While many companies allow workers to bring their pets to work, Microsoft isn’t one of them. Since Microsoft employees love their pets too, they create calendars with their pets’ pictures on it and sell them to raise money for charities.
When the cat calendar started in 2007, “I said, ‘Hopefully we do $1,000 in our first year,’ ” said Karen Easterbrook, a manager in Microsoft’s research organization who has worked on the calendar every autumn since then.
The cat calendar in its first year reeled in $44,000. In 2016, employee gifts and matching contributions from Microsoft’s philanthropy arm grew to about $80,000. The main beneficiary is the Forget Me Not shelter in Republic, a former Eastern Washington mining town in Ferry County that is home to about 1,000 people.
If your company won’t let you bring animals to work, consider creating your own pet calendar to raise money for charities. You may be surprised at how much people will pay for a picture of someone else’s pet.
To read more about Microsoft’s pet calendars, click here.
[xyz-ihs snippet=”PetSmart”]