Each year, Pierce Atwood identifies an organization or a cause for its charitable activities. These activities include jeans days, pizza lunches, lunchtime trivia competitions, and other firmwide fundraising events.
For 2020 & 2021, we focused our fundraising efforts on behalf of the Alzheimer’s Association, the leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer’s care, support and research. Founded in 1980 by a group of family caregivers and individuals who recognized the need for an organization that would unite caregivers, provide support to those facing Alzheimer’s and advance research into the disease, today the association reaches millions of people affected by Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
In 2019, we supported the Doug Flutie Jr Foundation for Autism, established in 1998 by former quarterback Doug Flutie and his wife Laurie, in honor of their son Doug, Jr. who was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. The mission of the foundation is to help people and families affected by autism live life to the fullest.
In 2018, we supported the Make-A-Wish Foundation, whose mission is to grant the wish of every child diagnosed with a critical illness.
In 2017, Pierce Atwood focused our fundraising efforts on safe havens to support women and children in at-risk situations. Each office selected an organization in its community as the beneficiary of the funds raised. All money raised throughout the year was split among the following organizations:
Boston – Casa Myrna
Washington, DC – My Sister's Place
Augusta/Portland - Family Crisis Services
Portsmouth – HAVEN
Providence - Sojourner House
In 2016, Pierce Atwood’s Charitable Giving Committee selected the Travis Roy Foundation as the beneficiary of our yearlong fundraising efforts. Travis Roy, a native of Yarmouth, Maine, was on the BU hockey team in his freshman year. At just 11 seconds into his first collegiate hockey game, he crashed into the boards the wrong way and was left paralyzed from the neck down.
Following his injury, Travis created a foundation focused on empowering spinal cord injury survivors through adaptive equipment grants and providing funding for spinal cord injury research. Travis was a popular motivational speaker and made frequent appearances around New England and across the country. Travis passed away in 2020.
In 2015, under the leadership of firm energy attorney Julia Weller and paralegal Sandy Stenquist, Pierce Atwood raised nearly $3000 to assist victims of the Nepal earthquake. These funds are being donated to the Gorkhaly Foundation, which is working to rebuild the micro-hydro plant in Barpak, the quake’s epicenter, and the American Nepal Medical Foundation, one of the first organizations to respond when the earthquake hit, and that is still on the ground in Nepal.