Barnes & Noble bookend 2010 with CSR commitment

Shining the light on the excellent CSR work done by companies is a continuing theme on the Miratel blog. As Corporate Social Responsibility continue to become more firmly embedded in the overall approach taken by corporations and small companies it’s encouraging to see the benefits being provided combined with the ‘do what we know best’ approach often embraced. Key decision-makers at companies with 15 employees or 15,000 employees are showing the initiative to creatively engage in the community time and time again. Barnes & Noble have again demonstrated that with their 2010 summary of some CSR events.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. are officially the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company. At the time of writing they operate more than 700 bookshops in all 50 states. Subsidiary Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC that I only just became aware of operate an additional 600 plus college campus bookshops throughout the country . I think it was Spiderman who said “with great power comes great responsibility” but the book giant have shown that their size simply means they can do more.

They recently announced that they were able to collect and donate in excess of 1,000,000 books for children in need across the nation during their 2010 holiday book drive with donations from customers and associates alike. In tandem with that the company were able to donate more than 20,000 books to ‘Toys for Tots’ which were then distributed to needy children over the holiday period as gifts.  Sarah DiFrancesco, director of community relations for Barnes & Noble explained:

“The Barnes & Noble Holiday Book Drive is successful every year because of our generous and thoughtful customers who are able to help those less fortunate during the holiday season. This holiday tradition is a wonderful way for booksellers and customers to come together and give the gift of reading to children in their local communities.”

The annual book drive begins again on November 1, 2011 with the company hoping to improve upon last year’s results. I feel it’s a really strong showing that when you focus on your expertise and extensive network of great deal of good can be done for your own communities. Well done Barnes & Noble.

Miratel solutions is a full-service call center located in Toronto and we embrace and encourage the expansion of CSR internally at all times.

To learn more about Toys for Tots please visit their official website.

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