Nurturing curiosity and supporting causes is a top priority for DK colleagues, and the U.S. team has made several book donations to organizations that promote literacy and serve a crucial role during the COVID-19 outbreak. We donated 2,000 books to First Book to support children affected by U.S. school closures, and gave 300 books to Bess the Book Bus, a Florida-based mobile literacy outreach, to be distributed across the country. Having recently visited the Lower East Side Girls Club, which helps girls and young women on the Lower East Side of New York City, we provided books to be included in care packages for members who may have lost their safe spaces because of the pandemic.
DK also supported two nonprofits in California. To encourage science education, we donated STEM-related titles to Community Resources for Science, which serves schools in low-income communities, and donated more than 500 books to Project Books and Blankies, which provides books to shelters, literacy and after-school programs, classrooms, libraries, and more.
Beginning in 2018, Penguin Random House U.S. started shifting to LED lighting and is now saving more than 2.75 megawatt hours annually, including:
- All floors of our New York City headquarters building (saving more than 743,000 kWh annually)
- All lighting in the Westminster office areas (saving more than 400,000 kWh annually)
- Westminster warehouse areas (saving more than 1 megawatt annually)
- In 2022, we completed installation of LED lighting throughout the Hampstead Distribution Center
- Starting in 2023, we are installing LED lighting in the Crawfordsville distribution center (saving more than 600,000 kWh annually)
We are the publishing industry’s leading supporter of PEN America, the U.S. chapter of the world’s leading international literary–human rights organization. PEN’s mission is to defend free expression, elevate marginalized voices, and foster dialogue across boundaries, a mission that mirrors our own core values. As a global community of writers, editors, designers, and free thinkers, we are passionate about upholding and protecting our right to free expression, and, through our partnership with PEN, we celebrate the courage of individuals who constructively challenge censorship and taboo, no matter the odds.
In celebration of our five-year anniversary as Penguin Random House and to ensure that our authors’ voices carry beyond the page and into our communities, we partnered with the MTA Metro-North Railroad and Grand Central Terminal to create a charitable-giving opportunity through an in-transit reading experience. We created an app that allowed commuters and visitors to download free Penguin Random House book excerpts from inside Grand Central Terminal, on station platforms, and in the Park Avenue Tunnel. A special 5-minute Reads section on the app triggered a donation; for every five minutes read in this section, we donated a book to our charitable partner, Save the Children, up to 25,000 books. The books were distributed through community events, family activities, and holiday celebrations at parks, schools, and libraries. This charitable component empowered New Yorkers to give back to those in need while engaging in a fun, worthwhile activity To learn more about the campaign, click here.
Globally, we have increased our efforts to reduce single-use plastic and printing in our offices. Simple solutions have helped us make significant impacts, like using branded Penguin Random House mugs instead of one-time-use paper cups, defaulting to double-sided printing to reduce paper waste, and sharing motivation and encouragement in email signatures to limit printing. In the United Kingdom, we’ve implemented reduction projects to remove single-use plastic from shipping boxes and replaced it with reused cardboard. Transitioning to e-contracts alone has reduced paper consumption in the United Kingdom by more than one million units a year. In Australia, we initiated a “Keep Cup Drive” and saved an estimated 70,800 single-use paper cups from the landfill. In India, we took a pledge to make our office plastic-free and increase our efforts toward reduced energy consumption. India replaced all packaged plastic water bottles with Penguin-branded glass bottles; uses biodegradable paper for waste, has a default setting to print double sided, and automatically deletes print commands after a few hours of no response; and introduced Green Hour every week to avoid using electricity and appliances such as laptops and printers.
We are committed to climate and environmental protection, and that includes encouraging our colleagues to participate in global movements. As millions of people around the world participated in climate strikes by walking out of their homes, schools, and offices to join in the action for change, our offices in the U.S. and Canada supported our employees who wanted to participate in their local strikes, and they were not required to use paid time off to participate.
An annual event since 2014, the Penguin Hotline runs during the holiday season and is staffed by employee volunteers. Hundreds of employees are on call to help recommend books to anyone trying to find the right title for someone on their holiday list, and the Hotline is “publisher-agnostic,” meaning recommendations can come from various publishing houses. In 2019, the Penguin Hotline also featured various best-selling Penguin Random House authors including Celeste Ng, Jasmine Guillory, and Emma Straub, who personally answered requests. The Hotline also partnered with LitWorld, a nonprofit that addresses global literacy and human rights; we donated $2 for every reader request, up to $10,000. We donated to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, in support of the zoo’s conservation efforts to protect African penguin habitats. To learn more about Penguin Hotline, click here.
Our fifth anniversary as Penguin Random House in July 2018 provided an unprecedented opportunity to unite around the globe to get more books into the hands of more readers. Through a special anniversary global book donation, we offered every Penguin Random House employee worldwide a selection of free books to donate to any philanthropic or nonprofit organization of their choice. Thousands of our employees joined the campaign, and we were able to provide more than 72,000 books to children and adults in need. Recipient organizations included schools, libraries, hospitals, rural development NGOs, and organizations that serve homeless and incarcerated individuals.
Ahead of the November 2020 elections, together with PEN America, Out of Print, and When We All Vote, we launched Book the Vote, a nonpartisan initiative to protect free speech and ensure every voter’s right to participate in elections. Building upon an already successful program from the 2018 midterm elections, Book the Vote unites the organizations’ distinct initiatives under one centralized website, bookthevote.com. By creating and disseminating book and author content, voter registration information, and resources to increase understanding of civic topics, Book the Vote empowers people to participate in our democracy and express their voices through voting.
As part of the initiative, we enlisted more than 20 of our bestselling authors, including Deepak Chopra, Jeffrey Toobin, and Kyle Creek, to make sense of America’s history and politics through engaging and informative videos based on their books. “How America Works” will cover four topics: The Right to Vote, Voting for the President, the Supreme Court, and the Electoral College.
To learn more about the campaign, click here.
In January 2019, we partnered with the American Library Association to create the Penguin Random House Library Award for Innovation. The award recognizes the libraries and staff who have overcome hardship and adversity to creative lasting innovative community service programs that inspire and connect with readers. It awards $10,000 to a principal awardee and four runners-up $1,000 worth of Penguin Random House titles each. To learn more, click here. To learn more about our previous winners and how to apply for this year’s award, click here.
