By Lindsay Firestone Gruber, President & CEO of Taproot Foundation
Our values guide our work in every way at Taproot—we believe in the power of civic engagement and the importance of supporting social good organizations through pro bono service.
One way we honor these values is by closing our office on Election Day every year to ensure all Taproot employees have time off to participate in whatever ways they choose. That time can be used to make calls to get out the vote, volunteer at a local polling place, or simply to get to the polls on a busy day.
Over the last month, you might have noticed some additional out-of-office messages from our team before Election Day. I made the decision to offer additional time off leading up to November 3 in order to honor the intention behind this Taproot tradition—to support engaging in the voting process actively and safely—during this extraordinarily challenging year.
We’ve also been using our platform to support voting by sharing tips for making a plan to vote and stories about what voting means to us. The implications of elections are both deeply personal and extremely significant for our work, for the organizations we seek to serve, and for our communities. Voting is a crucial opportunity to take an active role in shaping the future, and we believe in using the resources at our disposal to encourage everyone who is eligible to vote.
In anticipation of Election Day and the uncertainty that may follow, I want to share this with the Taproot community: we will be here, ready and waiting to serve, working together to make sure that more organizations driving positive social change can do so in the face of whatever obstacles arise. We will remain deeply committed to our mission and to our belief that when we strengthen the organizations tackling society’s greatest challenges, we help create the greatest possible change for the better.
