Reimagine Corporate and Nonprofit Partnerships with Kendra Scott’s Amanda Young

Reading Time: 21 minutes

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I’m thrilled to have Amanda Young, the Marketing and Philanthropic Manager at Kendra Scott, here to spill her secrets behind successful corporate and nonprofit partnerships. We cover everything from setting up pop-up shops, creating custom gifts, and leveraging local contacts.

Today’s case study explores how an International Women’s Day fundraising campaign empowered local communities and drove meaningful impact across 140 stores.

You’ll also hear about Kendra’s incredible origin story revolutionizing the jewelry industry with a scrappy $500 investment, to later striking a deal with Nordstrom and opening her first retail store. 

This episode is a testament to the transformative power of perseverance and combining business success with a commitment to giving back. Amanda’s wisdom will offer a clear roadmap for nonprofits eager to maximize their fundraising efforts this year. 

Kendra Scott’s philanthropy has resulted in over $50 million dollars in donations since 2011!

P.S. Don’t forget to register for my Monthly Giving Summit coming up on Sept 5-6 from 1-4 pm ET – the ONLY virtual event designed to help nonprofits build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good. RSVP for FREE here!

P.P.S. Join me for my Book Launch Tour at Kendra Scott stores in Atlanta, GA and Sarasota, FL! 

RSVP for Atlanta on September 7th

RSVP for Sarasota on September 18th

SNEAK PEEK

Resources & Links

Can we meet in Nashville? The 8th annual Raise fundraising conference, hosted by OneCause, will be held at the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville, TN September 9-10, 2024 Use code MISSIONS200 to receive $200 off registration, Register: https://bit.ly/4bNqihi

Interested in partnering with Kendra Scott? Click here to learn more. You can also connect with Amanda on LinkedIn.

Join The Sustainers, my Slack community for nonprofit professionals growing and scaling a recurring giving program.

Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you.

Additional resources for corporate and nonprofit partnerships

• Attract Corporate Partners in 30 Days with 2 Cold Emails
• 3 Corporate Partnership Myths Hindering Meaningful Connection
• How To Attract and Find Corporate Partnerships for Nonprofits
• 1 Digital Idea To Create Meaningful Corporate Partnerships

Transcript

Amanda Young: We are always focused on the betterment of the lives of women and children, because we are a female founded company with plenty of women that work here. Kendra is a real woman. She took $500 out of her savings account in a dream, as we like to say. She designed her first collection of jewelry and went business to business, nonprofit to nonprofit, and said look, here’s this jewelry. All I ask is that you use it for a good cause and you tell people who I am. And she became so famous in the Austin area during that time. Nordstrom heard about her and picked her up, and then we opened our first retail store. There was a line of people wrapped around the building and Kendra just looked out in pride because she was like, oh my gosh, how do these people even know who I am and how do they know to come here and support me? And it turns out that so many of the people that were in line to shop that first day were people that we had given back to through the years.

Dana Snyder: Hey there, you’re listening to the Missions to Movements podcast and I’m your host, Dana Snyder, digital strategist for nonprofits and founder and CEO of Positive Equation. This show highlights the digital strategies of organizations making a positive impact in the world. Ready to learn the latest trends, actionable tips and the real stories from behind the feed? Let’s transform your mission into a movement and the real stories from behind the feed.

Dana Snyder: Let’s transform your mission into a movement. Hello everyone, welcome back to Missions to Movements. I have a guest here with me today that we actually met in person first and now have connected to this podcast. I feel like it’s the reverse Most of the time, where you meet somebody virtually, then you meet in person, then they come on the show. But Amanda Young is here with me today. She is the Marketing and Philanthropic Manager at Kendra Scott. We met at the Alpharetta store here in Atlanta, georgia, for a friend of mine’s book launch. Shout out to Kendra Bracken Ferguson, and Amanda spearheads innovative marketing strategies that not only elevate the brand of Kendra Scott but also resonate with diverse audiences, whether we’re talking about social media campaigns, collaborations, community events. Amanda is there to ensure that Kendra Scott’s message of empowerment and philanthropy reaches far and wide. And I had to have you on the show, Amanda. So nice to meet you again virtually.

Amanda Young: It is a pleasure. I’m so excited to be able to talk about all of the special things that we do at Kendra Scott that make us so unique and make it such a great place to work. So thanks for having me.

Dana Snyder: Of course and I love that you just said that, because I think your background is so interesting you really rose in your career there, starting off at a store and then now having this interest in philanthropy, what you do. Can you share kind of how that all blossomed?

Amanda Young: Yeah, so I love that you asked me this. I’m so proud of my background in retail. Before I became a member of our regional marketing team, I was really a career retail worker. I had worked for many luxury brands. I was management in those stores for those brands and I loved the ability to just be able to connect with customers face to face, person to person. And it was once I started in one of our Atlanta stores as an assistant manager doing events in that store that I really started to realize the impact that could be had through this philanthropy pillar that is such an important part of our business. And it was really just something that came out of just organic partnerships – Me just being in the store chatting with people on the sales floor, shared interests of beautiful jewelry and finding out that maybe they work for a certain nonprofit or work for a major corporation that does a lot of community giving and just saying how can we help, like what is something we can do to make whatever it is that you’re doing even more impactful. And it was kind of through those conversations that I found myself on the regional marketing team. So I’m so thankful for the opportunity that I had to be able to join this team and I’m thankful for my retail background to be able to bring some of that knowledge into the role.

Dana Snyder: Absolutely Okay. For those that might not be as familiar and you’re about to become obsessed with the brand, will you please share with us the brand story of Kendra Scott, how the jewelry business came to be, and then also how philanthropy, because I know it is so integrated into the DNA of what you do.

How Kendra Scott began a jewelry business rooted in philanthropy

Amanda Young: Yeah, I love sharing this story because, one, it’s true and, two, it’s an amazing story. So we are always focused on the betterment of the lives of women and children, because we are a female founded company with plenty of women that work here. And the origins of our story are so important because they’re deeply embedded in the work that we do today. So Kendra is a real woman. She actually started our brand back in 2002 when she had started a business previously and it didn’t work out the way that she wanted. That business was also rooted in philanthropy, but then she was going through a whole bunch of life changes. She was now entering single motherhood and needed to find a way to provide for her family, and she took $500 out of her savings account. In a dream, as we like to say, she designed her first collection of jewelry and went business to business, nonprofit to nonprofit, and said look, here’s this jewelry. All I ask is that you use it for a good cause and you tell people who I am. And she became so famous in the Austin area during that time that Nordstrom heard about her and picked her up, and then we opened our first retail store. I think it was 2010 or 2011 and there was a line of people wrapped around the building and Kendra just cried because she was like, oh my gosh, how do these people even know who I am and how do they know to come here and support me? And it turns out that so many of the people that were in line to shop that first day were people that we had given back to through the years, and I love telling that story because that’s really the feeling of community we try to foster everywhere, that we have a store. We always believe we have something to give and we want to give, no matter how big or how small, and it’s just such a great feeling to be able to work somewhere where we have those experiences like Kendra had on that first day, all the time working at Kendra’s.

Kendra Scott’s International Women’s Day case study with nonprofit partnerships

Dana Snyder: God, yes, oh, my God, so good, and you just had a big campaign. I mean, you do lots of things throughout the year that are give back focused. But I really wanted to dive into your case study surrounding International Women’s Day, because it was such a beautiful and this was nationwide, this wasn’t just here in Atlanta, but can you share what was the overall kind of national approach for this?

Amanda Young: Yeah, so International Women’s Day is one of those days that we call a Kendra holiday. Right, it’s for those things that just make sense for us to be able to activate in an impactful way.

Dana Snyder: Oh my gosh, I love that so much. A Kendra holiday this is for you listener. You might have a X your brand holiday that you can like have ownership around. I think that’s just such a great nugget for somebody to attach themselves to, like whatever other cultural things might be going on what makes sense for your organization, your business, to align to. Sorry, I just had to pick that out.

Amanda Young: I love that we have a few of those types of holidays throughout the year, and International Women’s Day is one of my favorite because we are a majority female company, we have a female founder. It just makes sense for us to be able to reach the women and children that are right in our backyard. So this International Women’s Day campaign it’s not the first time we’ve done it and it certainly won’t be the last, I’m sure but basically we invite local nonprofits to come into our store and fundraise. So we had a give back event in every single one of our stores. So that’s, I think, over 140 stores.

Dana Snyder: Wow.

Amanda Young: Something to that the tune of that. I’m losing track. These days, we’re opening stores left and right. Our customers are so excited about us coming into their communities.

Dana Snyder: You’re launching a new store right down the road from me.

Amanda Young: Oh my gosh. Yes, that store, it seems, is going to be such a huge hit. Everyone is so excited about it. I remember when we first announced everyone was like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe this. We’ve been needing a store here. I’m like, yes, I love that and you know what? Not to go back, but a lot of the people who know about us and the brand awareness in this new store, in this new city, in this new county. They worked with us and know us through our give back events that we’ve done throughout the years. So working with the community and servicing them in a way that is meaningful and impactful. It has major returns for us on a personal level, but then also on a business level, of course. But yeah, so our International Women’s Day campaign we had give back events with nonprofits that supported women and girls specifically in all of our stores, and we basically invited these nonprofits into our four walls to do some fundraising. So it was a great day that was full of lots of fantastic stories, amazing content, beautiful smiles, and we ended up giving back I think it was nearly $50,000 from just that one day to local nonprofits. And what I love about that is, I mean, it’s always amazing when we can give back to major national nonprofits, but it’s also special to be able to prioritize those smaller local nonprofits who really do need the fundraising push. They really do need the exposure, they really do need the ability to get more people supporting their cause on a local level. So it’s just a wonderful holiday and it’s great that we were able to support it in the way that we were, and it’s always just so special.

Dana Snyder: How did that work from a local level? So let’s just say I’m just using the Alpharetta store as an example because it’s close and there’s about two in Peachtree Corners which I’m very excited for. So in Alpharetta, if an organization because I know this happens outside of national holidays where people can have these in-store hosted fundraisers, oh yeah, what does that look like? And what did it look like, I guess, on the example of International Women’s Day for Alpharetta, was it one organization per store on that day or could it have been multiple nonprofits?

Amanda Young: It could have been multiple and a lot of stores had multiple nonprofits that day, which is so exciting. We just said minimum of one, but some stores had like a stacked day where they had nonprofit after nonprofit coming in and being able to support so many on such an important day.

How Kendra Scott supports nonprofit partnerships through events

Dana Snyder: Okay, so let’s just say I was interested. I rose my hand. What was the process like of getting set up to be a nonprofit on that day? And then how would they invite people to like, come and shop in the store and what was like the percentage back?

Amanda Young: Yeah, so that’s a really great question and the way that we work with nonprofits for International Women’s Day is actually the same way. We work with nonprofits 365 days a year, which is awesome, and I love that you mentioned we do these fundraising events outside of International Women’s Day. We can host give back events in our stores any day that our stores open, and many times our stores will have four, five, six events per week where they’re giving back. So I love that we called that out, because we definitely want to be able to impact the local community as many times as we can in as many ways we can. So basically, the way this process works is if you were interested in doing a give back event, you basically just fill out an application on our website. A member of our team will reach out, have a conversation, make sure you’re aware of what the event looks like. The ask from the nonprofits, which is really simple we basically just ask for you to tell people and have them show up and support. We really handle the rest. So we’ll create marketing materials for you to be able to email your supporters. Social media templates so you can post on social. We understand that nonprofits especially not small ones they may not have an entire marketing department behind them to help promote these events, so we try to make it as easy as possible for us to give back by giving the materials and the tools necessary to be able to make the event a success.

Dana Snyder: Awesome, okay, and then you show up, right, you invite your community to be there, and then is it shopping the entire store. Is it specific items? How does that work?

Amanda Young: That’s a great question. It is typically the entire store. From time to time there will be a couple of exclusions, but it’s pretty rare. So we will give 20% of all sales from a certain time period back to an organization. So typically, let’s say you have an event from five to seven. We’d love a happy hour event we invite your supporters in. We love when a nonprofit is able to have a representative present to speak about the organization, maybe give a speech at the top of the event and share what our fundraising goal is for the evening, and then we provide the sips and sweets, as we like to call them. Everyone gets to mingling and catching up, sharing impactful stories about the organization, and we will give 20% of the sales from that experience. And deeper than that, we also have the ability to offer 20% of sales from virtual oh cool, yeah. So during typically a 48-hour period, we will give an organization a unique giveback code that they can use online and anytime that code is used during that period, a 20% donation will go back to that organization as well.

Kendra Scott’s corporate culture of supporting nonprofit partnerships

Dana Snyder: Oh my gosh, I love this idea. Okay, and what was so fun, honestly, when I went to my friend’s book launch party which inspired my idea for launching my book at Ken Prescott’s location, because all of these things that they’re doing was this fact was in talking with Amanda, I was like, I have an idea, let’s brainstorm this. And then we jumped on a call and it’s the fact that you have, sometimes, I think, we think, oh, there’s no way this corporation is going to do this, this or this or they’ll be able to brainstorm this, this and this, but there is that, right, there’s always that opportunity and it seems like to have just a conversation to explore what’s possible. And then, obviously, you guys have things that are already set up for our organizations, but you’re open to the conversation of seeing what’s possible, which I thought was awesome.

Dana Snyder: So, outside of International Women’s Day campaign, because when we met it was close to around that March timeframe. However, something I also brought up to you, which was part of the brainstorm conversation, was the fact that I’m hosting this monthly giving virtual summit in September, and so I said, hey, is there anything that you do with nonprofits around monthly giving? And you were like, oh, let me tell you all the different things that we could do around a monthly giving program. So can you share a few of these ideas, because I thought they were brilliant, specifically if you could start with the one, the pop-up at the company.

Amanda Young: Yeah, of course. So I love that you called out the fact that we are so open to different ideas, and I’ll say that culture comes directly from our founder. Kendra is the type of person to say why not? I mean who says we can’t. And it’s so funny because I feel like with some brands, the ideas and the ideals don’t always match the actions. But here, because our founder is so deeply rooted in the core pillars of our business, we really do have the freedom to say, well, why not, why not try it and see what happens. And I’m fortunate enough to work for a brand and have leaders that they understand that sometimes innovation comes from just trying something one time, right, like, why not, let’s just try it, see what comes of it, and it might be something huge. At the very least, it’s a new connection made. So I love that you mentioned that, because that’s a culture that comes directly from Kendra herself, which is awesome.

Amanda Young: But when we were talking about these monthly giving campaigns and ways that organizations can kind of think outside of the box to engage their support base, one thing that I love is the idea of Kendra Gives Back pop-up experience. This is basically where we bring the in-store party experience to the supporters. So I always mention to certain organizations do you have a corporate sponsor that has been really supportive of you in this past year? Would you like to gift them with the opportunity to have a pop-up at their place of work? This is always such a hit with organizations because everyone knows we are all busy, especially during gift-giving holiday times. Mother’s Day right now is like around the corner, right, and next thing you know it’s snuck up on you and you haven’t bought a gift for your mom, your wife, your sister, all the important women in your life. So we have the opportunity to say why don’t we bring the party to them and offer a 20% discount from anything that’s sold there? And also it makes it super convenient for the business because now I know that I don’t have to scramble to find a gift. Kendra Scott is coming during lunch and they’re going to be here to be able to gift wrap our items and make sure we give back to the organization we’ve been supporting for years. So that’s one of the ways that I love being able to kind of take some of the heavy lifting off of the organization. I think sometimes when I talk to nonprofits it’s like, well, we’re a small team and we don’t really have that many people who can be boots on the ground. I’m like no worries. How about the other people who want to support the corporate sponsors or, you know, the board members, the people who are really motivated to be able to give back to this organization, that maybe do have some time to set these types of things up?

Dana Snyder: Yeah, I’m going to totally make up an idea here. But this is something where, if you talk to your board of directors, most of the time they’re working at corporations. So let’s just say, for example, I’m going to make up Bank of America, so at Bank of America they’re at their corporate headquarters, a board member works there and they can set up a pop-up and they can have all the employees there shop and come by and it’s is it a discount or it’s the kickback, 20% back to the nonprofit 20% back to the nonprofit If we wanted to support from a philanthropy point of view.

Amanda Young: Now we do have some other ways that we work with, like business to business partners. That’s more of like a discount based perk. But if we’re leaning with the community giving, I always love to pitch a give back first, because who doesn’t love being able to purchase and having that purchase go towards an important cause?

Dana Snyder: Yes, exactly, and then that percentage back could go towards your monthly giving program, which I thought was really cool as a donation. The other thing that we brainstormed and actually our mutual friend Kendra was doing this in store is she had created a custom item. Can you talk about how that’s done?

Amanda Young: With us online and they can create a piece that is unique to whatever it is that they’re buying for, whether it be a gift, whether it be an important cause. So I love using all of our amazing customization as a way to take giving campaigns to the next level. So we have our really unique experience called the Color Bar. This is where you can come into the store, design any piece and our team will hand set it for you on site. Color bar is one of my favorite things to pitch to organizations. If you have a specific color that means something to your organization, we can make that happen in any one of our stores. A lot of our stores also have on-site engraving, so if you wanted to engrave a piece that had a word that was important to your organization, we can do that the name of the monthly giving program, the name of the program yeah, we wanted to designate a title to people who are part of the monthly giving program. We can get that engraved on a piece and make sure they get that as a gift with a certain donation amount. So we have these abilities in store online. I’m always pitching these opportunities to our organizations and they love it because it’s something different and unique that they utilize to kind of increase that monthly giving yes, absolutely, and I think it’s.

How to start a nonprofit partnership with Kendra Scott

Dana Snyder: Sometimes you just don’t know what’s possible until you ask the questions and you explore oh, we have this nugget of an idea. Or you hear something like this where you’re like, oh, this has been done before, Like I’ve never seen this or been a part of it. So if someone’s interested in creating a partnership with Kendra Scott, what are like ABC steps?

Amanda Young: Yeah. So first things first. If you don’t have a contact, you don’t know who to reach out to. You’re just listening to this in your local community and you’re like, oh man, I’ve got to be a part of this. I always recommend hopping on our website. We have an entire page dedicated to philanthropy, as it’s one of our core pillars. On there, you’ll see so many different opportunities for you to work with us as a brand, and there’s also the way to create an application for either a give back event, in-kind donation, and a member of our team will reach out to solidify the details. So I always say that’s the easiest and most consistent way to get in touch with someone in your backyard when it comes to doing these types of events.

Dana Snyder: Awesome. Okay, I will put the link to that page in the show notes so somebody can access it right away. Is there something else that I didn’t mention that you wanted to make sure that I covered in terms of philanthropy.

Amanda Young: I don’t think so. One thing I just love sharing and this is like such an amazing figure so I love to just lead with this whenever I’m talking about the amazing things we do is our overall give back number. We’ve given back over $50 million to local and national nonprofits since we started our Kendra Gives Back program in 2011. And that is such an impressive number. We are so proud of it. We are constantly giving back, whether it be our time, our talent, our treasure, whether it be 20% of our sales in our stores. Part of the community of giving that we’ve kind of fostered at Kendra Scott starts with the people that we hire, and I find the common denominator with all of us is we all want to be able to be making an impact in our communities, big or small. So I love to be able to share that give back number and we’ve given back countless more. When it comes to in-kind donations, we always believe we have something to give. We always lead with that and I always tell people just never be afraid to ask you keep asking too much. I mean you might. I might have to go back and say I don’t know if we can make that happen this time, but we’ll always find a way to support if we can Always have the conversation.

Dana Snyder: Yeah, and I think something that’s so powerful especially when it comes to I’m teasing that Amanda is probably gonna be part of our monthly giving summit coming up in September is the fact of community and these in-person whether it’s a pop-up at an organization or within the store coming to a store experience, if you can invite your monthly donors or just your overall donors and host that little happy hour there and then you make the invite to join your monthly giving program. And oh, by the way, in addition to this pop-up we’re having in the store, there’s also a specific item where, if you join our monthly donor program tonight and you’ll be able to purchase this item that has the name of it. Right, it’s the story and it’s like it gives someone something that’s a physical experience and experiential, just being surrounded by like-minded and like-valued people. So I don’t know, I just literally, you guys, when I met Amanda at the store, I was just, I got chills because I was like, oh, like, she is my person and this organization has such a feel-good aura around it. And I have to tell you, when I was in the store for Kendra’s event, I did the color bar experience. I don’t know if you remember this. Yeah, I do remember, okay, so my birthday is on St Patrick’s day, along with my mom and my great my late now great aunt. So this is what you don’t know. So I created a necklace for my great aunt. She was turning 90. My mom got a earrings and I made a ring. This was a cool thing. So it was the same the March birthstone. I think it was. Yes, it was the March birthstone. In those different, I could pick out the what I wanted it to be, whether it was a necklace and a ring or earrings and so we went up for my aunt’s. This just tells you I mean, this is just the connection of the story and like how beautiful and meaningful the jewelry turned out to be. Right, it’s not just an earring. So we went to Ohio for my great aunt’s 90th birthday party. She ended up having an incident where she fell and she was in the hospital. So my mom and I were so glad we went there and I brought my daughter with me and thank God I did because and she opened her gift. My mom and her opened it all together there in the hospital. So she had on her necklace, her mom had her earrings, I had the ring. Two weeks later she ended up passing away, oh wow. And then my mom just went back up and she sent me a photo and she’s like look at these beautiful earrings I’m wearing to aunt Pat’s funeral celebration of life. And it was the earrings from that we made at Kendra Scott.

Amanda Young: Oh my gosh, I’m so touched by that story. Thank you for sharing that, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we get stories like that all the time in our stores, where people it’s not just jewelry, right Like sometimes, I think, we say like, well, it’s just jewelry. You know, we’re not like rocket scientists or we’re not impacting the world in that large of a way, but jewelry is not just jewelry. A lot of the times it has such a deep connection and personal story that comes along with it, and that’s one of the things that I loved the most about working in the store is there would always be a time where I’m like I’m designing on the color bar with someone and then all of a sudden we’re both crying because we’re sharing deeply personal stories about what this jewelry means to us, and it’s it’s not just jewelry, it’s the people who wear it, and I think, hopefully, that’s something that we lead with at Kendra Scott. We have amazing products, but it’s the people who work for us and the people who shop with us that make it so incredible. So I love that you shared that story.

Dana Snyder: That’s amazing, I’m like fighting back tears right now, because that’s such it was awesome out because that’s such, such it was awesome and the the the thing that bonds us all together. I don’t even know if I just shared this in the story, but we all are St Patrick’s day birthdays, so funny, so it was. We were all there together to celebrate her birthday. Cause 90 is definitely the most important, and so it was awesome to be able to be there with her and just have that special moment all together. So thank you for helping make that moment really special. That was amazing.

Amanda Young: I love that. That’s amazing and I’m so glad-  it’s so funny. I don’t really work in the stores that often, but you and I were designing together. I’m like I think the store team kind of peeking out of the corner of their eye like should we be supervising her? What is she doing?

How to support Kendra Scott’s mission

Dana Snyder: No, but it was really beautiful, and so I just want to invite everyone to think about Kendra Scott in your next corporate partnership meeting conversation. Look at their website, see what they do. Connect with Amanda, which then leads me to two final questions for you. I like to ask all of my guests what’s one thing that you would like to ask for help or support on?

Amanda Young: I think that’s such a great question – Whenever we’re working with organizations since we do so many give back events a lot of the times it can feel like you know a cut and paste, a copy paste. This is what we know works. I love when an organization is able to share with me the specifics of their audience and what they need to be motivated to support and give back. So I always love when I get very specific instructions and feedback from an organization. The more specific the better. That way we can make sure that we’re working together in a way that makes sense.

Dana Snyder: Perfect, I love that. And then, lastly, where can listeners connect to you? Where can they connect with Kendra Scott?

Amanda Young: Yeah, so I’m most easily reached via LinkedIn. I feel like we all are these days Kendra Scott. We are on social everywhere where you can find social. We are Kendra Scott at Kendra Scott one word, very easy to find, and we love being able to engage with people that way. So definitely reach out.

Dana Snyder: Awesome, beautiful, Amanda, thank you so much for joining us today and all the work that you do for organizations local and national.

Amanda Young: Of course, it was such a pleasure. I always love being able to share the joy and the good that we do, so thank you for having me and for allowing me to be able to chat about my very special job.

Dana Snyder: You’re very welcome.

Dana Snyder: Can you tell I love talking all things digital? To make this show better, I’d be so grateful for your feedback. Leave a review, take a screenshot of this episode, share it on Instagram stories and tag Positive Equation with one E so I can reshare and connect with you.