2022 Baird Annual Report Resilience
Impacting Our Communities
For more than 100 years, Baird has focused on building stronger communities in the places where we live and work.
The success of our businesses becomes especially meaningful to us when we are able to use it to support the greater good of the world we live in. Baird’s community efforts revolve around our associates, who can participate each year in Baird Gives Back Week, request a matching gift from Baird Foundation and be a part of an Associate Resource Group. All these initiatives reflect and support the diverse communities we share.
Baird Foundation
Baird Foundation supports nonprofit organizations aligned with our focus on health and human services, education, the arts and more. Baird Foundation helps us live out our strong commitment to equality and opportunity for all, and particularly seeks to support organizations where our associates are actively engaged in order to maximize our impact.
In 2022, Baird was proud to continue the legacy of our former chairman and CEO with the Paul Purcell “Kids Win!” Annual Baird Education Grant. More than $800,000 was awarded to nine nonprofit education organizations across the communities we serve. Paul was passionate about making sure that every child had access to quality education, and the awards we established in his name carry out that legacy.
The 2022 Recipients of Paul Purcell “Kids Win!” Annual Baird Education Grant:
- Academy for Urban School Leadership, Chicago
- ACE Scholarships, Denver
- All-In Milwaukee, Inc., Milwaukee
- BUILD, Chicago
- City Forward Collective, Milwaukee
- Invest in Youth, Seattle
- Journey House, Inc., Milwaukee
- Junior Achievement of Kentuckiana, Louisville
- Junior Achievement of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
To support our associates’ personal giving, Baird Foundation provides matching gifts to deserving charities as well as direct donations to organizations where our associates are actively involved. In 2022, Baird Foundation contributed more than $5.4 million to qualified nonprofits, including more than $3 million to match our associates’ charitable donations. In addition, our annual United Way campaign raised over $4.1 million, with contributions from 66 participating offices.
2022 Baird Foundation Giving Areas of Focus
Baird Gives Back Week
Our annual Baird Gives Back Week, held this year in May, saw more than 1,800 Baird volunteers donate 5,866 hours of service. Our associates supported more than 120 charitable organizations across 91 participating locations globally, from Louisville to Milwaukee, and from Seattle to London.
Support for Diverse Associates
As a firm, we are focused on serving an increasingly diverse client base and searching for the best talent globally, which means providing support and resources for associates with a wide variety of interests. Our Associate Resource Groups (ARGs) help provide associates with networking and professional development opportunities while emphasizing meaningful community outreach. Among their most notable efforts in 2022, Ascend, our women’s resource group, continued its work for our Women at Baird Initiative, which is a platform for stories, podcasts and other resources devoted to women’s success stories at Baird. PRISM, our multicultural resource group, offered a three-day multicultural community conference attended by more than 350 Baird associates in May 2022. “The conference added a new dimension to Baird’s efforts to bolster the engagement of associates of color,” said Gordon Pan, President of Baird Capital and Executive Sponsor of PRISM, “to raise awareness of multicultural issues, educate allies and create a healthy, firmwide dialogue.”
Baird is committed to diversity for our clients, for Baird associates and for the communicities in which we live and work.
Related Links
For a downloadable version of the 2022 Baird Annual Report, click below.