The Power of One: Vivint Smart Home and Vivint Gives Back
Founded in 1999, Vivint provides smart home products including smart locks, lighting, cameras, thermostats and smart sensor and related services for the broad consumer market. Vivint has installed more than 30 million devices in homes throughout North America and its cloud-based smart home platform processes more than 1.3 billion events per day.
Vivint launched its nonprofit foundation Vivint Gives Back in 2008. In 2014, Vivint sharpened the focus of Vivint Gives Back to help families with children who have autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other intellectual and developmental disabilities after recognizing the profound impact of smart home technology for these families.
Of children with ASD, roughly half attempt to elope from a safe environment—a rate nearly four times higher than an unaffected sibling. According to research from the Interactive Autism Network, parents of elopers rank wandering as one of the most stressful ASD behaviors.
A smart home system helps monitor these children’s activities and safety. With cameras, door and window sensors and other smart devices, a Vivint smart home system helps the parents of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities secure their homes and find greater peace of mind.
Vivint’s ‘Power of One’ initiative represents the impact one person can make in the world. And it’s the driving force behind the Vivint Gives Back employee volunteer program. Through the Power of One program administered by Vivint Gives Back, 49,858 Vivint volunteers have traveled 25,129,378 miles to donate 244,986 volunteer hours around the world to help children with intellectual and development disabilities, their families and others facing significant hardship.
The Power of One is an ambitious program designed to help every Vivint employee have the opportunity to give back within their communities.
It starts by setting an important expectation on each employee’s first day at Vivint when they are reminded of the company’s six core values, which include: “We Give Back – Helping people is core to our DNA.” In many cases, this is what draws prospective employees to Vivint.
The Power of One centers around four key annual employee volunteer initiatives:
International Impact Trips – Vivint Gives Back organizes hundreds of Vivint employees to travel to some of the most impoverished places in the world where they serve the local communities, especially community members with intellectual and developmental disabilities. While Vivint subsidizes the cost of travel and supplies, employees willingly donate an average of nearly $1,800 each to participate. Vivint Gives Back supplements International Impact Trips with National Impact Trips, where employees travel across North America to build Vivint-funded sensory rooms for children with ASD. To date, Vivint Gives Back and Vivint employees have built nearly 80 sensory rooms.
Vivint’s partnership with Nonprofit Feed My Starving Children – Vivint Gives Back recruits roughly 1,000 Vivint employee volunteers for each event to package and ship hundreds of thousands of specially designed meals for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities living in orphanages in third-world countries.
Summer of Service – Each year between May and September, Vivint Gives Back identifies, organizes and facilitates nearly 100 service projects throughout North America where Vivint employees donate their time and talents to make a difference in their local communities.
Sub for Santa – Vivint Gives Back rallies Vivint employees to donate funds for, purchase, wrap and deliver gifts for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities and other underprivileged children who otherwise would not receive presents during the holiday season. Vivint matches every dollar that employees donate.
In a recent survey of Vivint employees by the Great Place to Work Institute, 91 percent said they “feel good about the ways we contribute to the community.” That’s a key reason why 84 percent also said “Vivint is a great place to work,” which resulted in Vivint’s active Great Place to Work Certification. Furthermore, in Vivint’s annual employee engagement survey, employees consistently rank “We Give Back” as the Vivint core value they are most satisfied with.
The Power of One and other Vivint Gives Back programs also play an important role in helping the company attract key talent who value the company’s contributions to both the bottom line and its communities. In many instances, the deciding factor for important hires is the emphasis Vivint places on corporate philanthropy and employee volunteerism through Vivint Gives Back.
