On Monday, millions of Americans and people across the world will honor Dr. King’s legacy through community volunteering. UPS is proud to be based in Dr. King’s hometown of Atlanta.

UPS’s founder, Jim Casey, shared Dr. King’s commitment for community service. Jim and his siblings founded the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) in 1948 to honor their mother, who struggled to raise the family as a young widow. Financed by Jim’s personal fortune, AECF serves as an advocate for at-risk children and families.

Every day, UPSers are out in our communities serving others. Whether it’s delivering packages, providing logistics support to disaster relief efforts or volunteering at a local school … being a part of a community means being involved in the community. In 2010, UPSers and their family members contributed more than 1.2 million hours of volunteer time. Dr. King’s legacy is not simply limited to one day of service … every day is an opportunity to serve.

How will you serve?

The following video profiles UPS manager Terry Brown, who was recognized for his volunteerism with the 2011 UPS Casey Award.

This December marks the 60^th anniversary of The UPS Foundation. Our founder, Jim Casey, a visionary in so many ways, was practicing the concepts of “Corporate Citizenship” and “Corporate Social Responsibility” in 1951 long before those words even existed. I’m thankful that I work for a company with a heart. After all, we do love logistics.

I came to The UPS Foundation just over one year ago after eleven years in corporate marketing. The desire to work in the foundation and have a job that allows me to give back started back in 2005. I was selected to attend the UPS Community Internship in McAllen,Texas.  For one month, I was relieved of my daily office responsibilities and asked to do service work in this extremely challenged community. Those thirty days changed my perspective on life. I became thankful for the things I had, and less wishful for those I didn’t.

In my current role as corporate relations manager, I see the real impact of all UPS giving. UPS and its employees give nearly $100 million a year back to our communities. We fund programs that make the dream of attaining a higher education possible. We provide support for emerging entrepreneurs to ensure they are positioned for success and self-sustenance. We are dedicated to ensuring that young girls grow up to be strong, determined, capable women. We provide the use of our transportation assets to make sure the children who are starving in the Horn of Africa are getting food supplies. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our competitors in the logistics space when disaster strikes to lend a hand and speed the distribution of emergency relief supplies. We leverage the skills of our drivers and our knowledge of road safety to teach teens how to be better drivers with our UPS Road Code program. I’m thankful that we are able to continue to do this in a time when so many companies have cut back on funding.

With all of our personal commitments and work obligations, our people find it in their capacity to give more than 1.2 million hours of their time to help others each year. I’m thankful that this is a part of our DNA and our people truly believe this is our obligation. The following video illustrates the continued commitment  to communities of UPS employees around the world during UPS Global Volunteer Month…

Happy Birthday to The UPS Foundation!

Introductions at a typical UPS meeting include name, position and number of years with the company. When I first came to work here, I was amazed at the number of collective years reported. It seemed 20+ years was closer to the rule than the exception. Even now, with 12 years under my belt – sometimes I still feel like a newbie who can barely find the water fountain.

Every year on Founders’ Day, along with celebrating the company’s anniversary, we recognize employee anniversary milestones (20, 25, 30, etc.). And this year, the Communications Department is celebrating the very special 40^th anniversary of one of our own. Yes – that’s the BIG 4-0. It is an amazing milestone for one of our favorite characters, Geno “Cool Cat” Reilly.

We captured some of Geno’s reflections on his 40 years at UPS. Enjoy!

With the 104^th anniversary of UPS just around the corner (Aug. 28), I’ve been thinking about our founder, Jim Casey.  Jim taught us a lot.  His speeches and writings in the 1930s, 40s and 50s would make a best-selling business book if repackaged today.  Thomas Friedman…  Jim Collins…  Gary Hammel… all the other business gurus of today – Jim had them all beat more than half-a-century ago.

But Jim taught us more than just good business.  He taught us about philanthropy, and about giving back to the community. 

Jim always wanted to be involved in the community, not just a passive funder.  The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a great example.  Founded by Jim and financed entirely by Jim’s personal fortune, it’s a hands-on, community-based organization that reaches out, gets involved and changes the lives of thousands of at-risk kids every year.  That’s how Jim wanted it.

And when he formed The UPS Foundation 60 years ago, I believe Jim knew that the company had a unique view of the communities we serve and that we could make a difference by being involved. UPS isn’t a company with products sitting on shelves, or stores or manufacturing plants in selected cities. We’re a company of people, serving other people, face-to-face in every community in the country, every day. If there is a stop light in America, the chances are that a UPS driver will pass under it today, and that same ubiquity is quietly spreading around the world.

And we do get involved. Last year, our employees and their families globally logged nearly 1.3 million hours of volunteer time in our volunteer management system. It’s a remarkable achievement that few companies come close to.

The trend in corporate volunteerism is to increase the impact and quality of the hours that are donated.  Applying the unique skills of an organization to community challenges can have a much greater impact than just painting benches or raking leaves (although physical labor is still critical to volunteerism).  For UPS, this has meant dedicating our logistics and transportation skills to compelling issue like disaster relief.

In Haiti, Japan, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere, combining our logistics expertise, our transportation assets and our philanthropic dollars has helped make relief agencies more effective and ultimately save more lives.

Our founder Jim Casey may not have imagined the breadth of capabilities and scope of operations of today’s UPS… but he certainly would have expected that UPS people would be dedicating their time and talents to help build stronger communities wherever UPS operates.  He’d be proud of the legacy he helped to inspire.

This month, UPS celebrates 104 years of business. Our founder, Jim Casey, instilled in UPSers a spirit of service to our customers and our community. While Jim may not have regarded himself as a “hero,” his commitment to community service has delivered a lasting impact. Jim and his siblings founded the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) in 1948 to honor their mother, who struggled to raise the family as a young widow. The AECF serves as an advocate to help vulnerable children and families succeed.

And this spirit of serving extends to our customers … many of whom regard UPSers as heroes for their business.

Today, UPSers contribute their time and talents in a variety of ways:

• Providing logistics expertise to relief efforts in the aftermath of the Haiti and Japan earthquakes
• Coordinating the shipment of machinery to aid the Chilean miners rescue
• Serving in the Community Internship Program to assist neighborhoods that need help with poverty, drug dependency, homelessness and illiteracy
• Cooking meals for families staying at The Ronald McDonald House while their children undergo medical treatmen

Over the next few weeks, we’ll share stories of UPSers whose acts of heroism have made an impact on the lives of others. Like the story of UPS driver Ethan Callif who rescued a women trapped in her car that was sinking in a pond. And the story of UPS pilot Ray Robinson, who helps lead a summer aviation program for youth in Louisville, Ky.

Our series starts tomorrow with the entertaining story of Murray Wihlidal, a UPS supervisor in Canada, who delivered an urgent shipment of merchandise to John Mellencamp’s concert in Saskatchewan.

In 1907, Jim Casey and Claude Ryan started American Messenger Company in a Seattle, Wash., basement office space. The two young entrepreneurs and their employees delivered messages to people throughout the day and night.  Early on, the company strived to distinguish itself through customer service and team work.

That company eventually became UPS. On August 28, UPSers around the world celebrate Founders’ Day to remember what we have accomplished and what we have still to achieve. UPS has survived 21 recessions, a great depression, world wars and natural disasters. Our goal has never been to simply endure these challenging times, but to learn from the lessons of adversity and to thrive. For all that we have accomplished, we owe our success to the trust of our customers and the dedication of our employees.

The following quote from Jim Casey reflects this belief:

 ”You cannot be successful entirely through your own efforts. All of us, if we are to accomplish anything worthwhile, will do it largely through the help and cooperation of the people who work with us. We must help others to help us.“

Despite the economic hardships UPS has encountered during its history, we’ve continued to invest in our business to fulfill the promises we make.  Promises to serve our customers’ business needs and help fuel their growth — whether that promise is to deliver a package across town, help a customer connect to new markets through exporting and importing or provide a range of logistics support that results in cost-savings and faster transit times to their customers.

As a company committed to serving its customers, UPS cannot fulfill its promises without the partnership of its employees. The passion, curiosity, ingenuity and constructive dissatisfaction that our founders’ instilled in all UPSers fuels our collective efforts to deliver the best.

Our success is not measured by industry accolades or milestones … it’s measured by the achievements of our customers and the accomplishments of our employees. It’s their success that we celebrate during Founders’ Day.

UPS’s services have expanded greatly since those two young entrepreneurs founded the company in 1907. Yet despite these changes, it’s a company our founders would immediately recognize … a company focused on fulfilling its promises to customers and its 408,000 employees.

Like many UPS employees, Assistant Chief Pilot Paul Warrington spends his spare time helping others – but this story is a little different. He, his friends and family have logged more than 12,000 volunteer hours helping the needy in Cambodia over the last six years.

Based in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., Paul and his family have dedicated their spare time to helping the impoverished and underserved people of Cambodia, half the world away. UPS has named Paul this year’s winner of the James Casey Community Service Award in recognition of his service.

The James E. Casey Community Service Award is given to one UPS employee who demonstrates exceptional commitment to helping others in their community each year. Established in 1995, the award was named in honor of UPS founder Jim Casey, who strongly believed in helping our communities. 

I talked to Paul about his experience in Cambodia and motivation to travel across the world to help strangers. Here’s what he said:

How did you become involved in helping with the Cambodia mission trips?

We became close friends with a couple in Louisville who are doctors. They had been leading mission trips to Cambodia to help provide medical care to the impoverished people of the region. My wife was the first to go and I stayed home with the kids. When she came back she really wanted me to go and have the experience. So it wasn’t until midnight the night of the cutoff that I said, “Ok, I’ll go.’  That was six years ago. Since then, between the two of us we’ve been 10 times. We’ve lead five teams.                            

How big are the teams and who goes on these trips?

On the last trip we took 23 people from all walks of life…doctors, dentists, lawyers and teachers.  On average, the teams are between 15 and 25 people.

What do you do for a typical trip?

For me, it’s not just the trip. It takes six months to plan these because we do it all.  We put it out there…the date we are going. Depending on who wants to go and the talents we have, we start organizing the plan of what this group can do. We look at whether it is testing the water or going into the school and teaching hygiene or fun things like puppet shows. 

What do I get out of it… it’s the planning, the organizing and the leading of it. We do three training events before we go to teach volunteers about cultural things and what to expect. You’re going into an environment where the heat, the food, the water, the smell, the traffic…it’s all different.  If you’re not ready for it, you’ll be miserable. So really, we must prepare them. What it’s going to be like and how to come together as a team. 

What do you get out of volunteering on this project?

To lead a team of different individuals from different ages from retired down to high school students is really great. You see them come back from these trips and they are changed. I enjoy that, that’s where I get excited. They get stretched out of their comfort zone a bit and then they say, I can do this…and that’s making a difference. They come back and make a difference in their community and that’s what really gets me excited.

Here’s to Paul Warrington, his dedication and service. UPS salutes you! 

One of the things I admire about UPS is its willingness – despite a very strong, structured culture – to embrace change when necessary.  UPS will turn 103 years old this year and in that time, it’s developed and pursued five different business plans that required transformation.

In the beginning, company founder Jim Casey set out to change the way messenger delivery companies worked.  He developed a business approach that emphasized service, well-trained and neat employees, 24-hour-a-day availability and low rates.

With the spread of telephone service, Casey realized his messenger business was doomed.  So he merged with a competing package delivery business and convinced the department stores of Seattle to rely on him to deliver goods to their customers.  This model led to a name change from the American Messenger Service to Merchants Parcel Delivery and a successful platform to grow across the country.

In the process of growing, Casey came to understand that the personal automobile and development of shopping centers would undercut the need for department store delivery services.  So he transformed again, turning UPS into a so-called common carrier, offering service to all interested parties in competition with the U.S. Postal Service.

The fourth transformation began in the 1970’s when UPS recognized the growing importance of technology and international trade.  The result was a decision to start building a platform to track packages while expanding around the world and launching its own airline.  This era would see the company ultimately build a network infrastructure to cover more than 200 countries and territories.

The fifth – and current – transformation began in 1997 and 1998 when the company conducted an extensive strategic review that took another hard look at its future.  The results pointed to a need to broaden the company’s capabilities in order to play an even more central role in helping customers grow.  In 1998, UPS changed its “purpose” in the company charter to, “We enable global commerce.”  In 1999, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange and proceeded to acquire more than 40 companies that now form the heart of its supply chain and freight segment.

UPS Supply Chain Solutions is a streamlined organization that provides logistics, global freight, financial and mail services.  SCS and UPS Freight now are an $8.9 billion business.  And no one at UPS thinks this transformation is the last.