Our Quarles Cares Initiative

At Quarles & Brady LLP, we actively engage in civic and charitable initiatives. We believe it's important for our lawyers and staff to give back to our communities and help make them stronger. Furthermore, we find it essential to connect directly with those communities in order to fully understand and better address their needs. Quarles Cares is a firmwide volunteer initiative that encourages our attorneys and staff to commit themselves personally to civic and charitable efforts. Our primary areas of emphasis are projects that relate to hunger and education, but whatever the cause, the focus of this program is hands-on volunteerism.

Quarles Cares is a wonderful vehicle for encouraging our attorneys and staff to remain in touch with the world around them and, hopefully, make our communities better and brighter places to live. Quarles Cares is also a great internal team builder because it allows us opportunities to work with Quarles personnel whom we might not see in the course of our daily routines, and we are able to celebrate one another's skills and strengths.

How We Serve Our Communities, Office by Office

Chicago, Illinois
We are partnering with Foundations Elementary School, a public educational institution serving low-income students. Volunteers from Quarles & Brady visit the school monthly to provide the students with educational and artistic opportunities. Our partnership with Foundations began with one grade in the 2006–2007 school year and expanded to three grades in 2007–2008, serving over 40 students. During those monthly visits, we read with the children, provide art opportunities that the school is unable to offer, and we celebrate holidays through projects, games and food. In the 2007–2008 school year, Quarles & Brady provided Secret Santa gifts for each child and sponsored a library book drive in addition to our classroom visits. We continue to look for ways to grow and enhance our partnership with Foundations and to help fulfill Foundations' wish list.

In addition to our partnership with Foundations, through Quarles Cares, the Chicago office participates in a number of community service events and fundraisers: We field a team and raise funds for the annual Pancreatic Cancer Research Walk. We sponsor and supply volunteers for the City-wide Women Everywhere Service Project. We have an annual commitment to the Race Judicata event, benefiting the Chicago Volunteer Legal Services organization. Our team of runners and walkers turns out in Quarles Cares shirts to enjoy exercising on a summer evening along the Chicago lakefront. In the last month, Quarles Cares and the Diversity Committee sponsored a visit to the Chicago office by local public high school students participating in the Loyola Law Academy. Over 50 students toured the offices, received a presentation from a panel of Chicago associates and participated in a legal exercise. In 2008, the Chicago office plans to expand its community service efforts to work with the Night Ministry, a nondenominational organization that provides health care, housing and educational services as well as meals to homeless and at-risk people throughout Chicago.

Madison, Wisconsin
The Madison office has partnered with two classes at Hawthorne Elementary School. We send seven tutors to the school on a weekly basis, to work individually with the students. We began the partnership by organizing a field trip for the students to the state capital, which included a visit to our office. Currently, we are collecting pennies as part of the students’ effort to raise money for Heifer International – a nonprofit that helps people around the globe obtain a sustainable source of food. We also participate in the Dane County Literacy Donation Drive by donating books, school supplies and games. We also send four volunteers to the Second Harvest Foodbank facility on a monthly basis to stock shelves and participate in the annual Second Harvest Foodbank Food Drive during the holidays.

The Madison office has been, and continues to be, very active in the community in other ways as well. The attorneys and staff work with the Dane County Boys and Girls Club, conducting mock interviews and serving as volunteer participants and coaches, in preparation for the "Youth of the Year" state competition. For the past 10 years, the Madison office has sponsored, and attorneys and staff have participated as a team in, the Madison Komen Race for the Cure. The office also participates in the following charitable events and volunteer opportunities: volunteering at the Madison Vilas Zoo benefits (Feast with the Beasts and Halloween Day at the Zoo); biking to raise money for the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County; painting, cleaning and completing various service projects around Dane County for United Way Days of Caring; participating in the Meals-on-Wheels Senior Meals Program; sponsoring and participating as a team in the Safe Harbor Run/Walk for Kids, to raise funds for Safe Harbor Child Advocacy Center — a nonprofit organization that provides children with a safe, friendly and child-centered environment; participating as a team to raise money through fundraisers and donations for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Walk; assisting the United Way Campaign of Dane County in reaching its goal of $16,000,000 through employee pledges and conducting various fundraisers; participating in the Holiday Teen Gift Drive, in cooperation with United Way, Marines Toys for Tots, the Salvation Army and others, to provide food and gifts for children and teenagers; and volunteering at the Sun Prairie Food Pantry, Sun Prairie Build-a-Dream Park and the Sun Prairie VFW Thanksgiving event.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin
We are a proud partner of Golda Meir Elementary School. In addition to providing a graduation celebration each year, our attorneys and staff facilitate and judge Golda Meir’s annual Invention Convention, in which students design and build their very own inventions.

In addition, the Milwaukee office continues to participate in a variety of civic initiatives, including the Open Door Ministry Program at The Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist and The Interchange Food Pantry, both of which are located in Downtown Milwaukee. As weekly volunteers at the Open Door Ministry, we serve lunch to people in need of a nutritious meal. We also donate toiletries, clothing and other personal necessities to assist those who are unable to afford these fundamental items. The Interchange Food Pantry provides assistance to those in need, and we volunteer on a monthly basis to help sort, bag and distribute the food. The Milwaukee office also participated in the 2007 Hunger Task Force “Stamp Out Hunger” Food Drive by helping to sort and pack over 28,000 pounds of food.

The Milwaukee office has also collected books and school supplies for area schools, and toys to be distributed as part of the Marine Corps Toys for Tots campaign. In addition to these initiatives, the Milwaukee office participated in the Family to Family Thanksgiving Food Drive, providing complete Thanksgiving dinners to 344 area families. We also collected professional clothing for the Bottomless Closet, an organization devoted to providing women with clothing that will enable them to more effectively seek and retain rewarding jobs. Over 30 Milwaukee office attorneys and staff participated in the Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure, raising over $7,000 for breast cancer research.

In 2007, the Milwaukee office raised $429,316 for the Greater Milwaukee United Way Campaign. One hundred thirty-one partners and retired partners, 35 associates and 10 legal assistants contributed to these results, and we had a total of 101 Leadership Givers who pledged $1,200 or more, including 16 who pledged at the "Tocqueville" level of $10,000 or more.

Naples, Florida
We have "adopted" a third-grade class at Golden Terrace Elementary School, where attorneys and staff members volunteer their time both in and out of the classroom. The program has several components, including quarterly events at the school that give the students a chance to interact with the volunteers, trips to a local bookstore to honor exceptional readers, a year-end book drive, and activities to complement the teacher's reading program such as recording books on tape and reading to the class.

The Naples office is also involved in an annual Habitat for Humanity community build day in nearby Immokalee, a holiday food drive to benefit St. Matthew's House, initiatives to support local soldiers fighting overseas, and local fundraising events for the American Heart Association and American Cancer Society. Beyond the Quarles Cares initiatives, many individual members of the Naples office generously give of their time and talents to the local community: Our attorneys sit on various boards, including the Collier County YMCA, Habitat for Humanity, the Immokalee Friendship House, the Boys and Girls Club of Collier County, and Camp Boggy Creek. (Camp Boggy Creek is a Hole in the Wall camp, enriching the lives of children who have chronic or life-threatening illnesses, with founders who include Paul Newman and retired General H. Norman Schwarzkopf.)

Phoenix, Arizona
Quarles Cares-Phoenix coordinates a variety of ongoing, annual, and one-time events as part of our mission to provide volunteer experiences that have wide appeal to our staff and attorneys, and a wide reach across the Phoenix community.

One of our most successful efforts is our longstanding partnership with Capitol Elementary School, a school that serves some of the Phoenix's most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Our involvement began in 1993, and since then more than 125 members of our office have been participating each year. Our dedicated volunteers log approximately 2,400 hours of service each year — a record that we are extremely proud of but which is vastly exceeded by our pride in the accomplishments of the students we serve.

We are also a founding charter member of the St. Vincent de Paul Corporate Breakfast Club. Each month, volunteers go to the breakfast kitchen and food preparation facility to help feed the homeless and hungry. Last summer, St. Vincent de Paul informed us of an extreme water shortage in Phoenix and the devastating effect of the extremely high summer temperatures on the homeless population in Arizona. Quarles Cares and the partners in the Phoenix office responded by donating enough money for the immediate purchase of more than 1500 cases of bottled water.

Our community service initiatives don't stop there, though. In October 2007, we worked with Rebuilding Together to participate in the Rock & Roll Paint-athon, where teams of Quarles & Brady volunteers painted the homes of two low-income and elderly homeowners who were unable to do the work themselves. On three consecutive Saturdays our teams prepped, cleaned, painted and touched up the homes. The transformation was a drastic improvement — not only did the project improve the community, but it also gave the homeowners a renewed sense of pride. In December 2007, we collected more than 170 stuffed animals for Bears for the Brave, a charity founded in 1986 by the Phoenix Police Department, Crimes Against Children Unit, to offer comfort to frightened children who are removed from abusive environments. (The stuffed animals are theirs to keep.) In January 2008, we organized a Volunteer Fair, bringing together a wide variety of volunteer organizations to make it easier for Quarles & Brady staff and attorneys to connect with organizations eager for their help. In February 2008, we enjoyed our second annual Hearts against Hunger in-service volunteer day at St. Mary's Food Bank, one of the world's largest food banks. Through food and cash donations and the efforts of 60 Quarles & Brady volunteers, we created 42,000 meals for hungry people across the state.

Our ongoing projects include blood drives every three months for United Blood Services and Project Linus, a national organization that provides blankets and afghans to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children who are seriously ill, traumatized or otherwise. A group of volunteers crochet and knit blankets in their free time and donate them to Project Linus. To date, 30 blankets have been completed. Our attorneys and staff also support the annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and the annual Book Drive to benefit St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center's Pediatric Ambulatory Care Center (PACC). PACC is an outpatient clinic that provides health care to underprivileged children. Over 100 books were donated in 2007 to children six months to teen years, and the books are theirs to keep.

This year's United Way campaign was a huge success. During Summer 2007, we raised over $70,000 through pledges, casual days and snack carts. As part of the campaign, the United Way committee chose a partnership agency of the United Way to support as a Quarles Cares project: the West Valley Child Crisis Center. We collected badly needed supplies for the center, which provides temporary shelter and supervision for children who are victims of, or at risk of, abuse, neglect or abandonment. Our summer associates participated in the drive by delivering the donations and sponsoring a pizza party for the children, where they played games and had a water slide for the kids. We collected over $1,500 dollars to purchase supplies, including a badly needed digital camera.

Tucson, Arizona
We are embarking on a new partnership with Carrillo Elementary Magnet School, located in the downtown area and within walking distance from the office. With fewer than 300 students, Carrillo is a small school encompassing a kaleidoscope of cultures, with a need for volunteers to lend a hand, assisting students to improve their reading abilities. Meanwhile, the Tucson office continues its annual tradition of hosting a dinner and holiday party for the children of TMM's Children's Village. Children's Village consists of seven state-licensed group homes, where children are provided with a loving and nurturing environment after having been referred there by the State Department of Economic Security–Child Protective Services, Division of Developmental Disabilities, and the courts. The children come from various ethnic backgrounds and some have special needs (disabilities).

Our attorneys and staff also support the Southern Arizona Community Diaper Bank through diaper drives; United Way through the Days of Caring projects; the Community Food Bank through participation in the Legal Community Against Hunger; and Project Linus through the continuing supply of handmade quilts and blankets.