Serving and Strengthening Communities
The guests and communities we serve are integral to our success. Target Forward’s vision to co-create an equitable and regenerative future reinforces the importance of our approach to proactive community engagement and collaboration with nonprofit partners.
Across Target, we continue to work to advance solutions that address community needs and drive meaningful and positive impact for people and planet. This builds on our long history of community support including a philanthropic commitment to giving 5% of our profits to communities in cash, products, and through the Target Foundation, an industry-leading track record of team member engagement and volunteerism, and a commitment to use our size, scale and business to positively impact communities.
Explore Serving and Strengthening Communities
Disaster Preparedness & Response
Volunteerism
Grants & Corporate Giving
Anchored to Target’s purpose, Target’s community impact, engagement and philanthropy show up in three ways, and work together to support our Target Forward vision to co-create an equitable and regenerative future with our guests, partners and communities.
Corporate citizenship
Our corporate citizenship efforts are those fundamental initiatives that fulfill the role we play as a responsible corporate citizen. We support communities in moments of need, and that generates brand love among our guests and team.
Target Foundation
The Target Foundation invests in systems change efforts to achieve a more equitable future for all. The Target Foundation’s practice of leading-edge philanthropy serves as a learning lab to shift and transform the systems that create greater equity and opportunity and will play a role in accelerating progress toward aspects of Target Forward goals and ambitions.
Community impact
Our community impact primarily focuses on three areas:
- Economic opportunity: Supporting wealth-building opportunities, including entrepreneurship, workforce development and asset-building.
- Community development: Fostering a community-based approach anchored in listening.
- Environmental sustainability: Focusing on the intersection of people and planet, including supporting place-based circularity advancements.
Examples of our impact across each of our focus areas
Economic opportunity
In the spring of 2022, we expanded the services available through the Target Scholars Program by funding Emergency Student Aid (ESA) grants. Executed by UNCF, ESA grants are intended to support Target Scholars who are encountering just-in-time financial hardships related to academic retention, health-related issues (physical or mental), food insecurity, housing insecurity, technology, travel/transportation or natural disaster. Each Target Scholar is eligible to receive up to $500 in ESA grant funds.
Community development
As a retailer committed to the development of thriving and vital local communities, Target has partnered with organizations such as the Center for Justice Innovation in New York City. Building on a successful grassroots partnership between our local team members and the Center, we invested in their Community First program. Together we are helping them foster a safer Times Square neighborhood for residents, workers and tourists by addressing upstream solutions to the unhoused population in the community.
Environmental sustainability
In service of advancing our investments in environmental sustainability, Target has partnered with the Latino Community Foundation (LCF), a California-based nonprofit piloting a model to reimagine a just recovery for communities affected by wildfires and to strengthen frontline grassroot leaders serving at the intersections of climate resiliency, economic justice and racial equity.
Company milestones
1946
The Dayton Company establishes giving 5% of pretax profit to communities
2009
Target launches 5-cent reusable bag discount
2013
Target team members first achieve 1 million volunteer hours
2016
Car seat trade-in program launches
2019
Target Foundation expansion announced
2019
Target launches Target Circle guest-directed giving nationwide
REACH efforts that support community impact
Target is committed to co-creating an equitable future for all, delivering on our Target Forward strategy to help everyone thrive. As part of our Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) commitments, we are finding new ways to support Black communities across the country.
Our physical presence in local communities
Enhancing existing and new stores with site and building design amenities inspired by the local community, we will also grow responsibly as we expand our store portfolio.
Site and building design amenities may include some or all of the following features depending on the location and conditions of each unique store site:
- New or restorative native landscaping, safe, well-lit parking lots, easy auto, bike and pedestrian access, connections to mass transit, EV charging stalls, storm water management, natural daylighting, using locally sourced materials, and local nature inspired exterior and interior biophillic design.
- As we build more stores in convenient locations for guests, especially in suburban, dense suburban, and urban areas, we’ll continue to focus on responsible growth and re-purposing old buildings where guests live and work, and near mass transit.
Impacting the resilience and vitality of local communities
We aim to create deep and lasting relationships in and with our communities to reflect and celebrate what is unique and vital to them. We do this by anchoring our approach in listening so that we can be nimble and locally relevant, and so that our philanthropic impact is genuinely meaningful to the people we serve.
- Small business support: Listening to our team members and community over the years has showed us there was a mutual appetite for support beyond financial resources. As part of our pro-bono consulting program, Target pledges an annual commitment of 10,000 hours of pro bono consulting services for Black- and Indigenous-owned (BIPOC) small businesses. This program offers tools, customized resources and support to small business owners. In 2022, we exceeded our goal, providing 16,000 hours of consulting services. Since the inception of the program, Target has partnered with over 150 clients, engaged over 600 team members and provided over 30,000 hours of consulting services valued at more than $6 million.
- COVID-19 response: Our efforts to ensure equitable access to vaccines allowed us to rapidly meet the shifting community needs and values in times of crisis. While recognizing that COVID-19 was a global and national crisis, we also mobilized and deployed resources to local, community-based organizations across the United States who were able to quickly and effectively respond to the demands from their communities.
- Community-driven solutions: Our on-the-ground teams partner with trusted community organizations to respond to community needs and concerns across the country. One example is when the team at store T-1507 noticed its community in Richmond, California, struggling to support the growing population of people without housing near their store. In response, they partnered with local nonprofit Collaborising, and together they identified service providers and partner organizations, and designed a day-long effort to support the unhoused population living near the store. With community partners, Target team member volunteers cleaned up debris around the encampment and handed out over $500 in gift cards for residents to buy food, personal care items, first aid kits and much more. The encampment residents responded, with many — despite previously declining to accept counseling services — choosing to talk with a nonprofit team of mental health and substance abuse professionals for short- and long-term support.
