Eagle Mine provides its employees with a $500 gift card to help spur the local economy

On Monday, June 29, we launched our “Rockin Local” campaign to encourage our employees to patronize local businesses while economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

To jumpstart its campaign, we invested $100,000 into the local community by issuing each of our 200 employees a $500 gift card to spend locally. The gift cards were purchased through the Lake Superior Community Partnership’s “Love on Local” program.

“We have a responsibility to our employees and local businesses to do all we can to get them going again,” said Darby Stacey, Eagle Mine Managing Director. “We hope our Rockin Local campaign will help energize our local economy and have asked our employees to spend their dollars at locally owned businesses over the next few weeks.”

In addition to the gift cards, we are taking the message of shopping locally even further by encouraging the community to consider how it could support its local economy.

“We want to emphasize that shopping local doesn’t end with spending money at a local storefront,” said Meagen Morrison, Social Responsibility Advisor. “There are opportunities everywhere to support our local economy, from using a local design company for your website needs to buying used items from your neighbor, or volunteering for a local non-profit.”

In addition to the $500 gift cards, we are offering our employees incentives to support the local economy, such as wellness giveaways from items purchased at local bike shops and farms, and encouraging the use of annual employer-issued boot vouchers at local businesses.

We also will reinforce our long-term commitment to support the local economy through the purchase of goods and services for our business by highlighting our Responsible Mining Policies that outline local procurement and recruitment to maximize community benefits.

“We are now looking closer than ever on how and where we spend our money as a business,” said Stacey. “These are things we are continually evaluating. It can be anything from where we purchase our coffee to where we order our equipment.”

This is just the beginning of a further commitment to supporting the local economy, given the impact the pandemic has had on local businesses.

“We are coming together and finding innovative ways to minimize the impact on our community,” said Stacey. “We want to continue our innovative social programs that offer our community security and stability as an antidote to the uncertainty.”