Why This CEO Gives Employees Money To Give Away

A client’s dog interrupted a routine Zoom call.

Most people would apologize, mute the barking, and move on with the agenda.

The team at Lemonade Stand did something else.

What happened next became one of CEO Derek Miner’s favorite examples of a culture program producing a result nobody could have planned—and nobody in the room could ignore.

The story only exists because of an unusual line item on the company’s P&L.

Every employee gets money to give away.

They can use it to help a teammate, surprise a client, or meet a need in their community. The company asks them to follow two rules.

This small budget that empowers employees’ care has turned into something much bigger.

When Derek shared the numbers behind the program, we were shocked… and I’m confident you will be too.

This episode breaks down the system of care (Build then Bless) that Lemonade Stand built, why it works, and how you can test the same underlying idea without writing a blank check.

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Think about the best team you’ve ever been part of.

Years later, the metrics blur. You remember who showed up when things got hard. Who made sacrifices for the group. How it felt to know the people around you had your back.

Teams like that can feel almost magical—a rare collision of the right people, the right moment, and the right struggle.

That’s what Derek Miner experienced early in his career.

His first startup ran out of money, and Derek says many people worked for free. The company ultimately survived and was acquired. On the night before the announcement, his CEO looked around the management table and told the younger leaders:

That sentence followed Derek for more than 20 years.

Most leaders who experience a culture like that chalk it up to chemistry or luck. They treasure the memory, then hope the right group of people somehow finds its way into the same room again.

Derek decided to test a harder idea:

Could a leader create that level of care, sacrifice, unity, and loyalty on purpose?

Could you build systems that help people notice one another, show up when it matters, and choose the good of the group—even when no crisis forces them to?

That is the unspoken question behind Derek’s work at Lemonade Stand.

Build Then Bless is his answer: an attempt to turn the qualities that made his first great team feel special into budgets, habits, systems, stories, and leadership behaviors ANY company could repeat.

The six strategies below show how he’s trying to remove luck from the equation.

Build Then Bless began with a rejected donation.

Lemonade Stand had money set aside for a nonprofit. When the organization turned it down, the obvious move was to find another charity.

But they decided to try something different.

They gave the money to employees and said, “You guys know the needs. You know the things that matter the most to you. Go out and do good.”

There were only two rules:

The second rule is the most powerful part.

The stories come back to the team: groceries for someone going through a hard season, a care package for a sick client, relief packs for unhoused neighbors during a heat wave.

Each story is a demonstration of employees living out the company values in real life — caring, making an impact, looking beyond themselves to tend to the needs of others.

And every story gives the next employee a new idea for how to act.

As Derek puts it, “The very best cultures and companies are a collection of stories.”

That line is worth sitting with.

Most companies communicate culture through declarations.

Lemonade Stand communicates it through stories.

And they gather those stories by giving employees resources to create those stories, and the expectation that they’ll come back and share the results.

The strategic logic: a capped budget gives employees permission and autonomy. The story-sharing adds accountability, recognition, and a teaching loop. One small program makes an abstract value visible over and over again.

You’ve probably seen the standard sales gimmick: If you sit through our demo, we’ll send you a gift card.

Derek’s team noticed how transactional that “if” feels.

So they removed it.

During discovery calls, the team listens for small personal cues: a pennant in the Zoom background, an upcoming family trip, a dog barking downstairs.

Then they send something thoughtful whether the prospect buys or not.

The prospect owes them nothing in return. The gift often arrives while the proposal is still under review.

And the reaction is usually some version of:

The answer is simple: This is how the people at Lemonade Stand behave.

The same team will also tell a prospect when the agency is not the right fit.

It sounds almost too ethical…

But, they simply care more about the relationship than forcing a transaction.

Derek says Lemonade Stand’s close rate rose above 50% after it brought Build Then Bless into the sales process.

The gesture gives the buyer a preview of how the company will care for them after the contract is signed.

The strategic logic: most companies describe their culture during the sales process. Lemonade Stand demonstrates it. That creates trust before the prospect has to make a decision, and trust makes the decision easier.

One of Lemonade Stand’s employees went in for a routine screening.

Coming out of sedation, the employee and their spouse were laughing with the doctor.

Then the doctor delivered the news: Cancer.

The first response from leadership came before any policy conversation:

Then the team stepped in.

They covered work. Delivered groceries. Created date nights. Supported the family through treatment.

The care they have for each other is genuine, and it runs deep because they have been empowered to show it and share it regularly.

Derek has even been on the receiving end of the caring culture he helped create.

When his father died, the team told him to shut everything down and take the time he needed. When he came home, he found a framed piece featuring his father’s name and sheet music hanging above the piano.

His father was a concert pianist.

Derek still sees that framed print every day.

This is where values stop being copy and start becoming culture.

Everyone notices how a company behaves when caring becomes expensive, inconvenient, requires sacrifice, or can be operationally messy.

But that sacrifice is what they remember, and a big reason why employees stay.

The strategic logic: crisis response is a public test of trust. The person going through the crisis feels it directly, but everyone around them is watching too. Compare the cost of covering one difficult season with the cost of replacing one great employee, and the math gets easier.

Derek has a blunt test for whether values are real:

If the answer is no, they are probably branding.

Lemonade Stand uses its values in hiring, recognition, coaching, and exits.

And the values apply to everyone — even leadership.

Early in Derek’s tenure as CEO, he replied to a current customer as if they were a brand-new prospect.

John, the company president, called him directly and asked about the response.

He connected the feedback to one of Lemonade Stand’s values: Be humble.

The CEO got called out by a direct report using the same standard applied to everyone else.

That moment told the team more about the values than a hundred posters could.

Lemonade Stand reinforces the standard during all-hands meetings by recognizing people and naming the specific value they demonstrated.

That part matters.

“Great job” feels good.

“Here is the behavior you demonstrated, and here is the value it brought to life” teaches the whole company what to repeat.

The strategic logic: values enforced only downward create cynicism. Values that shape real decisions and correct senior leaders become decision infrastructure. They help people know what “good” looks like even when an executive is not in the room.

Most companies put enormous energy into an employee’s first week.

The last week is lucky to get a checklist.

Derek thinks that is backward.

Lemonade Stand operates by another simple principle: leave people better than you found them.

That applies when an employee leaves too.

The team personalizes departures, celebrates the person’s contribution, and stays in touch afterward. Former employees have texted to thank Lemonade Stand for making the transition meaningful.

That final experience matters more than most companies realize.

Every departing employee becomes a future reference, referral source, customer, partner, boomerang candidate, or critic.

And everyone who stays watches how the person leaving gets treated.

The strategic logic: offboarding is employer brand, retention signal, and alumni strategy packed into one moment. A thoughtful exit costs very little compared with the recruiting value—or reputational damage—a former employee can create.

Derek has a recurring block on his calendar every day.

It is labeled NTLT: Notice the Little Things.

His logic is refreshingly practical:

Derek uses the time to notice a contribution, follow up on a personal detail, ask a better question, or recognize someone whose work might otherwise stay invisible.

This habit grew from a realization: the small human signals that predict burnout, turnover, and customer trust rarely show up in a dashboard.

You have to notice them before you can act on them.

The BarkBox story is the perfect example.

A client’s dog was going crazy during a call. Instead of rushing past the interruption, a Lemonade Stand employee asked what was happening.

It was the dog’s birthday.

The employee sent a BarkBox.

Over the next few years, Lemonade Stand tracked mid-six figures in referral revenue from that client.

The team sent the box because someone noticed a detail and had permission to act on it. The referral revenue came later, from a behavior the culture had trained and funded.

The strategic logic: attention does not survive as an intention. It survives as an appointment. Scheduling the behavior turns “be more caring” from a nice thought into something a leader can actually practice.

Derek is the rare CEO who didn’t just say, “We need to care for each other.”

He gave “Care” a budget.

He built rituals and expectations around it.

He trained people to notice.

And he connected the behavior to outcomes executives already care about:

But that is not the real lesson.

The lesson is that culture becomes easier to defend when you can trace the chain:

→ What did we fund?
→ What behavior changed?
→ What did employees or customers experience?
→ What business outcome moved?

That is the conversation strategic HR leaders should be leading.

Culture shapes how the business behaves—and eventually, what the business produces.

SHRM is a member-driven catalyst for creating better workplaces where people and businesses thrive together. As the trusted authority on all things work, SHRM is the foremost expert, researcher, advocate, and thought leader on issues and innovations impacting today's evolving workplaces. With nearly 340,000 members in 180 countries, SHRM touches the lives of more than 362 million workers and their families globally. Discover more at SHRM.org.

We turned Derek’s operating system into a Toolkit for YOU! SHRM members can access the toolkit here:

Cultures like that at Lemonade Stand — where employees care deeply about each other, and the work they do — don’t happen by accident. It requires words to be backed up with consistent action, systems supported by budgets and resources, and leaders who care.

Nectar helps leaders like you create those systems so values become visible, caring becomes the default, employees feel more accountable, and leaders can see what is actually happening across the employee experience.

Check out AANA’s story to see how we can help a company like yours:

See Nectar in action:

Derek heard that the night before his first company announced its acquisition.

He’s been trying to recreate that ever since.

Build Then Bless is his solution for intentionally building the conditions for people to have a once-in-a-lifetime team experience at work.

We ask every guest about their “Culture Crush”—a person or organization they admire for the culture they’ve built.

Derek’s is Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia.

Her philosophy lines up perfectly with his: