How Jack in the Box makes an impact in San Diego and beyond

The Jack in the Box Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Jack in the Box Restaurant company. Dedicated to helping people access and explore life outside the box, the Foundation is responsible for community grants, disaster relief, employee volunteerism, and more. 

When Casey Birkdale stepped into the role of Foundation Director in 2022, she saw a lot of potential. The Foundation had supported local San Diego organizations for many years, but wanted to make a difference in its restaurant communities across the country. In addition, Jack in the Box had a strong reputation for community service, but not enough employees knew how to get involved. 

Casey and Foundation Program Manager Emily Schappler knew they needed to pull existing programs forward, open more opportunities for all employees, and launch a grant program to support nonprofits beyond Southern California. It was a big ask for a small team. 

{{quote}}

Creating new pathways to community impact   

Jack in the Box had a great culture of service, but they needed to expand and deepen their programs. Casey and Emily assessed the obstacles that lay ahead.  

Challenge 1: A who-you-know system

Jack in the Box had an existing volunteer program that had been around for more than two decades. The problem? It was managed on a spreadsheet. Most employees didn’t even know there were volunteer events happening. “If someone didn't know you wanted to volunteer, they didn't know to tell you about the project. We ended up tapping the same small group every time,” Emily says. In total, about 25 employees participated regularly in the program. Too many prospective volunteers were being left out. 

Challenge 2: A brand new grant program

Alongside their goals to open up the employee volunteering program, the Jack in the Box team also wanted to launch a brand new grant program: Jack’s Community Grants. This idea had long been in the works, and it was on Casey and Emily to bring it to life. They aimed to craft the grant program in a way that built on the momentum the Foundation had in San Diego, expanding their impact into Jack in the Box restaurant communities in over 20 states. 

Challenge 3: Everything was manual 

Spreadsheets meant that everything related to grantmaking and the volunteer program was a manual task. Grant records required vigilant updates to a tracker, and running every event was like starting from scratch. When Jack in the Box used Sharepoint for employee signups, all the data disappeared post-event, making tracking participation almost impossible. Plus, employees didn’t get reminders for upcoming events or a way to see their volunteer hours add up over time. 

Community programs with a way in for everyone 

As Emily and Casey looked at the scope of what they were trying to achieve, they knew they needed a software partner that could support both employee giving and grantmaking in a way that invited more people into the process and tied programs together. That’s how they found Submittable. 

With a platform for employee giving and grant management, Submittable had the framework Jack in the Box needed to expand. Plus the Submittable team provided true partnership along the way, offering support and guidance for this small team. “No one is as helpful, as friendly, and as open to feedback as the Submittable team,” Emily says. 

Together, here’s what the Foundation team was able to achieve. 

1. Make participation easy

The Foundation knew they needed to break their employee volunteering program out of its closed system by giving employees an easy entry point. Submittable helped provide that.

With Submittable, every employee has a personal dashboard where they can view upcoming opportunities and sign up with a couple clicks. Plus they get built-in reminders the team doesn’t have to manage. “It's taken a lot of the work out for volunteers, and for us as the organizers! They can sign up and know that they will be reminded of their project and their hours will get tracked, so they're not doing any of that on their own anymore,” Emily says.

The payoff has been huge. Whereas in the past, the volunteer program essentially had the same 25 employees, now that number is up in the 200s, with new people joining all the time. “In addition to making it so much more accessible for people to register for projects, we’ve also been able to advertise them in a better way on the platform, so we've seen tremendous growth in volunteerism,” Emily says.

2. Bring volunteering to every employee

Emily recognized that the volunteer program needed to meet people where they were, not expect them to find their own way in. She wanted every employee to know about volunteer opportunities available to them. 

Now, every new employee gets an introduction to the employee volunteering program. Emily joins new hire orientation to tout what a good opportunity volunteering is to meet people across the company in a meaningful way. She’s seen new hires get involved within their first month. “I always recommend joining a volunteer project as a new hire. It’s the best way to meet people outside of your team or department, and feel connected to the company culture. Having Submittable makes it so much easier for new volunteers to dive right in,” she says. 

Having Submittable also freed the team from some of the manual tasks that ate up their valuable time, allowing them to shift focus to expanding projects. This included creating volunteer events beyond their San Diego headquarters for the first time. They launched projects in places with a higher concentration of remote employees, including Seattle, Dallas, Phoenix, and Denver.

3. Invite employees into the grantmaking process

Launching a community grant program was a new challenge for the Jack in the Box Foundation, requested in part by the franchise operators who live and work outside of San Diego. It was important for franchisees and employees to feel connected to the program. 

One way the Jack in the Box team gets employees involved is through an employee review committee. Employees who want to be involved review and score grant applications from organizations divided up by region. “They use the scoring system on the Submittable site, which is super easy to manage,” Emily says. Scores are aggregated across the committee, and reviewed in order of score from highest to lowest. 

Franchisees and employees are also invited to write a letter of support for organizations they know well. The letter can serve as extra credit in the application scoring process, since these testimonials reinforce the impact of that organization on its local community. “An organization could get a perfect score of 100, but then if you add on a strong letter of support, they could score 105,” Emily explains. 

Often people who like to volunteer also want to be involved in the grantmaking, so the programs feed off each other, inspiring deeper participation. And if franchisees or employees are looking for a volunteer opportunity in their local community, Emily often starts with Jack in the Box’s existing grantees. 

Casey and Emily have learned that the right platform is essential to the success of their program. “I don't think it would be possible to run our grants program without Submittable,” Emily says. In addition to allowing them to receive and review the volume of applications that come in, it’s a simple system for applicants. “We really wanted to make sure that the application itself was not cumbersome for grantees,” she says. Submittable provided that ease for both applicants and reviewers. “I have heard feedback that this application was very, very easy to use,” she says. 

The growth of the grant program shows how successful they’ve been. In the program’s first year, there were 170 applicants and 73 grantees. This past year there were 600 applicants and 143 grantees. 

Corporate giving but make it personal 

The work the Jack in the Box team has done serves as a great example of how CSR and HR teams can recalibrate old programs and build new ones, all while keeping it grounded in the employee experience. As Casey and Emily look ahead, they’re excited about bringing more employees into the process. 

For any corporate team looking to launch or revamp a volunteering or grant program, a good first step is finding the right software partner. That’s often what it takes to unlock the kind of growth and connectivity the Jack in the Box Foundation has achieved.

‍