In May, Penguin Random House donated over 150 LGBTQ+ books across eleven divisions for a student-led Pride event at the New College of Florida. The school has been in the news recently as a site where partisan politics and educational freedom are clashing in a way that’s not unrelated to the wave of book banning we’ve been seeing throughout the nation. As a result of the recent appointments by Gov. DeSantis to the New College Board of Trustees in support of his views, students have been restricted in the kinds of activities they can do with school funds—including DEI and LGBTQ events like Pride.

We are proud to continue our partnership with the New York Public Library (NYPL). This program is part of our ongoing commitment to support a culture of reading and build the widest audiences for authors. This partnership with NYPL, where we tripled all donations made to the organization, helps to ensure that New Yorkers can utilize the vital services provided by their libraries free of charge, including access to books, computers, early literacy workshops, and job training classes.

Through a new partnership with Little Free Library, we are sponsoring 20 Little Free Library book-sharing boxes granted to high-need communities via Little Free Library’s Impact Library Program across the U.S., providing more than 500 mental health–focused books and over 30 titles for these libraries, and offering an additional 2,000 books for a national giveaway.

At Penguin Random House, we work to incorporate DEI into the DNA of every aspect of our company culture. Our DEI Values guide us as we continue our efforts to build a more inclusive and equitable culture for our employees, creators and partners. In this report, we reflect on our work throughout the past two years, while also looking ahead to all that’s yet to come.

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May 2021,  we announced the launch of Uplift AAPI Stories. Expanding on last year’s #ReadAsianAuthors initiative, we’re inviting readers to uplift AAPI stories and #ReadAsianAuthors. This initiative aims to celebrate and uplift the stories of our AAPI authors, and we partnered with AAPI influencers across social media platforms to reach as many diverse readers as possible. 

To continue our support of the AAPI community, we donated 15% of net proceeds from PRH.com sales in the month of May to Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, an organization “fighting for civil rights and empowering Asian Americans to create a more just America for all.”  We have previously worked with AAJC, as well as Stop AAPI Hate, with donations made to both organizations earlier this year. We also partnered with non-profit writing organization Kundiman by sponsoring an eight-week creative writing workshop, giving twelve AAPI writers the opportunity to attend free of charge. Internally, we hosted a bystander intervention training with Hollaback! for employees, in addition to a Q&A featuring the President & Executive Director of AAJC, John Yang.

Penguin Random House Audio spearheaded the new bi-annual Audio Narrator Mentorship program to discover a diverse range of new talent and help actors new to audiobook narration polish their craft and learn about the industry. The inclusive program was designed to reflect the diversity we see in the world daily in the audio space by giving actors in underrepresented communities an opportunity to break into the audiobook world. 

From the 1,680 applications, the six month program welcomed its 15 mentees. The cohort actors from around the world, including the U.S. and U.K., Canada and Singapore, nine of whom have already been hired to narrate audiobooks for Penguin Random House Audio before the program has concluded.

In September 2021, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial in Miami got together in-person for the first time since the start of the pandemic to lead a beach cleanup at Matheson Hammock Park. We partnered with Waterway Advocates, a nonprofit organization that develops and hosts meaningful community service and learning opportunities to empower individuals from all backgrounds to embrace their role in the conservation of the environment. 

At our warehouses in the U.S., we are working to minimize the use of plastic filler inside our outbound cartons. In our Crawfordsville, IN, Hampstead, MD, Reno, NV and Westminster, MD facilities, we are using 100% curbside recyclable paper filler inside our loose cartons. The innovative shape of the paper padding provides a more sustainable option, while still protecting our books. We have ten paper cushioning machines to produce carton filler packaging in two of our distribution centers, with plans to add more in Crawfordsville, IN, and Westminster, MD. We are aiming to reduce plastic filler by 90% by the end of 2023. 

In the U.S., we launched our first ever companywide DE&I training effort, Moving Toward Equity, in June 2022 in partnership with consulting and professional development firm True North EDI. The training is focused on incorporating equity, or the promotion of impartiality and fairness within PRH’s policies and procedures. Through the program, we aim to tackle inequity of all kinds through a structural lens as we continue our work to create a truly equitable workplace.

Corporate Services and the Sustainability Subcommittee have formed a Zero Waste Task Force to execute on a long-term Zero Waste initiative for the company’s New York City office, rethinking how we reduce, divert, and dispose of waste that ends up on-site. Achieving zero waste means conserving all resources with responsible production, consumption, and reuse of materials with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health. We have been tracking our waste diversion for 1745 Broadway on a monthly basis for over a year now to inform and quantify our waste diversion efforts. We diverted 167 tons of items from landfill primarily through recycling and donation programs in the first 12 months of tracking.

To show support for authors, illustrators, students, parents, librarians, and teachers, PRH and School Library Journal partnered with PEN America, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council of Teachers of English,  FReadom, and Library Journal to create a poster that emphasizes the importance of free expression as book bans and challenges spread across the country. The poster was included in the May 2022 issue of School Library Journal and amplified by a social media campaign.

Titled “Open Books, Open Doors,” original artwork for the poster was created by award-winning artist Rafael López, illustrator of Just Ask by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and several other children’s books published by Penguin Random House. The vivid, colorful illustration features a child stepping into a larger-than-life book as they’re transported into a beautiful new world. The back of the poster outlines a call-to-action to visit the Penguin Random House Banned Books Resource Hub, which provides tools, materials, and organizations that educators, librarians, parents, students, authors, and illustrators can turn to in the face of book bans and challenges.

In addition to distribution in School Library Journal, a limited run of printed poster copies is available to educators, librarians, and parents at select industry events and retail locations throughout the summer. The 18×24 poster and social media assets are available for direct digital download at slj.com/readfree.

We care deeply about the planet and creating a business that gives back to nature. In 2022 we partnered with One Tree Planted, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to global reforestation that plants trees to restore nature and biodiversity. As part of this partnership, for every new employee that joins PRH U.S., we donate to have a tree planted in their honor. We also celebrate career milestones by donating to have the corresponding number of trees planted for the number of years worked in five-year increments. To learn more about One Tree Planted, click here.

PRH Authors Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, joined NYC Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter on a visit to P.S. 123, a community school in Harlem that provides wraparound services to students through their partnership with Graham Windham, a nonprofit in New York City that provides youth and family service programs.

The Duke and Duchess donated two garden boxes filled with vegetables and herbs to help support a growing need in the community for easy access to fresh and healthy food. Their impact-driven nonprofit, the Archewell Foundation, worked with partner Proctor & Gamble to stock P.S. 123’s pantry with free-of-cost products to help families take care of their personal health and hygiene and create clean and healthy homes. The Duchess of Sussex donated reading nooks to many Graham Windham locations in New York City, to support families’ access to books and facilitate bonding opportunities for parents and children.

Ahead of the publication of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story on November 16, 2021, One World, an imprint of Random House, partnered with Bookshop.org, the ethical online marketplace which supports independent bookstores. The expanded book version of the 1619 Project – one of the most significant journalistic events of recent years by Nikole Hannah-Jones that places slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative – provides readers with the definitive account of how racism and Black resistance have shaped the nation. 

Independent bookstores across the U.S. have identified local organizations such as schools, libraries, and book banks that will benefit from donated copies of this momentous book.Through Bookshop.org, customers can support local bookstores and communities directly, as well as through We Need Diverse Books, a non-profit organization that distributes books to low-income classrooms, educators, and organizations across the country. Over 15 percent of the participating independent bookstores are Black-owned and managed, with many playing a significant role in their local communities. This partnership will allow them to continue supporting their communities by making the stories of The 1619 Project widely accessible. The initiative runs through January 31, 2022.

For more information on The 1619 Project and Nikole Hannah-Jones, visit 1619Books.com

This past October, we began partnering with Harlem Grown , a remarkable organization serving the children of Harlem by offering resources, inspiration, and a safe place where they can just be kids. In partnership with Grandma’s Place and supported by Humans of New York’s fundraising efforts, Harlem Grown is now building twelve libraries on their urban farms across the community. To support this community-based organization, we are curating and stocking these libraries with a commitment of more than 10,000 books a year. It’s imperative that children have access to stories that uplift, empower and inspire them to dream big. 

The organization aims to help young people, especially those that live in community homeless shelters, lead healthy and ambitious lives through mentorship education in urban farming, sustainability, and nutrition.

An important part of our mission is to ensure that every child has access to reading. We are proud to support the Starlight Children’s Foundation Book Mobile Program, which offers pediatric patients at local hospitals the chance to explore fictional worlds through books, for the past nine years. The program provides a necessary pastime for severely children throughout their hospital stays.

We initially supplied book mobile carts to The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan and Harlem Hospital in Manhattan. We bolstered our support for the program by supplying book mobile carts to Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, and the Brooklyn Hospital Center in Brooklyn; now impacting all five New York City buroughs. The carts are replenished annually with Penguin Random House children’s books.

For the third year in a row, we partnered with the Kellogg Company to bring the Feeding Reading Program to students nationwide. The program was facilitated by our Special Markets team. Their partnership with Kellogg’s Feeding Reading program allowed anyone who buys participating products to earn credits for a free Penguin Random House book. With 125 diverse books to choose from in the program, participants had the opportunity to redeem up to 6 books. 

The creative packaging included classic Penguin Random House literary characters such as the Berenstain Bears, Corduroy and The Very Hungry Caterpillar were featured on more than 100,000,000 Kellogg’s products. 

We believe the right to freedom of expression and the protection of writers against censorship and unjust persecution are indispensable to the development of society and culture. In honor of Banned Books Week, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and highlighting the value of free and open access to information, we partnered  with the American Bookseller Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) to celebrate the theme of the week “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.” 

From the week of September 26 – October 2, we donated $15,000 to ABFEE. Penguin Random House stands with ABOFF’s mission of promoting and protecting the free exchange of ideas. The organization issues statements on significant free expression controversies, participates in legal cases involving First Amendment rights, collaborates with other groups with an interest in free speech, and provides education about the importance of free expression to booksellers, politicians, the press and the public.  

We came together with longstanding partner Save the Children to bring their annual 100 Days of Reading to 10 US cities. The tour kicked off in San Francisco to bring ​​summer learning, fun activities, and essential resources that helped kids need to prepare for the school year.To support the program, we donated 50,000 children’s books in addition to providing content for their online library.

Stops included Los Angeles, New Orleans, Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte and Stanley, NC, Bay City, MI, Racine, WI, Chicago, and Boston.

For Giving Tuesday in 2021, we partnered with our longtime friends at First Book to give the gift of reading by supporting the “Give a Million” campaign through providing a 200,000 book donation to First Book toward their million-book effort. This Giving Tuesday initiative helps support our shared values and mission to foster a universal passion for reading. 

Penguin Classics has partnered with #DisruptTexts, a renowned education organization that works to create a more inclusive, representative and equitable language arts curriculum for K-12 students. Facilitated by Penguin Random House (PRH) Education, this partnership includes a number of new initiatives focused on connecting with, and supporting, educators through innovative programming; online events for vital dialogue and teacher community discussion; and new educator resources for guiding student reading and discussion of traditional and “new” classics in-and-out of the classroom.  

Initiatives and resources include: original educator guides authored by the #DisruptTexts team, to be made available as free, downloadable educator resources on PRHSecondaryED.com; a virtual educator event to be hosted by the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE); an online discussion panel to be hosted by publisher Penguin Classics featuring Min Jin Lee, author of the novel Pachinko; and a number of other collaborative programming and resource-based initiatives in development. Each of these initiatives will revolve around the essential question “what is a classic?” in order to broaden the scope of which texts are considered traditional literary canon.

The aforementioned educator guides will be for four Penguin Classics texts that have been overlooked in secondary classrooms that are representative of BIPOC communities, including: Passing by Nella Larsen; Monkey King by Wu Cheng’en; Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko; and The Penguin Book of Migration Literature edited by Dohra Ahmad.

We partnered with the Authors Guild Foundation to host Virtual Business Bootcamps for Writers at no charge to participants due in part to a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Penguin Random House, and other generous donors. The Business Bootcamps for Writers  launched in 2018 as a free, in-person one-day intensive program across various locations around the country, targeting communities without such programming or connections to the publishing industry. With the pandemic, the Business Bootcamps for Writers program was reimagined as a series of webinars presented over several months. By offering the curriculum online, a greater number of writers who wish to participate are reachable no matter where they live. 

The Bootcamps for Writers is a series of free webinars for early and mid-career authors that provides them with the relevant tools and resources to manage their careers and successfully navigate the publishing marketplace.  he curriculum educates authors about just what it takes to create, publish, and market books in an increasingly competitive climate, including a deep dive focusing on earning a sustainable living as an author.

In honor of the global publication of RENEGADES: Born in the USA, a collection of conversations between Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen, we made a financial donation to the Obama Foundation’s youth leadership programs, expanding upon our earlier donation of one million children’s books to First Book in the Obama family name. A portion of President Obama’s proceeds from RENEGADES will benefit youth leadership programs at the Obama Foundation.

We partnered with The Association for Rural and Small Libraries to launch a rolling grant program to recognize rural, small and tribal libraries that support underserved communities in the U.S. and U.S. territories. The program will award grants of up to $2,500 to libraries that demonstrate a true need. Penguin Random House and ARSL have worked together to ensure the application process is simple and straightforward to remove as many barriers to applying for a grant as possible. Grants are not limited to literacy and may be used for everything from library programming and books to resources like hotspots that help community members access important information. In-kind donations will also be considered.

As a part of our commitment to amplifying diverse voices, we sponsored Voices for Justice, a free virtual speaker series that supports diversity, equity and inclusion work at the Cambridge Public Library. 

The virtual events featured Random House author Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste) and One World author Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer) . 

Voices for Justice funds diversity, equity and inclusion activities at the Cambridge Public Library, including public programming and workshops, professional development for Library staff, and the creation of “Little Free Libraries” filled with free books that reflect diverse authors and experiences.

We proudly continue our partnership with the New York Public Library (NYPL). The New York Public Library program closely aligns with our ongoing commitment to support a culture of reading and build the widest audience possible for our authors. Our partnership with the NYPL will ensure that New Yorkers can utilize the vital services provided by their libraries free of charge, including access to books, computers, early literacy workshops, and job training classes. This year, we teamed up with Knopf author Jhumpa Lahiri to encourage readers to participate in the campaign and make a donation to the NYPL. In an email sent out to donors, Jhumpa discussed the role libraries played in broadening her literary world and jumpstarting her writing career:  “Wherever I have lived, whatever I have studied or pursued, libraries have always been my true home.”   

Throughout the summer, the NYPL has gradually expanded service across all of their open grab-and-go locations in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, where patrons can now browse for books and reserve time to use public computers to browse the Internet and search their catalog. Click here to learn more.

In celebration of Pride Month, we with skincare brand Aesop to transform four of their retail locations in the United States and Canada into Queer Libraries. For a week in June, Aesop stores in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto cleared the products from their shelves and replaced them with books that uplift the underrepresented voices and experiences of queer communities around the world, with a particular emphasis on BIPOC and trans authors.

Designed to spotlight LGBTQIA+ authors and to promote access to their works, the campaign invited all guests to take home a complimentary book of their choice, with no purchase required. As part of the initiative, Penguin Random House donated 2,350 titles to the collection. In solidarity with independent queer bookstores, Aesop also purchased more than 3,000 volumes from Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto and Women & Children First in Chicago.

In celebration of Juneteenth, we gave 100% of net proceeds on PRH.com on June 19 to the Bookshop.org fund benefitting Black-owned bookstores as we continue our commitment to #AmplifyBlackStories all year long. For the month of June, #AmplifyBlackStories highlighted stories of Black joy, not to disregard the realities of racism and injustice but to engage with the Black experience in America in a way that is full, balanced, and truthful.

In the summer of 2021, we donated nearly 2,000 Spanish language books to REFORMA’s Children In Crisis Project, a program that addresses the needs of asylum-seeking children arriving at the United States border. Among the titles donated included were El cielo, las estrellas y la noche by Jean Pierre Verdet (Altea); 100 genios del balón by Alberto Lati (Plan B);  El beso de la traición by Erin Beaty (Alfaguara Juvenil); 15 consejos malvados para ser tu propia superheroína by Vania Bachur (Altea); and Historia en meme by Guillermo Perez Romero (Plan B).  

For years, REFORMA has been working to provide Books & Library Connections for Unaccompanied Refugee Children through its Children In Crisis Project. REFORMA: The National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking, is an affiliate of the American Library Association, promoting the development of library collections to include Spanish-language and Latino oriented materials; the recruitment of more bilingual and bicultural library professionals and support staff; the development of library services and programs that meet the needs of the Latino community; the establishment of a national information and support network among individuals who share our goals; the education of the U.S. Latino population in regards to the availability and types of library services; and lobbying efforts to preserve existing library resource centers serving the interests of Latinos.

Since 2009, PRH has been a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) SmartWay Transport Partnership, an innovative collaboration between the EPA and the freight industry designed to increase energy efficiency while significantly reducing greenhouse gases and air pollution.
When carrier capacity fluctuates, the Transportation Department focuses on securing the best resources to move our freight, including utilizing freight carriers who are considered best in class. Volume shifts and capacity constraints during 2021 (the latest EPA data set year) required working with a vast array of carriers which slightly decreased our overall percentage of SmartWay carrier miles, but we maintained our status as a SmartWay Partner.

In collaboration with Anthony Key, Director, Multicultural Marketing, and the School & Library Marketing teams at the Penguin Young Readers and Random House Children’s publishing divisions, Penguin Random House Education observed  

In observation of Juneteenth, Penguin Random House Education donated $10,000 and free books to support the great work of the Black Caucus of NCTE, an advocacy group of Black English language arts educators and scholars. Alongside the Black Caucus of NCTE, we hosted our inaugural commemoration of Juneteenth during the event: “Literacies as Freedom Tickets: Black Caucus Scholars Reflect on the Texts That Set Them Free” on June 16th. We observed Juneteenth as an occasion for reflection and education to celebrate the end of slavery in America and acknowledged the profound contributions of Black people to American history and culture.. 

Additionally, Penguin Random House Education has created multiple collections of books by Black creators that educate, empower, and inspire students in the classroom year-round for elementary students and secondary students.

We are committed to lifting and holding Black voices throughout the year and were happy to honor them especially on Juneteenth.

In June 2021, we launched All Ways Black, an initiative showcasing  and celebrating the many facets of the Black experience.

Debuting on instagram, All Ways Black (@allwaysblack) is a separate and unique channel designed to specifically connect with Black readers every day and carve out space specifically for our Black authors and books. All Ways Black is a key expression of Amplify Black Stories, an ongoing initiative dedicated to promoting the Black authors and books that are moving culture forward.

We partnered with influencer Cree Myles,founding editor of All Ways Black and the creative force behind last winter’s Black Like We Never Left Read-a-Thon that raised more than $10,000 for the Center for Fiction’s Emerging Writer Program, for an authentic voice for the channel. Cree works alongside the Creative Strategy team to develop editorial content and original programming that highlights the depth and breadth of our stories and creators.

We reprised our partnership with Every Town for Gun Safety in honor of  National Gun Violence Awareness Day on June 4 and in support of #WearOrange weekend, to help raise awareness and send a powerful message to end gun violence. 

Colleagues were encouraged to show individual support through participation in a Special Unlimited Matching Gift Program the weekend of June 4. 

Most of all, Penguin Random House employees were asked to raise awareness of #WearOrange. Whether they posted on social media with tags to end gun violence or sharedPenguin Random House’s National Gun Violence Awareness Day Book List, we came together to spread the important message of ending gun violence.

We are committed to ensuring the publishing world is accessible to everyone, and celebrate the three recipients of the newly-created Penguin Random House Scholarship chosen by The New York University Center for Publishing. Christina Lopez, Megan McDonald, and Sophie Schmidt were able to participate in this year’s NYU Summer Publishing Institute (SPI) three-week virtual program, beginning June 7, 2021.    

The Center for Publishing Penguin Random House Scholarship was established to foster greater diversity in the publishing industry, and enable college juniors and seniors, as well as recent college graduates, who are interested in pursuing a career in publishing to attend NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute program.

To celebrate International Literacy Day, we reunited with our longstanding partner, Worldreader, to help promote literacy and the joy of reading around the world. With every book purchased on our website, we donated $1 to Worldreader, up to $10K.

Worldreader works to champion digital reading, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This year, International Literacy Day was celebrated under the theme, “Literacy for a human-centered recovery: Narrowing the Digital Divide.” As we saw the way we  move in an even more digital direction due to COVID-19, we find it necessary to provide children with digital access to books as the world adapts.

Since 2010, we have donated hundreds of thousands of e-books to Worldreader to help millions of children read around the world. We are committed to advancing literacy, especially in communities where there are not many books available. Together, Penguin Random House and Worldreader help create a world where everyone is a reader.

Together with We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), we launched the Black Creatives Fund in February 2021, an initiative with a mission of supporting emerging and established Black writers and illustrators. Penguin Random House is the inaugural sponsor of the fund for the 2021 year. 

The Black Creatives Fund will feature three initiatives in 2021, including a Revisions Workshop, a mentorship program, and a marketing symposia in partnership with the Brown Bookshelf. The Fund will launch with the six-month Revisions Workshop that will support unpublished Black writers with completed manuscripts and feature esteemed faculty including our authors Nic Stone and Jewell Parker Rhodes.

Twelve writers selected for the workshop will have the opportunity to receive guidance throughout the revision process and submit their manuscript to editors at Penguin Random House for possible publication. All 12 writers will be awarded stipends. Two finalists will receive larger grants, and publishing deals for top performers will be strongly considered. 

As longtime partners of WNDB, we are honored to collaborate with them to build this important new pipeline for discovering and elevating Black voices. The Black Creatives Fund is an integral piece of Amplify Black Stories, our year-long campaign to celebrate Black authors and introduce their stories to a diverse group of readers. For more information, please visit the Black Creatives Fund program page.

In December 2020, nearly a hundred employee volunteers from PRH US participated in our 9th annual Dinner on the House in partnership with City Harvest, a volunteer experience designed to serve others and share our good fortune with those who may need a helping hand during the holiday season. We’ve previously held this event as an in-person volunteering experience at City Harvest‘s food rescue facility in Long Island City. This year, with in-person volunteering no longer a viable option due to the pandemic, we looked to City Harvest, an organization focused on feeding hungry New Yorkers,  to create new, virtual volunteer opportunities for our employees. Employees volunteered in one of two ways:

• Holiday Greeting Cards: City Harvest delivers food to over 400 community food programs serving thousands more New Yorkers a day than before the pandemic. Our volunteers wrote holiday greeting cards to send to City Harvest’s many partners. 
• Mini Mesh Bags: During the holiday season, City Harvest Repackers use thousands of mesh bags each day to pack fresh produce that will go into their trucks and be delivered to food pantries and community food programs across the five boroughs. Our volunteers helped make these bags which keeps costs down and ensures more money can be spent on emergency food.

In addition to our employees donating their time, Penguin Random House made a donation to City Harvest as part of the Repack to Give Back campaign, which will provide 200,000 pounds of produce and non-perishable goods to 384,000 families in need this holiday season.

The Penguin Hotline, a resource to help consumers everywhere find the right books for people on their holiday gift lists, launched for the seventh year in a row on December 2, 2020. This year, we are excited to donate $2 to longtime partner We Need Diverse Books for every request received from  December 2-16. 

The hotline is run by hundreds of PRH U.S. employee volunteers across departments and divisions who craft thoughtful and customized book recommendations. Each year, countless satisfied Hotline users express their appreciation of the “human touch” that strengthens this experience and makes it so special.

We Need Diverse Books is focused on putting more books featuring diverse characters into the hands of all children. The partnership with the Penguin Hotline this year gives both volunteers and consumers another great reason to participate and spread the word.

In celebration of National Family Literacy Month this November, we teamed up with online retailer zulily to provide books to children in need across the U.S. As part of zulily’s sixth annual holiday giving “Books for Kids Buy 1, Give 1” campaign, each Penguin Random House book purchased will trigger a donation – up to 75,000 books – to longtime partner First Book. The largest and fastest-growing network of educators in the United States exclusively serving kids in need, First Book is a nonprofit organization that aims to remove barriers to quality education for all kids by making new books, educational materials and other essentials affordable to its member network of more than 500,000 educators. We’re proud to partner with Zulily to provide children with the gift of reading this holiday season.

As part of our ongoing efforts to help protect the planet and its future, we are proud to support the All We Can Save Project. Created by the editors of One World’s ALL WE CAN SAVE: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, Dr. Ayana Johnson and Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, and inspired by the anthology, the new initiative will accelerate the success of the climate movement by providing support and community for women climate leaders — scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers — across generations, geographies, and race.

The All We Can Save Project will hold virtual and in-person programs; provide education and engagement; and direct financial support to cohorts of women climate leaders with the goal of championing a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. One of the most crucial issues of our lifetime, it’s imperative that we acknowledge the intersectionality of environmental injustice with racial, social, and political inequities. We hope the All We Can Save Project will empower women climate leaders in profound and impactful ways to continue to care for our planet and its inhabitants.

We are excited to be the inaugural sponsors of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses’ first annual Black Literary Award to support the ongoing work of Black-led presses and presses who champion BIPOC authors. Recipients of CLMP’s award will receive $10,000 grants and will be announced in spring 2021.

At Penguin Random House, we’re committed to fostering a literary landscape that’s truly diverse, where emerging and underrepresented writers are recognized. Grants like the Black Literary Publishing Award help ensure new voices and perspectives are heard. In support CLMP’s 50-year legacy of elevating emerging writers through small, independent publishers, we’re honored to help make it possible for them to launch this important initiative and secure its future.

Since 1997, we have partnered with Read Ahead in New York City to match public school students with Penguin Random House employee volunteers for one-on-one mentorship. Read Ahead is dedicated to helping students unlock their full potential through mentoring relationships, fostering the social and emotional skills that are essential for academic and life-long success. Penguin Random House volunteers offer one-on-one support to NYC public school mentees in grades K-5 throughout the school year, helping them develop their love of reading, confidence, and skills to thrive in school and beyond.

Starting this year, we’re excited to expand the program to all of our U.S. employees through a virtual mentorship program hosted on Zoom. Student need is greater than ever this year, with the added challenges of COVID-19 and remote learning, which have had a significant impact on school communities. We’re honored to continue our partnership with Read Ahead and provide their students with engaged PRH mentors from across the country.

For the second consecutive year, we will partner with We Need Diverse Books for PRH’s annual Creative Writing Awards Program to widen the applicant pool beyond New York City and invite hundreds of students from across the country to submit their work. Our partnership with WNDB underscores a critical element of the CWA program: to nurture the next generation of literary talent by supporting young writers from a variety of backgrounds. As the publishing industry continues to reckon with issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the CWA program is an opportunity for PRH to support students from underrepresented backgrounds and encourage their involvement in the field. This program is one facet of our continued effort to elevate diverse perspectives and increase representation among our authors and staff.

The 2021 competition launches on December 2, and closes on March 2, 2021.  Five first-place $10,000 prizes will be awarded in the categories of fiction/drama; poetry; personal essay/memoir; and spoken-word poetry, through the Maya Angelou Award. In recognition of the Creative Writing Awards previously being centered in New York City, the competition will award an additional first-place prize to the top entrant from the NYC area.  Runners up will also be honored.

Established in 1993, the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awardshave awarded more than $2.8 million dollars to public high school students for their original compositions. To learn more about the program, please click here.

As part of our 2020 holiday campaign, Books Give More, we’ll donate one book to longtime partner We Need Diverse Books for every book purchased on penguinrandomhouse.com from October 20, 2020 through Giving Tuesday (December 1, 2020). During these unprecedented times, books are more important than ever, providing safe and accessible entertainment, and promoting a deeper understanding of the issues facing our community and country. Through our partnership with We Need Diverse Books this holiday season, we’ll be able to put more books into the hands of all children in economically disadvantaged schools around the country, helping to address the literacy gap that affects marginalized youth by giving children stories and authors they can relate to.

Penguin Random House U.S. is proud to partner with We Need Diverse Books for ongoing programs like our annual Creative Writing Awards.

Throughout the year, the Dodgers Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program typically hosts Dodger Days as community-based resource fairs at local parks for thousands of kids and their families in Southern California. In response to COVID-19, the new “drive-thru” series is an adjustment from its in-person format.  The Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation (LADF) conducted a needs assessment with the Dodgers RBI families, their youth development program for 5 to 18-year-olds. Of the youth currently enrolled in this program, 25% have household incomes below $20,000 annually. Through this assessment, they found that the majority of families indicated lack of access to books as a barrier to distance learning.

The LADF hosted five drive-thru events in June, providing over $480,000 in food boxes, exercise and fitness resources, softball and baseball equipment, books, and educational support to feed families and help youth stay active and healthy.

Penguin Random House donated 500 books that were given away to attending families for their children.

Through the LADF, the Dodgers have been providing critical donations to support the local COVID-19 relief efforts that will hopefully uplift significantly impacted Angelenos, including the most vulnerable populations. In 2017, PRH also partnered with the L.A. Dodgers and LADF on their joint initiative, LA Reads, to help address the literacy crisis in Los Angeles, by getting children excited about reading, with a special event at the Los Angeles Central Library.

Since 2010, Penguin Random House has donated more than 550,000 digital books to Worldreader to help children read in underserved schools across Sub-Saharan Africa. To celebrate International Literacy Day in 2020, we encouraged our readers to help bring more books to children. With every book purchased on our website, we donated $1 to Worldreader.

In these pictures, a classroom full of students in Kibera, Kenya eagerly reads. In their hands they’re holding a library of thousands of books – including lots of favorite Penguin Random House books. The ability to read and learn gives these students a chance to improve their lives. And that ripples through to their families and their communities. As Worldreader’s largest global publishing partner, we are proud to help advance literacy around the world.  We have donated hundreds of licenses for Worldreader e-reader programs in sub-Saharan Africa, linking literature of all reading levels and age groups to schools and libraries throughout the region.

We proudly partner with Worldreader to help create a world where everyone is a reader.

Penguin Random House’s donation of 750,000 books to First Book as part of READ TOGETHER, BE TOGETHER is featured on CNN International’s “Impact Your World” series. This special series showcases how companies around the world are giving back during the COVID-19 crisis.

This donation is one of the many ways Penguin Random House is helping communities affected by the pandemic. To meet the urgent need expressed by educators coping with school closures as a result of COVID-19, the donated books will be sent to programs and schools that are currently delivering books, food, and supplies to our youngest citizens who are isolated and locked out of a learning environment.

See the video on CNN here.

As Penguin Random House, we hold a collective belief that diverse voices need to be elevated and heard. Externally, we are committed to using our platform to amplify an even broader range of voices. Internally, we are working to build an equitable, inclusive, and psychologically safe work environment for all employees.

We are guided by five core pillars that shape our DE&I efforts across the business.

Leadership Investment in DE&I: Effective leadership is at the core of systemic change and we are investing in that change through unconscious bias, antiracism, and inclusivity training. We hold leaders accountable for implementing our s DE&I vision, setting goals, achieving results, and being role models.

Diversity & Representation: We are committed to making our employee population more representative of our society by ensuring that attraction, sourcing, and recruitment is done through a DE&I lens.

Career Growth: Diversity, equity and inclusion is crucial to the development of all employees to ensure they are prepared, supported, and well-situated in how to advocate for their career paths. We integrate DE&I into talent development, performance management, advancement, and retention efforts.

Psychological Safety and Belonging: We seek to create a more psychologically safe, inclusive environment that allows employees to bring their full selves to work and voice their ideas and opinions openly.

Content & Marketplace: We are committed to increasing the number of books we publish, promote, and sell by people of color with the ultimate goal of publishing books that reflect the world we live in.

While these pillars have advanced our progress in establishing more inclusive business practices, there is still much more important work to do. Together with our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Councils, Employee Resource Groups, and leadership teams, we will continue our ongoing and evolving plan for action to achieve our aspiration of creating a more equitable company and publishing community.

At Penguin Random House, we believe in and strive to create an environment of belonging and respect for all. We as individuals and as the collective leadership of this company recognize the urgent need to forge a path toward positive change. Black Lives Matter. Black Stories Matter and Black Voices Matter—and as publishers, we commit to using the powers of our creativity and ingenuity to lift those voices up in the world.

A list of anti-racist books and resources can be found here.

Our employees across the territories are leading teams, such as the Sustainability Subcommittee in the United States and the Environment Team in Australia/New Zealand, to make grassroots efforts to combat climate change. In the United States, the Sustainability Subcommittee is an employee-led group of engaged colleagues who are dedicated to positively affecting the environment. In tandem with our corporate efforts, through awareness campaigns and events, the Subcommittee aims to have a positive impact in our communities and the environment where we work and live.

Our Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial team in Miami kicked off its first year of corporate volunteering in 2019 with hands-on activities at main community organizations, including Miami-Dade County parks. Our employees planted 200 native plants at a county park to attract butterflies and other important pollinators, and also decorated a rainwater barrel with characters from our most popular children’s books to capture rainwater to irrigate the plants.

To further our efforts in the fight against climate change, the team in Miami collaborated to pack and sort donations for United Miami Way of Miami-Dade following the destruction Hurricane Dorian inflicted on the Bahamas.

In an effort to support America’s restaurant industry during the COVID-19 pandemic, we published Family Meal: Recipes from Our Community, a digital-only cookbook benefiting America’s restaurant workers. All proceeds from Family Meal support the Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund. It is one humble attempt to do our part to support the places and people that make our cities special.

The book’s publication coincided with #GivingTuesdayNow, which took place for the first time on May 5 as an emergency response to the unprecedented need caused by COVID-19. This global day of unity inspired us to join forces to support those in need during this global crisis. So we united the best way we know how—by bringing together authors from across Penguin Random House to serve up something truly special. Our family of more than 50 chefs and home cooks have opened their kitchens to share a look at the food they’re cooking at home right now—food that comforts, sustains, and helps them feel connected to the world outside.

Together with Brightly, our website dedicated to helping parents, caregivers, and educators find books and reading tips for every age and stage of a child’s life, we joined with our long-standing partner Save the Children to support its annual reading campaign—Read a Story, Change Their Story. The 100 Days of Reading campaign aims to combat the summer slide—which will be further exacerbated because of the unprecedented school closures due to COVID-19—and the content that Brightly has provided, including reading lists and educational activities, will greatly support kids and families in need.

For the fifth year, we supported Make Summer Fair, Save the Children’s Summer Reading Campaign. The campaign was created to foster continuous learning over the summer months and to ensure that children in rural America, many of whom have limited access to books, have the opportunity to keep reading. To further increase our impact, we teamed up with Zulily, the online retailer, to help provide books to children in need across the nation with a  “Buy 1, Give 1” campaign.

In honor of Juneteenth in 2020, we donated 100% of net proceeds from our website that day to a fund that will support Black-owned bookstores. We are partnering with Bookshop.org, an online retailer, to manage the fund for these bookstores. The process will parallel Bookshop.org’s existing program for sharing profits with independent bookstores. In addition to the Juneteenth donation, we made three additional contributions in June, July, and August, with disbursement to bookstores expected to begin in September.

Our contributions were split equally among all participating bookstores, and can be used to support any activity that promotes books and reading in the local community, such as school programming, author event technology costs, and basic monthly operating costs.

This program supports Black-owned independent bookstores with brick-and-mortar storefronts that are open or have a history of their storefront being open to the public for 20 hours a week or more, in a U.S. location. To find out more about how to participate, please email partnerships@bookshop.org.

As part of our long-term Diversity & Inclusion Strategic Action plan, we introduced our first-ever company-wide read, How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, and will facilitate discussions across our company on this important topic. Employees are encouraged to share their ideas and perspectives openly with one another, fostering learning, understanding, and belonging.

Dinner on the House is an annual employee volunteer experience designed to serve those who may need a helping hand during the holiday season. Every year, our employees travel to the City Harvest Food Rescue Facility in Queens to fill 1,500 boxes with holiday meals for families-in-need.

Our two children’s divisions, Penguin Young Readers and Random House Children’s Books, in partnership with Meredith Corporation’s Parents, launched READ TOGETHER, BE TOGETHER (#ReadTogetherBeTogether), a nationwide initiative that celebrates the importance and power of reading with young children. Originally slated to launch in summer 2020 with nationwide retail, educator, and consumer activations, the program began in March, in light of COVID-19, with a series of daily virtual storytimes with bestselling and award-winning authors and illustrators, as well as celebrity readers.

As part of READ TOGETHER, BE TOGETHER, we are donating 750,000 books to First Book. To meet the urgent need expressed by educators coping with school closures, the donated books will be sent to programs and schools that are currently delivering books, food, and supplies to our youngest citizens who are isolated and locked out of a learning environment. In addition to the book donation, we are also covering the cost of shipping the books to First Book, valued at $25,000.

The Global Walk is an annual, company-wide fundraising event held in New York City, which supports local nonprofit organizations that align with our commitment to social responsibility and giving back to communities in need. Past fundraising recipients include The Legal Aid Society, Project HOPE, Girls Write Now, i, Too, Arts Collective, and Barbershop Books, among others. Over the past five years, employees have raised more than $240,000 for our beneficiaries.

In response to the difficult financial choices so many of our indie bookstore partners are having to make in the wake of COVID-19, Out of Print, one of Penguin Random House’s companies, found itself in a unique position to help. For a couple days, 25% of sales on its website were donated to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc), to lift bookstores hit hardest by the social-distancing efforts and forced closures across the nation. This special retail event raised $19,500 for booksellers in need.

The $19,500 raised will help 19 families of bookstore employees to pay the rent and cover expenses for a month. Binc has more than 400 claims in process, and more are expected. Out of Print plans to continue to use its platform and merchandise to show appreciation and to assist various teacher, librarian, and bookstore groups during this crisis. The fundraiser was included in a special offer for tote bags that also served as a bit of “retail therapy” for readers while they supported the bookstores they love.

In 2018, we collaborated with the Legal Aid Society in a new campaign called Let Them Read, which brings books into courtrooms for young New Yorkers to read while they wait for their cases to be called. We donated more than 200 titles for the launch of the pilot program in Brooklyn. Books were historically not allowed in courtrooms, but attorneys successfully made the argument that providing books would give young New Yorkers something productive to do while waiting in court. To learn more, click here and here.

Together with the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc), in 2019 we announced a new grant opportunity for independent bookstores. Indies with Impact honored two bookstores that work in tandem with a community nonprofit or organization of their choice in a program that strengthens their local communities and encourages a passion for reading. We launched this grant to recognize, support, and strengthen the already robust connections bookstores have with their communities. To learn more, click here. To learn more about our 2019 winner, click here.

DK’s global Sustainability Working Party was created to deliver plans on sustainability as volunteers from our offices around the world meet monthly to create and execute our global strategy. The meetings also act as a forum to discuss ideas that will drive forward sustainability initiatives. We also have local colleague-led Green committees dedicated to encouraging sustainable behaviors among colleagues, including reducing printing and single-use plastic. These committees also participate in local and global events throughout the year to raise awareness about environmental causes, such as Earth Day and World Environment Day.

We are committed to supporting bookstores as special places that provide a source of comfort, information, and imagination to their local communities. As ever, we strive to be the best partner, now and in the future, for our bookselling community, and we remain supportive of those retail partners who have been hit hardest by the COVID-19 crisis.

In response to COVID-19, we expanded our support with a new initiative to donate 30% of book purchases made on our website to the #SaveIndieBookstores campaign of our long-standing partner, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc). This initiative directly benefited booksellers who urgently needed financial help with medical bills, household expenses, and other essentials.

In late 2019 and early 2020, Australia was ravaged by the worst bushfires ever experienced in the country. Across four states, lives and livelihoods were lost, homes destroyed, and our wildlife and their natural habitats critically impacted. PRH Australia, with the support of PRH Canada and PRH U.S., raised $75,000 through fundraising events across all sites, and that money was subsequently distributed to Australia Red Cross and wildlife rescue organizations in the most severely impacted states of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia.

At DK, we care deeply about an ethical supply chain and taking positive actions beyond that of a publisher. Our Green Pledge was launched in early 2020 and pulls together all the important work we do to maintain an ethical supply chain, and the positive steps we are planning for the future. Our work is split into four key areas—materials, environment, safety, and sustainable supply chains—and these will continue to be the focus of our efforts. Our Green Pledge acts as an essential framework for our processes, identifying what we have achieved so far in our sustainability goals and what our next steps will be to maintain an ethical supply chain. To learn more about the pledge, click here.

We successfully made the transition to purchasing Renewable Energy Credits at our distribution center in Westminster, Maryland, offsetting 100% of its electrical usage and making it possible to support clean energy. Both of our warehouses in the United States now purchase wind credits to offset 100% of their power. Our offices in the United Kingdom also completed their transition to renewable energy in October 2018, and our New York City headquarters is on track to reach 100% wind energy credits by the end of 2020.

We have been making conscious efforts to reduce our packing materials. In our Returns department, we’ve programmed our shipping machine to create custom-sized cartons for returned books that need to be put back in inventory. This machine creates shipping cartons in the exact sizes required to hold the books, which means that we use less corrugate and no plastic bubble packing material to fill in empty spaces. If needed, we use our “ravioli” packaging to create filler, which is 100% curbside recyclable. In general, this machine has helped us greatly reduce our packaging waste.

In 2018, we were the first book publisher to sign on to the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA) and the 78th company overall to join. REBA is a membership association for large-scale energy buyers to help identify barriers to clean, renewable energy and develop solutions to meet rapidly growing demand. We believe that, as a publisher, we are able to contribute solutions and information on sustainable printing and paper sourcing, and we are thrilled to learn how we can be more sustainable overall from other companies. To learn more, click here and here.

In support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and in recognition of the urgent need to recruit and empower educators of color, together with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), we reimagined our annual Teacher Awards program for 2020, which we began cosponsoring and administering in 2019.

This year, in lieu of distributing grants for its two competitions, the National Teacher Award for Lifelong Readers and the Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry, we made a $25,000 joint donation on behalf of both award programs to the Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award Program (EC-EOC), which supports early-career teachers of color as they build accomplished teaching careers in literacy education.

Built upon the Penguin Random House Teacher Awards for Literacy, which began in 2012 and has awarded more than $180,000 in teacher grants to date, this NCTE partnership awards two separate and distinct grant awards of $10,000 each: The National Teacher Award for Lifelong Readers honors a teacher who inspires their students to read all genres of writing, and the Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry recognizes a teacher who inspires their students to love poetry.

Our partnership with the NCTE recognizes the nation’s most dynamic and resourceful teachers who creatively inspire and instill a lifelong love of reading and poetry in students. The National Teacher Award for Lifelong Readers and the Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry honor teachers’ recognizes and supports educators doing innovative literacy work within their schools and local communities. The awards are open to full- and part-time teachers in public schools, and winners are awarded both cash grants and book donations. To learn more about the awards and our recent winners, click here.

Run by the Climate Group, Climate Week NYC is a place for the world to showcase amazing climate action and discuss how to do more. We supported the weeklong event with our Sustainability Subcommittee holding a series of events and learning opportunities for our colleagues. We had the opportunity to participate in our ongoing company-wide sustainability efforts with activities such as a PRH Green Book Club in-house author event, a mug drive to reduce single-use cups, and Green Mindful Moments, which are short themed company posts that provide tips for ways we can exercise more conscious, sustainable practices in our day-to-day work lives.

In 2017, we joined industry leaders in signing on to the We Are Still In initiative to express our unwavering support of the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2019, we confirmed again our support for the Paris Agreement as the U.S. government began the process of withdrawing from it. We joined other global companies to call upon the U.S. government not to withdraw from the agreement. To learn more about the We Are Still In initiative, click here.

To celebrate Earth Day in 2019, our Sustainability Subcommittee hosted the first-ever Penguin Random House Green Week. Green Week aims to bring a greater awareness to ways colleagues can live greener, more sustainable lives. The group organized events and activities that were devoted to areas such as environmental conservation, composting and food waste, recycling, and how to get involved and take action locally, as well as programs to help reduce the use of plastic, paper, and energy.

This year, our Sustainability Subcommittee reimagined Green Week for a virtual setting to inspire colleagues to learn more about how to conserve our natural resources, take action locally and at home during this period of social distancing, and provide resources for how to live a greener life. Through an author event and daily green-living tips, our employees directly received actionable resources and information to positively impact our world and environment.

On Amazon Day in Brazil, we made a joint donation with our Brazilian publishing group, Companhia das Letras, to the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), which has worked for 25 years to defend the Amazon and Brazil’s rich socioenvironmental diversity. ISA works with Indigenous communities, quilombolas and extractivists, and historical partners to help protect Indigenous territories and develop sustainable economic alternatives to the exploitation of their lands. We believe that sustainability and environmental protection are a worldwide effort, and we are committed to our ongoing social impact efforts. To learn more about our joint donation, click here.

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.

In December 2019, we partnered with the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) on their year-end fundraising campaign. Launched on Small Business Saturday and running through December 31, 2019, we matched all donations made to Binc, up to $15,000. In addition, we also donated $1 for every social media post on Instagram and Twitter that used the hashtag #BookstoresAreHolidays. Binc assists booksellers who have been impacted by disasters or personal financial hardships, and, by November, the Foundation had already assisted 90 booksellers and their families in 2019. The total of $30,000 raised by the end of the year helped at least 13 additional booksellers and their families through economic hardship. To learn more about the campaign, click here and here.

We are unwavering in our support of writers who seek out truth in their stories, and the readers who embrace them. We commemorate Banned Books Week in September annually, and in 2019 we were thrilled to be #BannedTogether. For every Penguin Random House book purchased during Banned Books Week, we donated $1 to the American Booksellers for Free Expression, up to $20,000. To learn more about our 2019 campaign, click here.

We have been a longtime supporter of Shakespeare in the Park, one of the cornerstones of the Public Theater’s mission to bring performing arts to New Yorkers. Since 1962, more than 5 million people have experienced more than 150 free productions of Shakespeare’s work and other classical works and musicals. We have supported the Public Theater through monetary donations, as well as by distributing free books to theatergoers waiting in line for tickets. Throughout the years, this has become one of our most popular volunteering opportunities, and many of our bestsellers have been gifted to eager readers. To learn more, click here.

Giving back is central to the Penguin Random House experience, and we have created a culture in which employees are encouraged to engage with their communities, both in and out of the office. In December of 2019, a time of joy for some but much need for others, a team of colleagues at Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial in Miami spent their lunchtime feeding those facing housing insecurity. They volunteered at the Miami Rescue Mission, making a donation to provide 250 meals.

In celebration of WorldPride in 2019, we hosted a live storytelling event, filled with ebbing moments of reflection and jubilance, and featuring some of our leading authors in the LGBTQIA+ community. Attendees were treated to cocktails, light snacks, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, as well as a copy of We Are Everywhere by event hosts Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown. All proceeds from the event were donated to the Lambda Literary Foundation. Authors featured included Sarah McBride, Garrard Conley, Tara Clancy, and Blair Imani, as well as Karah Preiss, cofounder of Belletrist. To read more about the event, click here.

With the mission to empower aspiring authors from all backgrounds in underserved communities nationwide, we partnered with the Authors Guild Foundation to produce a series of Writing Business Boot Camps across the country. From the end of 2018 to spring 2019, these six boot camps were free to participants due in part to an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and we sent two employees per city to share their publishing and work experience with the writers. Local published authors helped lead each session, alongside representatives from the Authors Guild and Penguin Random House, bringing a variety of experience and knowledge to the program. To learn more, click here and here.

In September 2019, Penguin Classics published The Penguin Book of Migration Literature, a global anthology that looks at our rapidly changing world. Every year, millions of people move to a new country, and these migrants constantly reshape their places of origin and arrival. We believe that, in today’s climate, it is more important than ever to advocate for migrants’ rights around the globe. Penguin Classics led a special social media campaign calling for audiences to share #MigrationStories that have shaped their lives, in order to spread the message that the story of global migration is one we are all part of. A custom section on our website featured five nonprofits, and, as part of our annual matching gifts program, we matched employee donations up to $10,000 in total. To learn more, click here.

We recognize that creating an environment of inclusivity at our company is as important as publishing a diverse list of authors. We believe that understanding and recognizing the unconscious biases that underlie our beliefs and inform our decision-making is a fundamental first step to achieving this goal. In 2018, we partnered with Steps Drama, a global consultancy that promotes learning and behavior change, to tailor workshops based on real-life scenarios at Penguin Random House that would create a unique learning experience for employees. In 2019, our colleagues trained by the Steps Drama team took over to deliver the workshops internally. Uncovering Bias Workshops are held throughout the year.

During Pride Month in 2019, our LGBTQ Network partnered with Drag Queen Story Hour to produce an exciting Literary Drag Show at the New York Public Library (NYPL) as part of the Library After Hours: Pride Edition. The show featured performances by six top drag queens, who put on exhilarating acts with a literary focus, including readings, lip-syncing, talks, and costume changes into beloved characters such as Little Red Riding Hood, Tinker Bell, and Gandalf. Attendees also had a chance to view the NYPL’s exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. To read more about the event, click here.

We want everyone who works at Penguin Random House to feel like they belong. To help do so, in 2018 we formed a Diversity & Inclusion Council comprising employees from all areas of our business. The Council is dedicated to facilitating a company culture that fosters inclusion and equity, supporting a broad, wide-ranging spectrum of perspectives. The Council proactively makes recommendations for ways to enrich our culture by amplifying underrepresented voices and providing welcoming and open spaces that empower our employees to publish books that truly reflect the diversity of our world. Diversity & Inclusion Council members have also established Diversity Committees in each of our divisions. With more than 200 employees actively involved, many of these divisional committees have organized special task forces that focus on an array of topics to create a positive, engaging, and inclusive working environment.

Girls Write Now is a nonprofit organization that pairs underserved young women and gender-nonconforming youth with professional writers as lifelong mentors and role models. We first began working with Girls Write Now in 2017 to produce their annual anthology, which features the voices of the program’s mentees in print. Today, we continue to work with Girls Write Now on a variety of additional initiatives to help foster the professional growth of the program’s mentees, including employee engagement workshops around editing, a partnership to source candidates and get priority referrals for our internship program, and the enlistment of our authors as keynote speakers in the Girls Write Now Live reading series at the New-York Historical Society. To learn more about Girls Write Now, click here. To learn more about the Girls Write Now anthologies and the Agents of Change Award, click here and here.

We have been listening to educator feedback that developing empathy and respect is a priority in increasingly multicultural classrooms. With this information in mind, together with one of our children’s publishing divisions, Random House Children’s Books, we partnered with First Book on a campaign that centered on the essential themes of diversity, acceptance, and inclusion in its back-to-school efforts in 2019, donating 15,000 copies of a First Book–exclusive, affordable paperback edition of All Are Welcome, written by Alexandra Penfold and illustrated by Suzanne Kaufman. The book features a school with children of different ethnicities, religions, and abilities and from different family structures playing side by side. To learn more about this campaign, click here.

In 2019, we partnered with Special Olympics and the American Library Association to participate in a pilot program to support Special Olympics Young Athletes (SOYA). SOYA is a sport and play program for children aged 2 to 7 with and without intellectual disabilities, where kids learn sports, such as running and throwing, as well as social skills, such as sharing, being team players, and following instructions. SOYA also helps support families, teachers, and caregivers in order to bring inclusive learning and play to communities across the country. To help continue this engagement at home, we donated 500 copies of R. J. Palacio’s We’re All Wonders and 500 copies of Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches, which were included in special Young Athletes backpacks at participating libraries. To learn more, click here.