Paintru ‘Painting Our Heroes’ Campaign Promise
This open letter has been ratified by all founding members of Paintru. We are making this promise publicly in order to ensure that, as we continue to build our company, we serve the veteran community, our artists, and our employees.
Why is this campaign promise necessary?
Paintru was founded by a team of military veterans with several goals in mind – (i) to tell our customers’ stories via art, (ii) to create jobs for ourselves and our fellow Americans with a preference for hiring military veterans and spouses, and (iii) to provide income opportunity to artists around the world. We believe in private business as a vehicle for job creation, but also in the ability of a private business to do good in the world, having a profound social impact beyond the economics of the business.
Today, as we ratify this pledge, we are a small company with five total employees. Our vision is massive – we hope to be able to paint thousands of portraits in pursuit of accomplishing the above goals. Over the course of running this business for the last two years, we have found tremendous joy in telling our customers’ stories, especially in painting our fallen comrades to immortalize their legacy.
We envision a future in which every fallen military service member, first responder, and healthcare worker who has passed during the pandemic is commemorated and honored via artwork. We want to tell these heroes’ stories as far and widely as possible. From post offices to high schools, any public gathering place is an ideal place to display a painting of a fallen hero. Moreover, providing a gifted painting to a bereaved family is a small symbol of our gratitude as a nation.
We anticipate deploying millions of dollars in pursuit of making this goal a reality, in support of Gold Star families and the sacrifice they, along with their loved ones, have made for our country. Accordingly, we want to ensure our stakeholders are aligned before we begin scaling this program in the hopes that it will hold us accountable to our mission and our values, as well as future generations of Paintru leaders.
Who Are Our Stakeholders?
The stakeholders of our Paint Your Hero campaign are: (i) the families of the fallen heroes we seek to paint, (ii) the Paintru employees, (iii) Paintru artists,(iv) our non-profit partners, and (v) our shareholders and investors. We believe that we can structure this campaign in a way that maximizes benefit to all of these stakeholders.
Execution Of The Campaign
Our non-profit partners at Steel Hearts are actively, as of September 11th, 2021, raising money to gift paintings to every family of a fallen servicemember. These funds will be used to purchase artwork from Paintru as a gift to Gold Star families. We will utilize the proceeds of the campaign to benefit the above stakeholders in the following ways –
(i) Each painting requested by a fallen servicemember’s family will be gifted to them at no cost. If the family would like extra paintings for loved ones, we will endeavor to provide those paintings free of charge to families. We pledge to always place the needs and requests of the families first in executing this campaign. Image selection and revisions will be handled by the Paintru team in order to ensure a speedy delivery and minimize disturbance to the families we serve.
(ii) Our artists will be paid a living wage. There is a minimum quality standard of art that we must maintain in executing our campaign. Accordingly, we will only work with artists who are able to accurately paint portraiture that will honor these fallen heroes’ legacy in a timely manner. When deciding which artists to utilize for the campaign, we will optimize to serve more families of fallen heroes in order to be good stewards of our non-profit partners’ funds. We believe that art has a unique ability to unite people from disparate backgrounds, and we pledge to utilize our benefactors’ funds to the best of our ability by sourcing artists who are cost-effective regardless of where they reside.
(iii) We pledge to pay our employees a competitive wage. For our customer service agents, this means a minimum of $15 per hour. Administrators of this campaign must be compensated for their efforts as well at a rate comparable to private-sector careers available to them.
(iv) Any profit above the aforementioned costs will go toward overall business profitability, allowing us to continue to execute this campaign for years to come. Our shareholders (ourselves included) will only benefit from this campaign by virtue of the public attention that this campaign generates. We will never utilize the profits of this campaign to pay dividends. We’ve chosen our investors carefully to ensure they are aligned with our social mission in addition to our financial mission.
Learn More and Get Involved
Since Paintru’s inception, we have considered it a vehicle for social good. We’re thrilled to take this next step to bring that dream to life and invite your feedback by reaching out to us at hello@paintru.com. If you’d like to become involved in the campaign, let us know and we will find a place for you to help!
