Community

At Dollar General, our mission is Serving Others and we live out this mission every day. We are dedicated to improving the lives of our customers by making shopping simple and affordable. We are also committed to helping others better their own lives through community support, in particular literacy and education.

Dollar General is deeply committed to the communities we call home. We consider the needs of our customers and the issues important to them. In keeping with its corporate mission of Serving Others, the company has a longstanding tradition of supporting literacy and education.

The Dollar General Literacy Foundation

In an effort to make a meaningful and lasting impact, the Dollar General Literacy Foundation’s investments are focused on increasing access to quality educational instruction, strengthening programs and instilling a love of learning and reading. Committed to helping increase the literacy skills of individuals of all ages, the Dollar General Literacy Foundation has awarded more than $250 million in grants to nonprofit organizations, helping more than 21.5 million individuals take their first steps toward literacy or continued education since its inception in 1993.

The Dollar General Literacy Foundation awards grants each year to nonprofit organizations, schools and libraries within a 15-mile radius of a Dollar General store or distribution center to support adult, family, summer and youth literacy programs.

The Dollar General Literacy Foundation also supports customers interested in learning how to read, speak English or prepare for the high school equivalency test. At the cash register of every Dollar General store, customers may pick up a brochure with a postage-paid reply card that can be mailed in for a referral to a local organization that offers free literacy services.

The Dollar General Literacy Foundation reviews grants to support adult, summer, family and youth literacy programs. Interested applicants may apply each January at www.dgliteracy.org.

XPRIZE Foundation Collaboration

In keeping with its commitment to increase access to educational resources, the Dollar General Literacy Foundation partnered with the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and the XPRIZE Foundation in 2015 to launch Adult Literacy XPRIZE, a global competition aimed at inspiring innovation and new technology in the field of adult literacy. The competition challenged teams to develop mobile applications for existing smart devices that can increase literacy skills among participating adult learners. Teams from around the globe joined the competition to create new mobile applications, and as a result of their work, nearly 12,000 new learners now have free access to mobile learning applications.

Opening Doorways

The Dollar General Literacy Foundation created in-store and online referral partnerships with the Ad Council, National Literacy Directory, National Center for Families Learning and ProLiteracy to provide free referrals to literacy and basic education programs across the country.

Since 2010, the referral program has provided more than 1.4 million referrals to adult learners. During fiscal year 2018 alone, more than 340,000 literacy and basic education referrals helped those individuals take their first step toward achieving their goals.

Children’s Health

Since 2006, Dollar General has partnered with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to raise more than $30 million through corporate gifts and an annual in-store Thanks & Giving® campaign to support the hospital’s life-saving childhood cancer research.

In addition to financial gifts, Dollar General and St. Jude also bring holiday joy to patients and their families by hosting the Dollar General Santa’s Workshop. Dollar General employees help bring the holidays alive by allowing patients and their siblings to select free toys, participate in fun craft activities and enjoy snacks and laughter.

Holiday Support

We are proud of our longstanding partnership with the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation and other local toy drives during the holidays. During our 12-year partnership with the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation, we have provided more than $1.1 million in financial support and hundreds of thousands of toys to help make the holidays brighter for families in the communities that we serve.

Disaster Recovery

We are proud to partner with the American Red Cross to better support the organization’s recovery efforts and serve communities in their time of need. Since 2010, Dollar General has supported the American Red Cross with more than $6.4 million in corporate donations and in-store collections to aid relief and recovery efforts following hurricanes, tornados, floods, wildfires and other natural disasters.