We’re known for our enthusiasm, camaraderie and diligence, and we want to share those great qualities with the communities where we live. That’s why we step outside our day-to-day business to serve our neighbors... And we have fun doing it.
"Living Our Purpose is not just about making our partners and their customers' lives easier, it's also about doing the same in society – in the communities in which we live and work. Great organizations need to be defined by their character, and I know AC Group is one of those great organizations that looks to make a positive change in the lives of individuals and the world at large however we can." - Milen Mahadevan, President
Degrees of Giving is an associate resource group that provides charitable giving to 12 nonprofits nominated by and voted on by AC Group associates every year. This year, we’re proud to support the following charities:
AC Group Degrees of Giving is a grass-roots corporate giving initiative that distinguishes our company culture from others. Associates nominate and vote for the charities AC Group supports each year. Here are the organizations we’ve had the privilege to support.
Raising a hand for good
Our annual silent auction brings in tens of thousands of dollars for our Degrees of Giving charities. Each year we auction off items donated by our generous local businesses, our associates auction off their time and talents through baking classes, music lessons, paint ball excursions and more. Our leadership get into the action as well, donating dinners and nights out on the town.
Oyler Mentoring Program
We have been mentoring Oyler students, grades 1-4, for over a decade. Mentoring has provided our associates an important opportunity to tangibly give back. The Al Hampton Mentoring Program is always a top-voted Degrees of Giving charity. Having the opportunity to mentor and connect with young kids has been an essential component to our employees living their purpose and loving where they work.
Save the Animal Foundation
We continue to find creative ways to support our non-profits. That's why we created an artistic fundraiser to support the Save the Animal Foundation. Our associates submitted pictures of their pets for $10 and volunteer artists turned them into works of art. Collectively, we raised hundreds of dollars for STAF and were wowed by our talented team (and some of their kids)!
Eggstrong Foundation
In addition to being a presenting sponsor of the Walk Ahead for a Brain Tumor Cure 5K, Eggstrong also donated $25,000 to a Brain Tumor Cure. The Eggstrong Foundation was created to honor the memory of our AC Group friend Jeff Eggleston, who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and passed away in 2016. He left us with his personal motto, one that he lived by each day, and one that he challenged his friends and family to follow: Do Better. Be Better.
Cincinnati Children's Hospital
Our Degrees of Giving volunteers assisted with checking in patients of the Cancer & Blood Diseases Institute (CBDI) at Camp Joy's Kids Week. Camp Joy is an experiential education center that offers traditional camp programs in the summer. They serve children from low-income homes, foster care or children with chronic medical conditions.
Women Helping Women
We received Volunteer of the Year Award from Women Helping Women, which focuses on crisis intervention and prevention advocacy for gender-based violence. Although survivors of gender-based violence are predominantly women, their services extend to men and the LGBTQ community.
Each year, we give back to nonprofits focused on STEM, food insecurity and enriching our youth and communities. But we know our associates have passions beyond that. Every AC Group associate with an active engagement with a charity – such as a board or committee position – is eligible to request a donation.
Living Our Purpose is about the work that gives back to our communities – creating change bigger than selling groceries and aligning to Kroger’s overall mission of feeding the human spirit. The best way to contribute to The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation is by rounding up to the nearest dollar at checkouts across the Kroger family of stores, add a tax-free donation to your online grocery order, or by volunteering at your local foodbank or community cleanup effort.
Learn more
Our company is made up of over 1,000 brilliant minds and our Skills-based Volunteering provides these individuals with an opportunity to use their talents for the better. From running reports to building dashboards, our data scientists, consultants and engineers truly show what it means to live our purpose.
Cancer Family Care is a nonprofit organization that helps children and adults cope with the effects of a cancer diagnosis in the family. They provide counseling, education, and support to all people touched by cancer.
We did several skills-based volunteering projects with CFC, including Donor Impact, which determined the impact of fundraising dollars year over year for the last 5-10 years. The data from this project will help CFC paint a picture of how efficient they are with the dollars they raise and how more funding could help more individuals. The end deliverable for this project is a one-pager or dashboard.
For the last two years, AC Group data scientists have completed analysis on ZHZW’s “End Hunger Campaign”. The campaign is run from the middle of November through Christmas and encourages donations that benefit the local community.
The analysis contains common metrics we use at AC Group including HH profiling & indexing, incremental sales, and control group comparisons. The final deliverables are shared with the ZHZW team and help inform how to run the campaign the following year. For example, the 2020 analysis helped inform the time frame for the 2021 campaign.
In April 2020, AC Group Data Scientist Charles Hoffman embarked on a mission with The City of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to make it easier for Cincinnati's most impoverished children to access walkable food donation sites. Leveraging our data science expertise, these organizations identified where children throughout the region were most in need of food during the COVID-19 pandemic. A map, created by AC Group, showing food distribution locations, can be viewed here.
AC Group Skills-Based Volunteering provides our consultants, engineers and data scientists the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in their community while refining their talents.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in spring of 2020, Cincinnati Public School closed, and kids were left with no secure access to meals. The community quickly came together to create food access solutions, powered by AC Group Food Access Maps that ensured that all kids living in food-insecure communities were within a one-mile walking distance to a meal distribution hub. The impact of this work had a profound affect on communities as kids and their families were guaranteed access to nutritious food. Learn more.
“Our city came together during the pandemic to ensure that every family had access to healthy food. It was absolutely remarkable, and could not have been possible without the mapping and data support provided by AC Group. Partners need to know exactly where to go to make sure everyone got food, and AC Group made that possible.”
-Cincinnati City Councilman, Greg Landsman
Since 2007, Strategies to End Homelessness has led a coordinated community effort to end homelessness in Greater Cincinnati and AC Group has been their data and analytics partner for years. Our talented data scientists have worked directly with the STEH science team to build models and dashboards predicting indicators of homeless recidivism. Through the power of data, STEH has made incremental steps improving outcomes through street outreach and rapid rehousing programs.
“As we have built our data analysis capacity from scratch, AC Group has helped us see what was possible, chart a plan and overcome obstacles every step of the way. From helping debug code to offering advice on building a data-driven culture, AC Group’s expertise has been invaluable.”
-Kevin Finn, Executive Director Strategies to End Homelessness
