We believe a successful company has a responsibility to the greater community, which is why our legacy of philanthropic giving to nonprofit organizations in the cities and communities where we operate is deeply connected to our core business.
Our approach to company philanthropy is comprised of three main parts. The Tiffany & Co. Foundation was established as a critical piece of our global sustainability efforts and has contributed to long-term social and environmental change. Tiffany & Co.’s Corporate Giving program helps our Company support local communities and connect with our customers around shared values, such as the arts, environmental conservation and inclusion. We also support the issues our employees are passionate about through our Tiffany Cares program, which encourages employee giving and volunteering. Each year, we aim to donate at least 1% of our pre-tax earnings to charitable purposes. In 2019, our corporate contributions totaled approximately USD $8 million, or approximately 1.2% of pre-tax earnings.
The Tiffany & Co. Foundation’s grantmaking is strategically aligned to complement our sustainability efforts, supporting progress on issues that matter to our business and stakeholders. The Foundation’s mission is to preserve the world’s most treasured seascapes and landscapes. The Foundation’s grantmaking today mainly focuses on organizations that advance responsible mining efforts and that protect the world’s oceans and coral reef ecosystems. When it comes to responsible mining, the Foundation promotes remediation and preservation of culturally or environmentally significant lands. The Foundation supports the protection of our oceans and coral reefs by making grants to organizations working to expand the world’s marine protected areas, as well as organizations that are dedicated to research, education and raising awareness of the importance of our oceans and the threats they face.
In 2020, we commemorate the Foundation’s 20 years of supporting organizations that empower people in protecting the world’s most precious places for generations to come. Since 2000, the Foundation has awarded over USD $85 million in grants to nonprofit organizations working around the world to advance issues of importance on a local and global scale. The Tiffany & Co. Foundation supports conservation efforts in iconic places around the world that aim to lift up communities and empower them to protect their landscapes and seascapes. People need nature to thrive, and in order to protect nature, we believe that we must look to local communities as the stewards of these precious places.
We believe that our tradition of corporate giving helps us connect with our customers and employees around shared values and interests, such as the arts, environmental conservation and inclusion. This tradition began when our founder, Charles Lewis Tiffany, and his son, Louis Comfort Tiffany, supported The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Society of Fine Arts in our hometown of New York City. Today, we continue this tradition through our engagement with local and global organizations that further causes that are important to us.
As part of our unwavering commitment to diversity and inclusion, in 2020 we began partnerships with the Ali Forney Center, a leading organization that provides services for homeless LGBTQIA+ youth in the United States, and the National Urban League, a civil rights organization that works through its 90 affiliates across the United States to improve social and economic outcomes for the Black community. These partnerships are enabled, in part, through our Employee Resource Groups and reflect our dedication to advancing important conversations within our company and the wider community.
Tiffany & Co. has always had a powerful relationship with nature and a legacy of supporting wildlife conservation. As part of our ongoing efforts, we continue to donate 100% of profits from the Tiffany Save the Wild collection to the Wildlife Conservation Network for the protection of elephants, rhinos and lions and have raised over USD $8 million since 2017.
We also contribute to communities affected by climate change. In response to the devastating bushfires in Australia in late 2019 and early 2020, we donated to support local relief efforts focused on assisting communities, wildlife and volunteer firefighters.
Our Company’s cultural values guide us to “do the right thing” and “be brilliant together.” We empower our employees to take action on causes they are passionate about, and we multiply their impact by supporting their efforts. We do this in two ways: by matching employee donations to eligible nonprofit organizations dollar-for-dollar, and by donating USD $10 to eligible nonprofit organizations for every hour of volunteer time employees contribute, up to a combined annual matching donation of USD $1,000 per employee per year. We started Tiffany Cares in the U.S.; and more recently, we have expanded the program throughout Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the U.K., Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand and plan to continue to grow the program globally.
The COVID-19 outbreak underscores the responsibility we feel to respond to the urgent needs of our greater community, as people around the globe are affected by this pandemic. From a philanthropic perspective, Tiffany & Co.’s response began with support for the nonprofit organization Direct Relief and its efforts in China to provide medical supplies and protective equipment to healthcare workers during the peak of the outbreak there. As the pandemic spread globally, The Tiffany & Co. Foundation made a rapid-response commitment of USD $1 million to support organizations providing immediate relief for communities impacted by COVID-19, both on a global scale as well as in our hometown of New York City.
The Tiffany & Co. Foundation awarded USD $750,000 to the UN Foundation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization and USD $250,000 to The New York Community Trust’s NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund. Further, Tiffany & Co. matched employee donations to any qualified nonprofit organization supporting COVID-19 relief dollar-for-dollar, as well as offering virtual volunteer opportunities for our employees.
As part of Tiffany’s ongoing commitment to supporting vulnerable communities, in the summer of 2020, 100% of profits from the Tiffany Infinity collection were donated to CARE, for a total of over USD $3.8 million. These funds went towards the humanitarian organizations’ work with those affected by COVID-19, particularly women and people of color.
At Tiffany, our approach to sustainability underpins all areas of our business.
