Community and Education

Results: A Day Made Better

OfficeMax has received thousands of letters of thanks from children and teachers, and a letter of commendation from a member of U.S. Congress. The success of A Day Made Better was measured through multiple quantifiable criteria, including, but not limited to the following:

• Impact on Adopt-A-Classroom
• Impact on OfficeMax associates
• Impact on OfficeMax business

Impact on Adopt-A-Classroom

Adopt-A-Classroom is a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization that connects teachers to community partners to help alleviate the financial burden of teacher-funded classrooms. By visiting www.adoptaclassroom.com, prospective donors can donate to any teacher at any school in the United States (including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands). These donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.

Adopted teachers can use financial donations to purchase school supplies at a number of online vendors, including OfficeMax. Before a teacher can accept her donation, the teacher must write a thank-you e-mail to the donor. Once the teacher purchases items, the teacher must tell the donor how the items will be used in the classroom.

Through helping us implement A Day Made Better, Adopt-A-Classroom, has become OfficeMax’s largest charitable partner. Even prior to the event, Adopt-A-Classroom was one of the two eligible charities for the 2006-2007 OfficeMax Associate Giving Campaign. Through this campaign, associates were able to pledge support for teachers in their communities through payroll deductions in 2008.

In comparing Adopt-A-Classroom data from October 2006 to October 2007, it is obvious that A Day Made Better provided positive, measurable and lasting results for Adopt-A-Classroom. Some of these results included the following:

• The number of teachers adopted increased 459 percent.
• The number of classrooms adopted increased 1,404 percent.
• The number of visits to www.adoptaclassroom.com increased 283 percent.

Since 1998, approximately 8,000 teachers have been adopted through Adopt-A-Classroom. The organization estimates that due to A Day Made Better and other support from OfficeMax, 10,000-15,000 more teachers were adopted in 2007.

Impact on OfficeMax Associates

An internal post-event survey was conducted among over 400 A Day Made Better team leaders, to help gauge the success of the event in the eyes of our associates. Team leaders are defined as the individuals involved in organizing the team of associates to surprise the selected teacher. The survey questions and results are provided below:

Impact on OfficeMax Business

While the primary purpose of A Day Made Better and our support for Adopt-A-Classroom was to provide school supplies and recognition to teachers, the event did result in product sales and a significant amount of media recognition and publicity for OfficeMax.

By 3:00 p.m. Central Standard Time on the day of the event, OfficeMax counted approximately 100 television broadcast mentions of A Day Made Better in communities across the United States. More than 200 print media stories have been published.

We estimate that over 40 million people were exposed to positive messages about the need to support teachers, representing over $2.4 million worth of publicity and the equivalent of over $800,000 in paid advertising. These figures were estimated using industry ad value equivalency and a three-time multiplier to reflect the third-party endorsement value.