and as part of that larger transformation, really saw the opportunity to create a social purpose platform to help build our relevancy for our stakeholders. So whether that's customers, colleagues, our communities, where we operate, our investors, um, really create that platform to build that relevancy, but also to create equity and accelerate sustainability efforts. So Mission Everyone was born. It was developed in partnership with our leadership. So really and um, when we talk Macy's Inc. We're talking Macy's brand, Blue Mindales and Blue Mercury and started with our CEO and was developed in partnership across the business. So dei sustainability, social impact marketing, corporate communications, really to make sure we could uncover what was unique and what was authentic for us as an organization. So Mission Everyone is our commitment to create a brighter future with bold representation for all. It's backed by our commitment to direct $5 billion of our spend billion with a B M by 2025 to our uh, people, partners, products and um, programs to create a more equitable and sustainable future. So that's spend like spend with diverse owned brands on M products that we sell in store, spend with sustainable products that we'd sell in store, but also development programs, investment in our colleagues and so much more. Um, it had to go beyond that great statement or a poster. It has to be authentic, it has to be embedded. Um, so we really see it as a strategy and a framework that supports that business transformation that I mentioned. But it acts as a lens for decision making across the business. Um, so all functions. So it has implications for our merchandising business, for our hr, for our marketing, for our supply chain and everything in between and helps us to really tell that authentic story of commitments. Um, and we structure it under people, community and planet pillars. Um, as we think about community. So that's our social impact as, ah, sorry, social purpose as a whole for the enterprise. But MEO gave us the meo. We all shorten things at Macy's as I'm sure many of the companies listening do. Um, really gave us the opportunity to reimagine our social impact work as well. We have a long history of corporate philanthropy, but didn't really have a focus, didn't really have something that we could clearly report on our impact and show the output and the outcomes from the work that we were doing. So we pivoted to support um, Mission Everyone. Lot of research as you can imagine, to really uncover what was relevant for us, what our customers cared about, what our colleagues cared about and what we felt that we could stand for as an organization. So overhauled, um, our entire strategy, our entire partner portfolio to focus on empowering youth to create a brighter future with bold representation through voice, choice and ownership. And every word of that is intentional and every word of that flows through how we think about our partnership. And our activations, um, empowering youth is broad. Right. You could take that in so many different directions. And we do so through education and mentorship, mental health and emotional well being and environmental stewardship. And the interconnectivity between those three pillars, um, became more and more, the more work that we did. So lots more work to do, um, across Mission Everyone overall. But, um, we feel like we're making great progress and. And lots more to come.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And what a huge program. It's not even program platform. To bring to life and to bring across the entire business from the top down is huge. And I'm, I'm sensing a lot of overlap already. But Deb, um, I'd love to hear from your perspective, what are your JEDI principles and how do they integrate really well into Mission Everyone?

Speaker C: I love ally that you just said. I'm hearing a lot of intersection because when our friends at Macy's came and shared Mission Everyone with us, we felt the same way. We saw ourselves in this purpose statement and in this vision and the approach, obviously the places of mentorship and empowerment. But there was so much more that it was being lived and breathed throughout the brand. And so for us, it's the way we think of our JEDI principles. For many that don't know, we were born as a solution, an innovative solution to the juvenile justice system 120 years ago. This is our anniversary this year. Very cool. We had a wonderful human who was a court clerk and saw too many young people coming through the justice system and said what young people deserve is a positive mentor in their life to help them prevent this space from happening. Over those 120 years, we have founded ourselves even further into that effort, taking these founding principles of bringing diverse communities together to ensure that young people have equitable access to opportunity through the power of mentorship. And that's what's formed our justice, equity, diversity and inclusion principles that our entire network has been activating on for many, many years and even deepening over the course of the last several. Sam talked about internally at Macy's. We have to continue to do our inside work, as have we. We are really proud that 100% of our agencies have gone through our JEDI curriculum, furthering their knowledge, ensuring that they are aligned, that our hiring practices are evolved, that our boards are more diverse and more representative of the youth we serve. We are serving some of the most diverse youth across our nation in all ways, from their geographic locations to their ethnicity and racial makeups, to their interests, areas and passions. And so our leadership needs to reflect all of that, and that's what we love about the Mission Everyone intersection is we see so much of it in how together, youth empowerment and the lifting of mentorship across our teams, both as how we impact community, but how we impact internally, ourselves as well, has been a theme of our partnership from the beginning. And we continue, and I and our teams, we continue to brainstorm daily how we can go deeper and further as, uh, we get to enter the next year ahead.

Speaker A: Okay, I want to come back to this piece about centering youth a little bit later, but to come back to the kind of the beginning of the partnership. Sam, how did your partnership come about? I feel like that's one of the big questions that we get a lot. And then also, what were you looking for in a national cause marketing partner, particularly during the holiday season when this initial campaign rolled out?

Speaker B: Absolutely. And it was an exhaustive process. Um, exhaustive, as you say. This is a holiday campaign at Macy's. This is a seven week campaign at our busiest time of year. Um, partnership choice had to be perfect, and the activation and expression of that partnership had to be perfect. And it was an exhaustive search. It was an exhaustive partner. And we partnered with Carol Cohn, um, and team to help, um, match us with big brothers, big sisters of America. Um, but, you know, when we did the legwork, when we did the research, we were coming from a really great place of understanding our mission, understanding exactly what we needed to pivot to and how we needed to align. Um, so, you know, first thing for us was brand and mission alignment. So Deb just talked about Jedi principle alignment, mission alignment. It was so obvious in that first conversation how well aligned we were. You know, we're both in the business of, um, empowering youth, in this case through mentorship. Um, you know, big brothers, big sisters, Jedi values, DEI values, but also from a brand perspective. So we knew we'd got mission alignment from a brand perspective as well. You know, our brand proposition had evolved as well in 22 to own, uh, your style. And our holiday tagline was evolving from believe, which it had been for many years, to give love, give styles. So we've got a lot of change happening in 2022. It was definitely the year of, the year of transformation, for sure. Um, but big brothers, big sisters have really strong brand recognition. You know, we looked at some of the morning console tracker data. You know, just strong appeal. You think about favorability, trust, impact across all demographics. So, you know, it wasn't just one demographic that was leaning more into big brothers, big sisters Favorability, but it was across everything. And that really matters to Macy's because we have such a diverse colleague and customer base that it was really important for our colleagues and our customers to be reflected in our partners as well and see that there's a connection there. Um, our partnerships largely centered on customer donation, point of, you know, point of sales. So customers have a second, sometimes a split second to make a decision. So that brand recognition and that does it make sense for Macy's to support this organization? And do I care about this organization? That decision is made so quickly that at this time of year, especially when you know those lines at the registers in the holiday, like, you need to be able to move quickly and we need to be able to make the most impact. So that national partner with a strong recognition, but also can't be national without being local. You know, we know so well that people want their funds and their donation to support people in their markets. So really being able to show those local affiliates, uh, as well, in this case, you know, Big Brothers, Big Sisters with the agency model being in so many of our communities, and we've been really blown away by just how much the Big Brother Big Sister agencies and our stores have connected. You know, we'd already got a partnership in the past. Um, some of our markets had already been working with Big Brothers Big Sisters for many years. But we just saw that take off, um, when we launched the partnership. So that was pretty exciting. Um, you know, endless opportunities for engagement and activation. Um, as I said, we knew that there had been a lot of existence in, um, relationships. So we had an inkling at the potential. But it was just amazing to see how that, that really grew, you know, from mental moments to style in events, conversations about a career, you know, with such a huge employer, that workforce development, which I know, um, you know, Deb, you probably talk about that 18 to 25 is one of the fastest growing age groups for Big Brothers Big Sisters to support. And we're such a huge employer that connecting the dots and there as well, was really strong. So so many ways to, um, ah, you know, kind of integrate. And then of course, you know, Artisan Deb and the whole team that we met as such an incredible team and so passionate about their mission, and we had to work fast. Ellie, let me tell you, we launched Mission Everyone. It was like, all right, we, you know, we've gone from just dating to marriage and, you know, planning our whole life together basically overnight. So you need a really strong team that you can get into that, you know, kind of Mode with as well and build. So um, it's hard to believe it's two and a half years.

Speaker A: Right. And as you're talking about this, I feel like some of this has just happened which isn't true at all because I've been hearing about this for a few years. But Deb backing up a little bit. Can you walk us through the launch of this multi year partnership? What were your initial goals and how did both organizations, Macy's and Big Brothers Big Sisters lay the foundation for a collaboration that would really extend into the future?

Speaker C: Absolutely Alex. And it's so true. It does feel like so much longer than two and a half years and so much more to go is what we love. But I love this question from first. The most important thing as a nonprofit, the idea that this was multi year from the beginning. So those of us in this work know we spend a lot of time developing partnerships and developing relationships with the hope you will have a year two chance when you can go into a relationship knowing that this is a multi year, that you're building a true structure that's going to last. You do take a slightly different approach to how and you are a little more thoughtful about building a really solid foundation in that year one. And it's where we had so much alignment. To Sam's point about alignment, we uh, had a lot of alignment from the very beginning that it was critical for our internal team. So for us, the Big Brothers, Big Sisters, our network of agencies, there's 230 of them across the country. And for them to be ready, poised, aligned, empowered and passionate about this partnership would ensure that that then turns into connection to their local Macy's colleagues, their stores, the ability to engage families locally in activities. So we started there. We had to make sure very early on before we told anyone in the world that we had an internal launch plan. And it started fast. When Sam says fast, uh, we met and became friends in April and we were launching with our internal network in June. Really road wowing this out very quickly to make sure we did the holiday season as this really partnered and aligned organization. That meant that all of a sudden as we were building it allowed for local agencies to be invited to Macy's activities and vice versa for local Macy's friends to be invited to hours, come to our holiday parties, come to our picnics, come to our back to school moments. Even before we hit holiday, let's do some career mentorship as Sam spoke about. And we had the opportunity to have volunteerism with the executive leadership team and our Littles doing a real career development opportunity back we've repeated it with such a strong success where these littles in that 18 to 25 range were able to come in and give real insights to the business and be coached on how to network and how to build your professional network. And believe it or not, they continue to stay in touch today, uh, with those senior leadership team members. But it went even further. We knew that one of the core things that we were built upon was the spirit of mentorship, the spirit of connectedness. And that mentorship doesn't end when you graduate high school or end when you graduate college or move into your career. In fact, you need it more than ever in the career space. And we wanted to make sure, as part of our partnership, we were celebrating mentorship within each of our organizations, and that this partnership was dedicated to that effort, especially at launch. We created a program we call Macy's Best Mentor, which we again started last year. And we're very quick to take nominations from throughout both of our teams. So Macy's team members nominated each other, our team members nominated each other. And if ever you want to sit and be heart filled about what's going on in your organization, read these stories of peers saying what a difference a colleague has made in their life, how much that colleague. And not just on my success in, um, writing something up for work or doing something for my job, but me as a human, me as an individual, and a successful individual in my life. The mentorship stories we saw were so powerful and so passionate, and it really affirmed to our earlier comments, it really affirmed. This is a mentorship partnership that really lives and breathes within our companies and our workforce and continues today. So we're very excited. We're on the precipice of announcing this year's best mentors as we celebrate January, which is National Mentoring Month. So again, from the very beginning, let's find those alignment moments that make sense. Because while consumers, we are grateful, they care and they're excited. And there's a clear connection in our missions at holiday. That's the external side. But internally, for us to build a real relationship, we need to do that year round. We need to be partnered all the time. And we continue to be dedicated to that in our planning, but in our relationship building, from Sam and I and our teams all the way down to our local agencies year round, that this becomes part of how we live and breathe and work together, so that this partnership becomes stronger because we believe consumers feel that they see that it becomes authentic, and it does turn into a more successful campaign when it becomes public.

Speaker B: You know, it's okay to build on that foundation in year one, right? Because it was a new partnership. We were doing it quickly. But when you build a really solid foundation, especially with that, uh, multi year agreement, it lays the groundwork for you to be able to embed and, um, think differently in future. But it was also really important from a foundation perspective in year one because it was complex for us. And one piece that we've not touched on yet is, and I mentioned that we were transitioning from Believers, our holiday, um, sort of marketing tagline, to give love, give style. But with that, we had a really longstanding partnership with Make a Wish as well, that we were sunsetting at the same time that we were introducing big brothers, big sisters. So we had our first year with both campaigns running at the same time in that holiday window. So we had to introduce a new partnership with enthusiasm and excitement while we really gracefully sunset a partnership that was so beloved. Um, you asked colleagues about the Believe campaign, and making a wish come true for a wish kid was something that they loved. You know, customers would come in and write their letter to Santa. So we had to be, we had to take a lot of care and attention to make sure a, ah, we didn't create confusion what are these two campaigns happening at the same time, but that we were really respectful to both partners in that moment to find space to find for both partners, um, in their different ways. So that was a goal. Now, it's not necessarily the sexy goal that you're building from a partnership perspective, but it was really important for us because we take a lot of pride in our partnerships and how we truly build partnership. So we had a long Runway. We made sure that Make a Wish and other partners were aware when we started to even think about our social purpose strategy, that we don't know where it's going to go, but you are going to be with us along that journey and we're going to keep you informed along the way. So that's a really important point to mention, just as we think about goals in that first year. Um, but Deb, also fundraising. I mean, we had no expectation the dollars that we were going to raise Year one. We'd not had Roundup through the entirety of that holiday campaign window before because.

Speaker A: Oh, I didn't realize that.

Speaker B: No, we just, we had, um, Roundup for probably the first two weeks of November with Make a Wish because the activation was about something different. It was about writing a letter to Santa races or donate this Was a little different. We couldn't repeat the same mechanic, um, with Big Brothers Big Sisters. So for the first time, we switched on Roundup through that period. And for any other retailers listening to this, you're all about transaction time in that window. So it was a bold move for our leadership team to let us keep that on throughout the holiday season. And nothing short of exhilarating when we're watching the dollars come in every day and projecting and projecting. And the end number just kept getting bigger and bigger the further into the campaign we got. Um, and we were blown away that we threw that change. So I know you all know it. Engage For Good. The power of a Roundup campaign. $4.8 million in the loose change. Um, you know, or the Roundup change is pretty spectacular. We were blown away.

Speaker A: We do the charity checkout champions report at Engage for Good every two years. I ran it last year and got to share the results at conference. And it still blows my mind, even as someone who works on collecting this data and analyzing it, how much a penny, three pennies, 25 cents can add up to massive numbers. I think last year it was 749 million was the total of those top 100 campaigns.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. There are so many pieces that I want to dive into here. Sam, I want to kind of take a little bit of a tangent for a second. Um, you talked about the challenges and the kind of the opportunity as well, but the need to be respectful of sunsetting one partnership and campaign and starting another one and creating space for both without confusing consumers. And I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit more to how you made that work.

Speaker B: It was just creating space for both campaigns. Honestly, having really clear messaging, um, we did create a little space. So we had originally had the Belief campaign with Make a Wish run from November 1st through December 24th. For the first year, we gave some space. So we launched Big Brothers Big Sisters in November, and that ran the full seven months. Whereas with Make a Wish, we kept that to the December timeframe. It was really when most letters to Santa were written. But by creating that space and having two different launch time frames as well, it gave our colleagues some time to really get into the Big Brothers Big Sisters partnership. We. We've talked about embedding. We've talked about building that foundation, and that was really important. So it gave us that whole first month. Most of our campaigns are just one month long, so it gave us that whole first month for colleagues to really get into, um, the new partnership, to really absorb the messaging to Make a connection with the local Big Brothers Big Sisters agency. The articulation and the activation of both campaigns is different as well. With Big Brothers Big Sisters, from a customer interaction perspective, it's donation at point of sale, Whether it's roundup or a donation online. With Make a Wish, it was writing a letter to Santa. So the two really compete. So it was about creating space is honestly the short answer.

Speaker C: Sam.

Speaker A: Um, one of the things that you said earlier and actually both of you talked about is how quickly a lot of this was rolled out. And so I'm curious, Sam, and I'll hand this to you first, what are some of the key elements that facilitated the quick integration of the partnership within both organizations? I'm guessing some of it was the team, but I'm curious about the different components. And on a broader level, how are partnerships activations and those kind of integration opportunities identified and then rolled out?

Speaker B: Sure. So it really helped that we'd got some history of partnership between our markets and our agencies working together. So we definitely tapped those teams to say what's worked in the past. How has this resonated? How have you brought it to life? Um, the team, exactly as you say. You know, between my team and Deb's team just coming together and, you know, weekly meetings, it's very tactical, but it was just off to the races. So we just had to spend a lot of time together. From Macy's perspective, we are a huge organization. You know, we have a lot of stores, a lot of to get to. Um, so engaging our senior leadership early was really important. So, you know, our CEO, um, met artists, as Deb mentioned earlier before the campaign. And this wasn't accidental. This was very intentional, um, as CEO and all of our C suite leaders came to the Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York office to just be present for a couple of hours in the afternoon, spend some time with some littles mentor. It was a great afternoon, but it was a great way for them to immerse in the mission. Meet the leaders, meet the team. So when we did get to launch a couple of months later, they got that connection, and it really helped, um, it really helped from that perspective, engaging our business partners earlier. Uh, we're in year two. The number of intersection points and the number of integration points in year two compared to year one has grown because we took the time to bring people along with us along the journey that's so important, um, to getting things moving. The earlier you can engage people, the less friction you have because they're bringing them along for the journey. Um, we also had a little fun internally. We had to get ideas quickly. Um, we have a fun process that, um, we created on the Corp Comms team a few years ago called Pitch Fest. Um, and Deb was part of this as well. We split people up into small teams and asked them to come up with fresh ideas to activate a partnership and then present in less than two minutes. We have a judging committee. We make it fun with a bell. I write, your time's up. Um, but it's amazing the creativity and the innovative thinking that comes from that. Now this is my broader team social impacts. It's as part of Corp Comms, it's the folks that are helping us to tell the story and bring it to life, but are working on the activation plans and the strategy so they get a chance to work with maybe different people from the team. They get a chance to brainstorm on something that they don't usually get to do. Um, and it's amazing the ideas that came from that and some of the ideas that Best mentor mentee that Deb talked about earlier came from that platform. So we also just bring the masses of the minds together, you know, to think differently. But what was important is we've talked about this foundation for year one, um, really focusing on some of those hyperlocal opportunities where we can create connection and focusing on Big Brothers Big Sisters agency awareness. Like, you know, the quick 101 to, uh, Macy's and then for our colleagues, the 101 for Big Brothers Big Sisters. And they're the people that are, um, speaking, you know, speaking about your mission. So for Macy's colleagues, they're the folks that the registers that are going to say, hey, do you want to round up to Big Brothers Big Sisters? Here's something I know about that organization. So it was really about our people bringing our people along, whether it's our immediate teams, our expanded teams, our entire organizations. It was really, um, it was really about bringing the folks along. It was about being mission centric. Um, Youth Voice from day one, um, built throughout, um, you know, throughout our creative, throughout, uh, um, video, throughout our, ah, messaging, soup to nuts. Um, but also planting those seeds. You know, we'll come to talk about some of our year two, but planting some of those seeds as well in year one for activations and integrations that will, will kind of come in the future.

Speaker A: So Deb and I are nodding our heads to pretty much everything you just said of yes, these are great notes. Okay, you mentioned year one and year two, which I feel like is a perfect segue. And we talked about some of these numbers already. But just to refresh our brains, you raised 4.8 million in year one. The fundraising efforts engaged all 230 plus big brothers, big Sisters agencies. And I believe, Deb, correct me if I'm wrong, that has a reach of over 5000 communities in all 50 states.

Speaker C: Amazing.

Speaker A: Getting m head nods. Yep, that's amazing. So I'm curious. I'm a huge person on who believe in reflecting and learning from the past and using that to innovate and iterate moving forward. What are some of the key learnings you took from year one that approached or that helped you approach year two planning? And either one of you can take that first.

Speaker B: So I think first the partnership resonated. You know, the, the legwork that we did in finding the right partner paid off. Um, the time that we took to build the foundation, to build the knowledge paid off. So it's just then how you build on that? Um, engaging our customers and our colleagues and our local agencies and the agencies went to our store rallies. So before the store opens, every single day, store manager will gather our colleagues together and have a store rally. Um, some are bigger than others, obviously, depending on the size of the store. But we had agencies come to so many of those across the country. Um, we knew that it was, it really resonated when we featured Littles in our creative that really worked. So let's keep building on that. How can we engage, um, the Bigs and the Littles and the youth in our creative? And throughout, um, the entire campaign, really every, every element of it, we knew that Best Mentor Mentee had really resonated in both of our organizations. So how could we, how could we build on that? So year two was really about, you know, building on that foundation, further integrating and embedding into our business. And actually what was interesting in year one where we were going out to the business to say, hey, we want to bring you along with this new partner by year two. People coming to us saying, hey, we've got this great opportunity. Do you think Big Brothers, Big Sisters would be interested? And you know, that's that we're breaking down the timeline barriers as well of the windows of this campaign to year round. You know, we've got. I've got a call later on this week for something that'll probably happen in the middle of the year somewhere. You know, I mean, it's really embedding into the organization. So we had so much fun with our CEO and C suite in year one. That we repeated it again this year. So that was another opportunity to think about, okay, how can we build on that? How can we bring more folks? So we actually bought of our top talent, um, that have mentors and are focused on mentorship, we brought them to join the C suite. So it was a mentoring mentor kind, um, of layered experience. Um, in new, in New York again. Um, last year we created a capsule collection, the Little Doodle collection, where, ah, Littles from across the country submitted doodle holiday doodle designs. So they did that. In year one and year two. We were able to sell that capsule collection which was a bear, a mug and an ornament, um, to over 100 stores and online. It's sold out online and it's completely adorable. Um, we're recording this after the holiday season, but Ali will try and get you something. So, um, how stinking cute this collection was. Um, but again, creating that experience for youth where they can submit something. And then we held an event to unveil the product in a store where we had a lot of youth submit designs so they could see it. They could. And the video, um, that was created to show that story as well was amazing because the pride in seeing a doodle that they created being sold on products in Macy's was pretty cool. Um, little breakfasts. We gave funding to each of our divisions to host breakfast and shopping events this year. Last year it was in about 20 stores, this year, 130 plus stores. And what's amazing is how many of those Littles shop for other people aren't necessarily shopping for themselves, they're shopping for others. And we give them all gift cards to shop. Um, experiential marketing. So our iconic events, we have tree lightings, Bigs and Littles, um, went to our tree lightings as well to, to be part of that moment. We had over 300 handmade ornaments in our Herald Square windows. And we know holiday windows are such a, a big part of the holiday season, so took over our 7th Avenue windows in our Herald Square store in New York with the ornaments which was super cool. Um, and I am kind of saving one of the biggest for last, which is uh, Thanksgiving Day parade. Now if I tell you that I've been um, lovingly pitching, um, parade team since I started at Macy's six and a half years ago, I wouldn't be underestimating, um, the integration. And this was the first year, last year was the first year that we had a, um, really, really meaningful parade integration where we had 30 bigs and littles from across the country. Join us, join 30 Macy's colleagues on our singing Christmas tree flight. So that is.

Speaker C: Which was beautiful.

Speaker B: It's gorgeous. It's one of our favorites. It's right before Santa. Um, and you know, not only was it this wonderful opportunity to fly in 125 people because not just the Bigs and Littles but their family because this was across the holiday, um, get a chance to do this but they had a wonderful mentor opportunity with um, Emmy award nominated conductor Judith Clarman. A chance to meet others. You know some of the feedback that we got from the Littles that came was actually got to meet other people that are like me and that love singing and love performing. It was wonderful to be around like minded people. Um, you know there were just that the legs that were created in year two it was all about build. Um, and we're setting the groundwork now. It's like okay, great. Now how can we take that further? How can we do evil more with even more functions across the business? Um, so super, super cool year two we raised 4.3 million uh, through customer donations. Um, and Macy's had invested an additional about $400,000 in grants as well to support some of those activations. Um, so 4.7 in year two. So we're getting close. Deborah was so close to being able to say 10 million over two years. But we'll take the 9.5. We'll of just thrilled with the impact that that can have to the organization and to youth and to the mission. Um, and just look forward to how we're going to build on that again. You know we're already, it doesn't stop thinking about how we can build on that for year three it's Christmas. It's uh, Christmas and the holidays all year round at me for this partnership.

Speaker A: I am a sucker for the holidays. So I don't think I would mind that our Christmas tree will be up, up for probably the rest of January because I was gone for three weeks of Christmas tree season. So it is staying up. Okay. Anyway, that was my tangent. Deb, what do you want to add in terms of learnings from year one into year two, etc.

Speaker C: I love it. Sam covered so much of what is true and true and true and, and the key for us on our side was really leaning on our local agencies and those leaders. We have a group of them who we are a little deeper engaged with and we, we bring them to the table. What else could we do? What else would be meaningful? What else are you seeing out in the community, maybe at, uh, your local Macy's. But the headquarters isn't seeing that you might do special. Some of our agencies do prom moments or, um, special gown shopping for those special moments. We would have never known those if they weren't coming from the local stores. The breakfast idea that Sam talked about came from local agencies and I had the chance to attend. They started those years and years ago, so them learning from each other and then scaling across the network. And even the collection that was sold this year, it allowed for youth and agencies who may not have a Macy's store in their backyard to participate that way. Every single part of our network was a part of the movement, was a part of this celebration. And then of course, course, it's Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving is very exciting. And no matter what, whether you are the 30 that got to come to the parade or you were tuning in to watch, we cannot let go of, uh, how impactful it was for other Littles, other bigs and our network to see their mission out loud, to see out loud what was happening and what was empowered by the, by Macy's for these matches. We have heard story upon story that just seeing is believing. And we say a lot in our Jedi world, if you can see it, you can be it. And Macy's gave a moment that now has rippled across our entire network for every young person that we serve and all of those bigs as well, who had just as much fun, that if you can see it, you can be it. And they got to celebrate over the holidays in this major, iconic moment with great pride. That's the program I'm involved in. That's where I engage. That's where my mentor comes from. For our staff, ah, it was a chance for them to stay with pride. And that's where I work every day. So it not only goes further all the things you just heard Sam say, but the resonance of those moments for young people is very, very powerful. And the continued amplification of youth, uh, at the center of all these moments, these are young people informing how we're elevating this partnership, how we're elevating these opportunities and where they want to show up with authenticity. And that's pretty powerful. Not every brand is going to release that kind of, that kind of opportunity to young folks. But Macy's really lives and breathes mission everyone out loud.

Speaker A: That is a huge one. Okay, I want to come back to one of the pieces that we talked about really briefly in the beginning, Deb, which is centering youth voices, which is really crucial when you're building programs for different audiences, they really need to be a part of that. How did you provide choice and ownership to the youth and involve them in this process?

Speaker C: That is a great question, Ali. And it's out loud. What we do every day in our world at Big Brothers Big Sisters, the entire reason we exist is for young people. And so we say all the time that the reason our mission works is because we put youth in the center. The big is there to support the youth. The agency is there to support the youth. Our national organization is there to support and empower youth. And so in this partnership, we did that from the very beginning. And thankfully, Macy's had the same vision. How do we bring a real match to life in our creative. How do we bring young people's voices to our senior leadership team? We spoke earlier about the mentoring moments that we had in our Big Futures program for the leadership of Macy's to join young people and hear their voices. Simple things that they were very proud and bold to say out loud. You know, if you had this on your website, it would resonate more with someone my age. What a bold opportunity for a young person in their, uh, early, early twenties to say out loud to a senior executive, have them hear it, and then also have them act upon it. That doesn't happen all the time. But they were given this opportunity because Macy's believes in youth, boys, and as strongly as we do. And in that they also said, well, how do we create more opportunities in our campaign for consumers to engage? What would a product creation look like? And it immediately was youth created youth design. What does it mean to you to be holiday season? Give us your visual inspiration of that. Again, all in the. As that has been said many times, out of the mouth of babes. Well, out of our youth we find the best things, including what would it look like if we were to engage with you locally? The idea of tree lightings and who would come out and participate was largely informed by our young people. The expansion of our Santa breakfast around the network, informed by our young people. And as we come out of this first year doing the Thanksgiving Day parade together, the insights our young people have given us into how we would do future live engagements. Not just about parade, but all things are from those young people and their lived experiences and literally their stories, their words, their joy. It's what everyone wants to know is really creating those mentoring, um, moment impacts that we celebrate that is fueled by this partnership. So to us it only affirms the more you lean in on youth voice the more solid the partnership is, the more it resonates with consumers and clearly the more impact we're going to make.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Okay, last question and we're going to make it lightning rounds. I'm going to challenge you. I want to talk about best practices really briefly. Um, so Deb, I'll start with you and then Sam, I'd love your take. What insights can you share with our listeners for building great consumer facing initiatives?

Speaker C: Authenticity 100% in your brand, your mission and the way you show up.

Speaker B: And I would say make it really easy for customers to participate. In our case with Roundup that just making it easy, clear, compelling, mission, centric messaging and creative. Having the youth in there was really key. And 360 activation. Leave no opportunity for integration within your business untapped.

Speaker A: I love it. Okay, I feel like that is a wonderful note to end on. I will include some links in the show, notes that you can go learn more about Macy's big brothers, big sisters and the work that they're doing together. Sam and Deb, uh, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker C: Thanks Allie.

Speaker B: Thanks for having us.

Speaker D: The Engage for Good podcast is produced in partnership with True Story fm, um, engineering by Pete Wright. Music this week is by Ian Post and Rex Banner. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, we hope you'll consider doing just that for our show. But the best thing that you can do to support Engage for Good is simply to share the show with a friend or colleague. Thank you for listening.