Community Giving
Thank you for your interest in our Community Giving. We are committed to supporting our local community as well as national organizations. We pledge to donate at least five percent of our annual net sales to not-for-profit or educational organizations.
Ways We Give Back
Please read through the following carefully in order to decide which program best suits your organization’s needs and offers the best chance of being awarded a donation.
Donations Event Requests
For most organizations a smaller Donation Request based on a specific event is a more likely to be approved and offers considerable value to the organization.
- Whole Foods Market donates to a specific event that the organization plans.
- We prefer to donate product or gift cards and rarely donate cash. The majority of our products will be our private label products.
- All applications must be received in writing at least 6 weeks prior to event/catalog deadline.
- Phone inquires are discouraged and will be directed to apply in writing.
- Rarely do we give large contributions to any one organization, allowing us to donate to a wider range and greater number of non-profits.
Bag Donation Program
This program is exclusive to our stores in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Kansas and was specifically created to assist our local schools! At checkout, if customers bring in their own bags, they can either take 10 cents off their bill or give 10 cents to a local school. This is an excellent opportunity for a school to partner with Whole Foods Market and raise money. We will change the benefiting school quarterly. Schools, please fill out the bag donation application.
Community 5% Days are another meaningful way we give back to our community. On designated days throughout the year a total of 5% of the day’s net sales are donated to local non-profit organizations. Customers help support our selected organizations just by shopping on these 5% Days.
Becoming A Community Partner
A Community Partner is a nonprofit organization that we feel matches our Core Values and with whom we want to build an ongoing, mutually beneficial relationship. We choose our Community Partners as carefully as we choose our vendors and products for our stores.
Organizations applying for a Community Day should meet all goals of the program. In general we choose organizations that are in the greatest need, have a focused impact on the most individuals or selected causes, and represent the Core Values of Whole Foods Market. All organizations must have nonprofit status (501c3) and focus their efforts here in Denver County.
Ready To Apply?
To apply for a donation, you may pick up the appropriate form at the store or download the applications here.
Please complete the form, attach a copy of your 501c3 status, any applicable brochure on your organization, and a business card if you have one.
Submit your forms in person. All requests must be delivered in person to the Marketing Specialist, Megan Rice, at the Capitol Hill store.
Please do not call to check the status of your application. To best serve our community’s needs we must streamline this process and be both efficient and consistent. All applications will be reviewed. If we have further questions we will call you. Once a month we make final decisions based on our monthly projections for the following month. At this time we will call all those granted donations and arrange the time for pick up of the award.
Note: Because we receive hundreds of applications, we are not able to personally speak with all applicants.
We love to hear feedback, have photos sent, pictures drawn, letters written, etc. of the event. It helps keep us connected to you, our community, and keep our team members excited and involved in the Denver Community.
Thanks again for your interest and we hope we can be of help to your organization!
