Apple employees donate record time and money to charity in 2020

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Donations by Apple employees
Apple employees are a giving bunch.
Photo: Apple

Apple employees donated their time and money in record quantities in 2020, a year that hasn’t exactly been the best in living memory. Apple’s Giving Program, which matches employee donations and volunteered hours with monetary donations to the size charity, saw plenty of action.

While Apple doesn’t provide exact figures for the year, it notes that — since the program’s inception in 2011 — Apple employees have raised close to $600 million in total donations to more than 34,000 organizations. Along the way, employees have volunteered a massive 1.6 million hours of their time.

Apple employees did plenty of good in 2020

An Apple press release highlights some of the charitable acts Apple employees have been helping carry out around the world. For example, employees Anthony Garrett-Leverett and Joe Cayao helped repurpose old material to create 14,000 face masks to help battle coronavirus. These were distributed to hospitals, convalescent homes, and frontline workers throughout the Metro Detroit area.

In another instance, Apple employees from the UK received sponsorship for their involvement in the British Red Cross’s Miles for Refugees event. This event replicates the grueling journey taken by refugees as they try to reach safety to start a new life. Apple volunteers made up the largest corporate team participating in this year’s event, which raised more than $2.6 million.

Meanwhile, Indian Apple employee Chandrika Raghunath and family volunteered making study guides for a school for disadvantaged children. Raghunath and other Apple colleagues devoted 300 hours to creating the digital resources.

This is just a small number of the overall contributions. You can read more about them here. The press release finally notes that Apple is donating an extra $5 million this holiday season to support organizations helping families and communities impacted by the coronavirus crisis.

For years, Tim Cook has been speaking about Apple as a “force for good” around the world. While there’s no shortage of things Apple as a company does, stories like this highlight how much good Apple employees are responsible for as well.

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