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Formstack for Good: Creative Ways Stackers Can Give Back

Lindsay McGuire
December 1, 2020
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Min Read

‘Tis the season for giving!

But at Formstack, we like to give all year long. As an organization driven by relationships and results, we know the impact that can be made through giving. 

This is why we launched Formstack for Good (FS4G) in January 2020 at our all-team meeting, called Converge. The purpose of FS4G is to bring together our most valuable assets for the greater good and encourage Stackers to contribute to their communities.

FS4G is built upon three pillars: 

People

Encouraging Formstackers to give their time, talent, or skills to causes that are close to their hearts.


Product

Using our industry knowledge to help nonprofits be more productive and efficient.

Planet

Programs and products that preserve, protect, and replenish precious natural resources.

We’ve seen smashing success with our FS4G corporate social responsibility program. Part of the reason it’s been so successful is because we’re able to fuse mission and purpose with fun throughout the program. 

Here are just a few ways our employee giving program uses creative approaches to allow employees to give to great causes.

Let’s taco-bout giving. 

If you follow us on social media or peruse our blog, you may have heard us talk about HeyTaco!. It’s a Slack-based program that allows you to give recognition to employees for good work. 

FYI, we usually don’t use our names as our Slack handles. It’s hard to explain… Feel free to Tweet us for the full explanation.

But HeyTaco! is more than just a fun way to give your teammates shout outs and gratitude. The tacos received can be used as currency. 

Each quarter, our Senior Human Resource Specialist Cici fills our HeyTaco! rewards portal with some awesome options we can cash in on with tacos. Although they change from quarter to quarter, we always have charitable options available. Donating 150 tacos provides a $25 donation from Formstack.

This quarter, we’re highlighting organizations that minimize hunger and are on a mission to end food insecurity. Here’s a look at the three new charitable taco options we have this quarter:

Learn more about Meals on Wheels and Feeding America


We also have some charitable taco rewards that are available all year-long. These align with our mission to stand up against inequality, injustice, and racism that has plagued our society for decades.

Learn more about the NAACP, Equal Justice Initiative, and Black Lives Matter. 


Since the inception of FS4G, Stackers have traded in their tacos to wrack up nearly $2,000 in donations. Besides the organizations above, Stackers have also supported the following organizations through our HeyTaco! Rewards program:

We donate using the power of our paychecks. 

A super simple way to allow employees to make charitable donations is through a payroll deduction. Stackers are able to automatically donate to many of the organizations mentioned in the section above through their paycheck. 

We use a system called UltiPro to make payroll deductions quick and easy to set up. It only takes a few minutes to set up, and you can edit your donation amount at any time. An added bonus is that all employees can see how much Stackers have donated through payroll deductions, helping us all understand the good we’re contributing to.

Who knew we had such philanthropic pets!

If you’ve seen our Instagram or read some of our blogs (like this one!), you know Stackers are OBSESSED with their pets. We even have a #pets Slack channel that is constantly flooded with cute pet content. 

Yes, that is a llama. His name is Kuzco.


This inspired our Events Marketing Manager Hilary to do something really cool for a great cause. With design help from our Social Media Manager Lindsay and lots of picture contributions from Stackers across the world, the 2021 Formstack Pet Calendar was born! 

We worked with the Indianapolis branch of A Perfect Promotion to source the best calendar option to fit our vision. After a few weeks, we compiled all the beautiful pet submissions into a beautifully designed calendar. We charged $15 per calendar, with $9.25 of each calendar going to Best Friends Animal Society as a donation.


We hope to sell 100 calendars to raise close to $1,000 for Best Friends Animal Society. If you’d like a calendar of your own, we have a limited supply left! You can order yours here

Taking time off to do good. 

At Formstack, we know our employees have strong skills they can use to give back in their community. This is why Stackers are provided with eight hours of volunteer time off each quarter which can be used at the organization of their choice.

Here are just some of the organizations Stackers have contributed their time and talent to in 2020: 

Ready to give back? 

There are lots of ways to get creative with your philanthropy. If you or your organization does something cool to make our world a better place, let us know on Twitter! We’d love to learn more and hear about your fun ideas. 


If you’re an animal fanatic who loves doing good, don’t miss out on your chance to order a 2021 Pets of Formstack Calendar. We have a limited supply left, and $9.25 of each $15 order will be donated to Best Friends Animal Society.

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Lindsay McGuire
Lindsay is the Content Marketing Manager at Formstack, splitting her time between creating blog content, writing reports, and hosting Formstack's Practically Genius podcast. She's a proud graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism (MIZ!) and loves connecting with others on LinkedIn.
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