DEL.ICIO.USUpdated: 2:27 p.m. January 15, 2009
CENTER FOR CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Home Depot gift card to benefit Atlanta civil rights center
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Retail giant Home Depot is launching its first gift card to commemorate civil rights, just in time for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the inauguration of Barack Obama and Black History month in February.
The gift card will be available in the chain’s nearly 2,000 U.S. stores on Thursday and at homedepot.com/dream. The commemorative gift cards say “Join the dream” and “It all can be a reality.”
It’s Home Depot’s way of embracing the excitement around the historic inauguration and the Center for Civil and Human Rights being built in Atlanta to, in part, make a permanent home for historic King documents.
Five percent of the amount purchased on the gift cards will be donated to the center that is slated to open downtown in 2011. (With the purchase of a $100 gift card, for example, $5 will go to the center.)
The Home Depot Foundation contributed a million dollars toward bringing those documents to Atlanta in 2006.
“I give our chairman and CEO Frank Blake credit,” said Marvin Ellison, executive vice president of U.S. stores. “He felt it was important for Home Depot to continue to re-establish itself as a great corporate citizen of Atlanta.”
Blake wanted to “take the next step to help build a permanent home to house the papers,” Ellison said.
This will be Home Depot’s first gift card program that lets customers get involved with a fund-raising drive. The company wants to raise $1 million through the gift card, which will be on sale through Feb. 28, Ellison said.
“It’s obviously very exciting to partner with Home Depot, a great Atlanta company,” said Doug Shipman, executive director of the civil rights center. He’s tasked with raising $100 million to construct the center and $25 million for an endowment. The center so far has raised about half of the funds, Shipman said.
“Having gift cards in stores reaches so many people who may not have heard about the center,” he said. “And it reaches out to all the associates at Home Depot. “
Shipman will promote the card through the center’s Facebook page, his blog and a mailing list with 5,000 supporters.
Home Depot will promote the cards in stores, with print and radio ads, and a YouTube video featuring Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who is on the center’s board, and Ellison.
“In this historic year for our country, let’s take an opportunity to support the history of the civil rights movement,” Franklin says on the video.
The video also asks customers to post their own videos or comments at youtube.com/homedepot.
Ellison said he’ll do local television interviews and will be on Steve Harvey’s radio show Thursday.
Said Ellison: “We’re excited. It’s a very worthy cause.”
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