Catbird has made giving back a priority since the inception of the brand. However, it was only until this year that the company started its own foundation to commit to helping those in need. Catbird Founder and Co-Creative Director Rony Vardi shares how the pledge to doing good has had a positive impact on the lives of others.
How important is it for you to incorporate giving back into your business/brand?
It’s been a huge priority for us to bring our brand and foundation closer together. On one hand, it allows us to share our philanthropic work with our customers who help make all of this possible. It’s also an opportunity for us to use our platform and visibility to take a stand on social justice issues.
Which causes or charities are you most passionate about?
Catbird works with a group of organizations that reach women and girls in underserved areas – providing them with education, jobs training, and reproductive health resources. As a female-founded and led company, setting up our foundation to serve women has been a core part of our mission. Broader to this, we always want to align Catbird with those working towards greater equality. ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Food Bank for New York City were all chosen for this purpose.
Who or what has inspired you to give back?
We’ve always given back, since our first year. Part of Catbird’s identity is only making and doing good things. It sounds almost too simple, but that’s what we set out to do and it’s never changed.
Early on, we made a lot of one-time contributions or we gave as a reaction to environmental, political, or social events. But as Catbird has grown, we wanted to evaluate our annual giving and ask ourselves how being more strategic could have a greater impact – that was a first step in eventually launching our foundation this year and committing to a minimum of 1 percent of all sales.
How, if at all, has your ongoing involvement in philanthropy changed your approach to design?
They’ve really gone hand in hand and inform each other. A lot of people don’t know that we are also our own manufacturer. We have an in-house jewelry studio that employs 25 jewelers. It’s the heart of our business. Having competitive pay, health care, educational stipends, and an empowering work culture in our studio is one of our highest priorities. We also want to stand by our process – from how our raw and precious materials are sourced to the amount of stock we produce. We couldn’t align with a women’s cooperative or the ACLU without having the values imparted by their movements in our own work.
What is your most memorable philanthropic experience?
We’ve been a part of a lot of really special initiatives, particularly in the last year. In June, we launched a capsule collection with Jill Soloway in partnership with her show Transparent. 50 percent of sales from every piece sold will benefit The National Center for Transgender Equality. Everyone across every team seemed to touch some aspect of this launch. It was incredible to see the entire company so emotionally invested in it, and to feel how collectively proud we all were.
We’ve also set up a long-term partnership with an incredible organization called The Adventure Project. They train women in Uganda and Kenya to become community health promoters, creating jobs for these women who in turn treat common illnesses and sell lifesaving products to their neighbors at affordable prices. It’s such a simple and brilliant model and the way The Adventure Project carries out their work really resonates with us and how we operate as a company – nimble, a little bit scrappy, and highly transparent.
