Lob, the leading direct mail platform, today announced Lob.org, a dedicated social impact arm. Lob.org is committed to driving change through more sustainable and strategic direct mail.
“Lob.org gets at the values at the heart of Lob and allows us to apply our unique direct mail capabilities in service of social good,” said Leore Avidar, Lob CEO and co-founder. “We believe we can make a meaningful difference by partnering with innovative nonprofits and taking responsibility for environmental stewardship.”
Lob.org will be run by Lob’s Head of Social Impact, Christina Louie Dyer, who formerly led global programs for Box.org. Lob.org expands the work for social good that is already underway at Lob, and focuses on making an impact by leveraging its people, product and resources in three key areas: racial justice, civic action and sustainability.
Lob has joined the Pledge 1% movement by committing to donate 1% of time and product. Starting this month, Lob will offer employees 1% of paid volunteer time off to engage with the organizations and causes they care most about. Through Lob.org, the company will now expand its product donation and discount offer and will increase the number of organizations it will be able to support through its platform. Lob’s current nonprofit customers include Ameelio, Congress.Cards, JustFix.nyc, and MuckRock.
“By adopting Lob’s direct mail platform, we’ve significantly sped up our processes and gained more insight into tracking the status of our public records requests,” said Michael Morisy, founder and executive director of MuckRock, a nonprofit collaborative news site with a focus on racial equity and policing. “Using Lob has also freed up our staff from administrative work to focus on more strategic aspects of our government transparency mission.”
Racial Justice
Lob.org is rooted in the belief that all businesses play a vital role in addressing systemic racism and advocating for racial justice and equity. Employees started a program last year to leverage Lob’s product to support organizations on the front lines fighting against racial injustice, and Lob.org will be expanding upon that work. In support of this cause, Lob recently joined Slack’s Next Chapter program, a six-month apprenticeship program to shift perceptions and bring formerly-incarcerated individuals into highly-skilled engineering roles. Mass incarceration disproportionately affects people of color, in ways that persist even after incarceration, and Lob wants to help change that through their own hiring practices.
Lob.org will also spearhead inclusive policies to make Lob a more diverse and equitable company. After raising $50 million in Series C funding in February, Lob plans to more than double its workforce over the course of 2021, and equity will be a pillar of this hiring growth.
Civic Action
Lob.org is partnering with organizations that drive civic engagement, particularly in the areas of voting, civil rights and communication with elected officials. Direct mail is an effective communication channel for social change. The company is part of the Civic Alliance, a nonpartisan coalition of more than 1,000 businesses working together to encourage every American to participate in shaping our country’s future. Currently, Lob is partnering with Ameelio, a nonprofit startup centered on criminal justice reform, in its voter outreach efforts in NYC prisons to educate and encourage those who are legally able to vote to do so.
“Lob’s easy-to-use direct mail platform gives us the infrastructure and data we need to focus on our mission of connecting incarcerated individuals with their loved ones,” said Uzoma Orchingwa, co-founder of Ameelio. “Lob has been a supportive and enthusiastic partner whose leadership team understood immediately what we wanted to accomplish and helped us achieve our goals.”
Sustainability
Lob.org is committed to building more sustainable practices into Lob’s products and across its entire supply chain operations, including its print delivery network, which is already the largest in the U.S. A company-wide materiality assessment is in progress to help Lob identify the most impactful areas to address first. Lob will integrate more sustainable practices that will scale simultaneously with the growth of the company and will give more insight to customers on their own environmental impacts and opportunities to offset them.
Since 2017, Lob has partnered with Eden Reforestation Projects to offset the ecological footprint of its direct mail services and planted more than 200,000 trees to date. By planting more trees than used, Lob has a net-positive impact on forests. Lob also helps its more than 8,500 customers reduce their environmental impact through the paper it uses. All of Lob’s products are printed on paper that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council for responsible harvesting and contains at least 10% post-consumer waste recycled paper.
To learn more about Lob.org, visit our website here.
About Lob
Lob automates direct mail for modern businesses. More than 8,500 companies use Lob’s cloud software to move faster and create new growth opportunities, including Expedia, Clover Health, Marley Spoon, Root Insurance, SeatGeek, ThredUp and Twitter. Lob’s APIs dramatically reduce mail processing time, reclaiming thousands of hours and improving data quality. One in two households in the U.S. have received mail generated through Lob’s platform. Headquartered in San Francisco, Lob is backed by leading investors including Y Combinator, First Round Capital and Floodgate. For more information, visit https://www.lob.com.
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