Social Responsibility

JK Harris Philanthropy

At JK Harris, the services our employees provide on a daily basis help our clients to get their life back through resolving their tax debt. To do this type of work, our employees must naturally have a desire to help others. They are often emotionally involved in the progress of the case as they get to know their clients and they take a great deal of pride when their clients’ cases are resolved.

This desire to help extends beyond the clients we help on a daily basis. Our company and our employees are dedicated to helping our local communities and our own employees, when the need arises. Our philanthropic efforts reflect the spirit of generosity imbued in the culture of our company.

From partnering with the American Red Cross for blood drives, to helping our own employees in a time of need, to our recent partnership and pledge drive for United Way - helping others is part of our company’s philanthropic philosophy and is a part of our culture.

“True charity is the desire to be useful to others without thought of recompense”
- Emanuel Swedenborg

Sustainability 

Going green: At JK Harris, it is more than just a passing trend. As a company, we are working hard to shrink our carbon footprint, conserve our resources, and reduce our energy usage.

Our move toward a greener JK Harris actually started in our company break rooms. One of our employees asked why we were using Styrofoam cups and plates to the tune of some 72,000 cups per year. We phased out the Styrofoam cups and plates and asked employees to bring in their own mugs and switch to paper plates. At the same time, we phased out plastic stir sticks, opting for more environmentally friendly wooden ones, which are biodegradable. Our restrooms feature automated paper towel dispensers to help eliminate waste and our cleaning crews use reusable cleaning towels rather than paper towels with their biodegradable cleaning products.

One of the biggest challenges for our company has been reducing the amount of paper we go through on a daily basis. Although our customer database system was designed to prepare us to go “paperless,” when you deal with the sheer number of documents our clients send in on a daily basis, it is challenging.  Our need to print documents as well as send and receive faxes is relentless and the efforts to reduce the amount of paper we use has been a challenge we have worked hard to overcome.  As a solution, we have improved our document management systems and have started shredding our own paper documents. We aren’t stopping there. We are also recycling all of the paper we shred, as well as all cardboard. This step has helped us to reduce our waste output by drastically. We went from using two eight-yard trash dumpsters down to one. By shredding our own documents, we have reduced the pickup of paper waste from a weekly event down to only once every six to eight weeks, reducing our carbon footprint further.

By optimizing our client database and changing our document archiving systems, we scan documents as they come in from our clients, making them viewable to anyone involved in the client’s case. This prevents needless copying of documents. We have also started sending tax returns to our clients via encrypted email. These steps have helped us reduce our paper usage by 36%. Our goal is to continue to improve our systems by further automating our mail-merge system to help reduce wasted paper. We are working on converting from a two- to a one-step process, which will reduce the amount of paper used in our mail-merge system by 50%.

Installing energy saving automatic timers on our heating/air conditioning units has allowed us to cut these units off for five hours overnight. While helping the environment around us, we were pleased to see our heating/air conditioning bill reduced by 20%. Our employees are also asked to turn off all electrical devices and to shut down their computers and printers before leaving work each day. We also employ T-8 eco-friendly bulbs in our overhead lighting and Advance eco-friendly ballasts in the housing of our lighting fixtures.

When we were looking to move out of our old office space, we conducted a study to determine the most central location for our company. We wanted a larger office space, in a central location that was convenient for our employees. Nearly 60% of our employees live significantly closer to our new location than they did to our old one, which saves them time and money in their daily commute. The greatest benefit of this is a greatly reduced carbon footprint.

At JK Harris, we are proud of how far we have come in our movement toward a cleaner and greener corporate environment. We look forward to the future and to continued enhancement of our green efforts.

Haiti Relief Efforts

On January 12, 2010, a devastating earthquake struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti. Centered near the capital city of Port Au Prince, the 7.0 quake was devastating to the small nation, one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.  The quake, one of the worst in the region in more than two centuries, struck the most heavily populated part of the country, affecting more than 3 million people. While there still is no official listed death toll, it has been estimated the toll is in the high tens of thousands. Meanwhile, nearly 1 million people remain homeless.

Not long after the catastrophic quake struck, images of the casualties and damages were broadcast globally and pledges of aid quickly poured in from around the world. Aid and relief efforts began in the immediate aftermath of the quake, but efforts were hampered by the blocked roads, damage caused to hospitals, and lack of access to much needed supplies. Donations for the country poured in from around the world in the days and weeks after the earthquake, but rescue and relief efforts were slow moving, until ports and roads were reopened.

In the days following the earthquake, our employees wanted to do something to help the small nation in some small way. Because so much aid was being rushed to Haiti initially, our employees voted to do several raffles and bake sales in the corporate office, then determine where we would send the money that was raised by the employees’ efforts. These fundraising efforts were developed and coordinated by our employees, with one employee using two days’ vacation time to oversee the bake sale efforts. All money donated to our Haiti fund came from our employees’ donations to the fund or from their purchases of raffle tickets and bake sale items and as well as a donation from JK Harris.

The images of Haiti’s orphaned children were particularly moving to so many of us. We wanted our fundraising efforts to go to an established and trustworthy organization. It was decided we would donate our fundraising efforts to the Save the Children charity.

Save the Children has been serving the needs of the poorest children and families in Haiti since 1978. A trusted organization that put 92% of its donations into its program services in 2008, we wanted to ensure our employees’ donations went to a credible charity that will remain in Haiti long after other organizations leave.

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