Most companies recognize that investing in employee engagement and development are vital to remaining competitive in a constantly evolving business world. When companies spend time and money improving the skills of their employees, they send a message to workers that they want to invest in their future. And in return, companies expect to see increases in job performance, organizational commitment and job satisfaction from their workers.

Employee training and development often focus on hard skills; the basic proficiencies needed to perform one’s job duties. But good employee training also generally also covers soft skills such as teamwork, leadership, problem solving and public speaking – the unquantifiable abilities necessary to give companies a competitive edge. This doesn’t come cheap: according to human resources think tank Bersin and Associates, the average training cost per employee in 2010 was $1200, with most of that money going towards developing soft skills such as management and leadership abilities.

So if soft skills are as vital as hard skills – and pricier to boot – where can employees acquire and cultivate these talents without breaking the bank? One place to look: employee volunteer programs.

Corporate volunteering and corporate giving programs not only help fulfill a company’s CSR mandate; they also offer workers a unique opportunity to participate in teambuilding efforts and develop job-related skills. On top of that, these programs are a bargain. According to the Trends Of Excellence In Employee Volunteering Series by Points of Light Institute, a company will spend about $416 on each person that participates in an employee volunteer program. That’s significantly lower than the $1200 that it costs per employee for one training program.

Clearly, businesses can reap much organizational value from supporting employee-directed corporate philanthropy. So why do so many companies under-fund their employee volunteer programs? You wouldn’t expect an athlete to do well on a starvation diet, right? Well, your employee volunteer program can’t thrive on twigs and berries either.

When a company’s volunteer activities don’t align with its values and cultures, management often doesn’t see the correlation between volunteerism and how it benefits their company. Since successful volunteer programs should relate to a company’s core business, it’s important to first define a company’s corporate philanthropy strategy, expectations and goals. That’s often missed in the “check the box” mentality which overwhelmed administrators sometimes apply to their company’s volunteerism.

What’s the solution?
Give ‘Em Choice

When empowered by their companies, employees tend to be more engaged and happier in their work. One path to empowerment is in supporting causes that are important to employees and offering them an environment in which they can make an impact. Long gone are the days of relying on United Way because that’s all your lone, part-time administrator could handle. A new era is upon us in the field of corporate philanthropy, and that innovation must trickle down to your employees. Engagement comes from meeting employees where they are, not expecting them to mold their passions solely around your CEO’s signature cause.
Walk The Talk

Volunteer programs also work best when supported by the company’s top executives, so senior management should lead by example by participating in and promoting their initiatives. When employees are clear about their company’s vision, they’re more motivated to represent the company’s brand, build relationships and strengthen their communities by sharing their skills and passions.
Turbocharge Your Systems

Other reasons for under-funded employee volunteer programs are a lack of employee enthusiasm due to disorganization, too much tedious administrative work and difficulty in calculating a return on investment. An efficient program management system like Causecast’s Community Impact Platform addresses these challenges with its well organized and easy to use interface, tools to measure and communicate community impact, a menu of volunteer opportunities and creative giving options that allows employees to support causes they care about in the ways they want, and a personal concierge service to help administrators adopt novel strategies and execute their volunteer programs throughout the year. An effective employee giving and volunteering management resource eases administrative overload and greatly expands the possibilities for corporate volunteer programs.

Companies today recognize that maintaining a competitive edge requires investment in their number one asset: their employees. Employee volunteer programs – when well-fed and supported by corporate management – offer a cost-effective way to develop the skills of a company’s workforce while improving the lives of those in need.

What are we supposed to do with all of our old gizmos?

While responsible businesses and consumers want to recycle their outdated technology equipment – and often think they are – the reality of the electronics recycling business is an eco-horror show.  Rife with misperception and abuse, the e-waste industry is notorious for cashing in on the good intentions of those who want to do right by Mother Earth and then delivering nothing but more problems for old mom.

Electronics recyclers claim that they’re lawfully disposing of electronics after stripping them of their hazardous contaminants.  The ugly truth is that after charging exorbitant fees for collection, recyclers often send waste to countries like China and India, where rules are lax and dangerous materials are commonly dumped near farms or sources of drinking water, or burned after the electronics are mined for reusable microchips, copper, and silver.  Because circuit boards are fireproof, the workers who burn or smelt down electronics just end up carbonizing the circuit boards and creating more emissions, then filling up landfills with the residuals.  This isn’t exactly what most people have in mind when they think “green.”

Enter Materials Conservation Company (MCC), an e-waste company that prefers to think of its mission as recovering materials rather than recycling end of life electronics.  Using a proprietary mechanical process, MCC safely reduces electronics to two new raw materials, rendering them into a metal concentrate or powder. The company then sells the metal to refiners, who employ an electrolytic system to make commodity grade metals, such as copper.  The end result is that electronic equipment – the toughest material to recycle – is 100% reutilized.

Think of it as a reverse Amazon, but instead of ordering products and putting them into a cart, you put products you already have into a cart.  That cart comes in the form of collapsible reusable containers that are sent to businesses by MCC, then picked up from company loading docks within 48 hours after being prepared to ship to regional centers.  Recycling partners disassemble the electronics, the scrap is sold to scrap channels, then the circuit boards and wiring are sent back to MCC where the processing begins to extract the metals to be reused in other ways, and recycles the circuit boards into an epoxy resin for use in waterproofing.

Did I mention that the cost of this to businesses and consumers is $0?

“Over the course of several years, we have developed a unique business model that takes our proprietary technology processing combined with eCommerce software, and leverages it with the existing physical infrastructure,” explains founder Michael Burney.  “We work with existing companies to handle the logistics and disassembly so that we don’t add trucks to the world, we generate no emissions in processing, and the only consumable is electricity.  The whole process is designed to be efficient.”

Most businesses do their recycling based on depreciation schedules; only when a piece of equipment is fully depreciated (aka broken) do they recycle, and they do this by paying waste companies significant sums for retrieval.  MCC offers a different model, where all locations of a company have pre-arranged access, the cost to the business is free, and organizations are provided with reporting on their materials.  And all of this is done sustainably.

MCC’s main competitor?  The trash industry, a business that thinks in terms of tonnage. According to the EPA, 2.37 million tons of electronics were ready for end-of-life management in 2009, but only 25% were collected for recycling.  The rest of that tonnage went to landfills or was exported, where most of it will not be reused or recycled.

Earth Day may have long come and gone, but Causecast salutes companies like MCC that are thinking of the earth every day, innovating ways to nurture our planet back to greater health and pave a greener path for the future.

Contact Causecast now to learn how we can help you have a positive community impact simply by disposing of your electronics in a sustainable way.

To help combat this critical social gap, corporate philanthropy initiatives of all shapes and sizes have been created.  Leading companies are working to empower people across the country (and world, in some instances) by putting their core financial literacy competencies to work.

For example, PwC is mobilizing its most important asset — its 35,000 people who are skilled in finance, accounting and business — to address youth education with a focus on financial literacy. The firm’s centerpiece commitment, formally titled PwC’s Earn Your Future, was launched at Clinton Global Initiative America in June.  It’s a five-year commitment to reach more than 2.5 million students and educators and represents a $160 million investment for the firm, $60 million in cash and 1 million service hours.

The firm is already activating on its pledge.  This fall it teamed up with Knowledge @ Wharton High School to offer a 3-day, all-expenses paid training session for more than 200 educators around the country to shore up their skills in the subject.

And most recently, during Martin Luther King, Jr. day, which is known as a national day of service, PwC employees spent the day giving back—from teaching financial literacy modules in schools to hosting career exploration programs for youth organizations. This approach not only helps the staff develop their skills, but also aligns with Dr. King’s work to empower individuals and strengthen communities.

“We identified a set of projects that supported PwC’s Earn Your Future commitment and helped the markets support them,” said Heather Wright, Corporate Responsibility Director at PwC. And the response was powerful.  Wright describes the feedback from participants as “tremendous,” noting that they “just lit up when we empowered them with this knowledge.”

PwC’s Earn Your Future serves as a testament to how such skills-based initiatives can make a significant and tangible social impact both at the micro level (such as helping empower the homeless) and the macro level (teacher training seminars that specialize in financial literacy). Wright notes that learning about financial literacy appeals to a wide group of people; indeed, the housing market crash and economic recession illuminated that financial literacy is imperative for people of all income levels and socioeconomic classes.

For PwC, the skills-based program isn’t just about altruism. “It’s a shared value concept,” says Wright.  ”PwC is helping our youth develop strong financial foundations that enable them to contribute to a growing workforce and healthier economy; and we’re providing our partners and staff opportunities to both develop their leadership skills and give back to our communities.”

In short, the greater the number of financially literate and empowered people, the more PwC is able to succeed. It’s a win-win.

So how about making volunteering easier than ever by offering virtual volunteer opportunities?  It’s just one more tool that savvy companies are using to sharpen their employee volunteer programs, and by extension, their overall corporate philanthropy complexion.

Online or “virtual volunteering” allows people to help non-profits in a variety of ways, from web design and social media strategy, to translation, accounting, research, data entry and a host of other needs.  This kind of skills-based volunteering allows virtual volunteers to contribute as much or as little time as they can, all from the convenience of their computers or smartphones. When employee volunteerism includes online opportunities and fundraising, your employees can effortlessly donate their time and talents.

Bringing Global Support to Local Nonprofits

Overcoming geographic boundaries and time constraints, virtual volunteering connects volunteers of various backgrounds, skills and cultures that may not be available locally to a charity, thereby enhancing an organization’s resources.  The hope is to also mobilize additional support as virtual volunteers learn about a non-profit and the people it serves.  In turn, volunteers can share this information with their companies and communities, creating a network of support.

You’ve got would-be volunteers who aren’t web wizards?  No problem.  If volunteers can read, write or do math, technology can help them tutor a child without even leaving their desks.

For example, Innovations for Learning, Inc. (IFL), an Illinois nonprofit that develops innovative technology to supplement reading and math instructional programs for K-2 classrooms, offers a web-based tutoring program that remotely pairs tutors and students.  “Tele-tutors” talk to students over the phone while sharing a mutual screen on their respective computers, where they can read stories, work on word activities and do homework together.  All of their work is integrated with the classroom instruction, and the tele-tutors are seen as an extension of the teacher while providing individualized attention to each student.  Since no travel is involved, more time is spent working one-on-one with each student, allowing for convenience and flexibility for the tutor.  Because of tele-tutoring, teachers have reported improved student performance; students look forward to their weekly virtual appointments and are motivated to work as they anticipate the call from their tutor.

Micro-Volunteering Makes it Even Easier to Contribute

Even if your employees only have ten minutes to volunteer, there’s an app for that.  Using a touch of a button on your smartphone, you can “micro-volunteer” by doing simple volunteer projects in small increments of time.  While they’re waiting for the bus or sitting in a boring meeting, your employees can be doing volunteer work.

Micro-volunteers are generally not required to undergo a screening process nor do they need to make a specific time commitment.  Besides donating money, an example of micro-volunteer work is helping a museum add tag words to the tons of images in its database to help them be searchable for future use.  By crowdsourcing the task of tagging the photos to micro-volunteers, the museum can catalog a greater number of photos without the expense of paying staff.

Companies such as cause integration leader Causecast make it easy for businesses to get their employees volunteering online.  Causecast’s Community Impact Platform helps companies promote virtual volunteering opportunities within an online volunteer and giving platform, to make volunteering as accessible as possible for busy employees.  And if the charities that a business wishes to support don’t offer virtual volunteering, Causecast will help those nonprofits develop online volunteer opportunities or source other nonprofits that can be supported through online volunteering.

So apply some strategic philanthropy to your corporate giving.  Let your employees know that they can hop on their computer or phone, get to work, make the planet a better place and feel good about themselves.  But carving out the time…now that’s the part only they can do.

Since 1986, three years after President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law, every third Monday in January is designated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a federal holiday that celebrates Dr. King’s life and work.  In 1994, Congress named MLK Jr. Day as a national day of service, and since then Americans have often celebrated the day through acts of service, dubbing the holiday “A Day On, Not a Day Off.”  This movement also aligns with President Obama’s national call for all Americans to incorporate volunteerism and public service into their daily lives as a responsibility of citizenship.

This year, on January 21, 2013, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), a federal agency that leads President Obama’s national call to service initiative, is encouraging organizations to honor MLK Jr. Day by volunteering for projects that support veterans and military families, educate communities on disaster preparedness, promote education and provide economic opportunities to the underprivileged.  More than 30 national organizations, including the American Red Cross, Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Habitat for Humanity, are strategic partners with the CNCS and will be holding local events through their chapters in various U.S. cities.

One of the goals of the MLK Jr. Day of Service is to put into action Dr. King’s teachings and philosophy of nonviolence to help solve social problems through service projects that empower people and build bridges in order to strengthen communities.  U.S. cities throughout the country will offer a variety of volunteer opportunities for its citizens to participate in community outreach and corporate philanthropy.

For example, The New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH) represents more than 1,200 nonprofit soup kitchens and food pantries in New York City that feed the over one million low-income, hungry New Yorkers.  This year, NYCCAH volunteers and their partner nonprofits will serve meals, distribute food bags, stock food pantries where the low-income can buy discounted groceries and even clean up homeless shelters to commemorate MLK Jr. Day.  Chicago Cares is sponsoring educational programs at several schools to teach children about Dr. King and his message, in addition to holding a volunteer-driven discussion group about Dr. King at St. Leonard’s House, a halfway house for men recently released from prison.  Boston’s Central Square will continue Dr. King’s message of unity through community service by hosting hundreds of local volunteers engaging in a variety of activities including making scarves and blankets for the homeless, bookmarks for people in literacy programs, Valentine’s Day cards for shut-ins, and sorting cans of food, winter clothing and children’s books for people in need.

On the West Coast, San Francisco based Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, will be holding a family-oriented Day of Service by organizing volunteers to participate in park conservancy in the Golden Gate National Parks.  In the Seattle area, the American Red Cross will bring together local volunteers for a day of disaster preparedness and education by canvassing throughout neighborhoods, talking with residents and leaving behind bilingual fire safety information.  And in the spirit of Dr. King’s vision of a Beloved Community, a place where people come together to make their community a better place to live, Los Angeles area citizens and corporate volunteers will participate in a schools beautification project by revitalizing the campuses of various local schools.

Some national businesses like Allstate Insurance will be holding their company-wide day of service on MLK Jr. Day, where employees on every level and in every position throughout the U.S. are encouraged to volunteer for any cause in their local community.  Target Corporation’s employee volunteer program will take part in the MLK Day Jr. Day festivities by participating in 30 unique project sites throughout Chicago, where employee volunteers will host multicultural fairs for students to educate them on diversity, sort donations at homeless shelters, spend time with senior citizens and create artwork to brighten learning environments.  Washington D.C. Target employees will join their fellow corporate volunteers in this day of service by helping the CNCS and Points of Light assemble and fill assorted items in toiletry kits for active U.S. military personnel, wounded warriors, veterans and first responders.

For nonprofits and community groups, MLK Jr. Day is an opportunity to introduce their causes to new volunteers and find potential funders and partners who can support their organizations throughout the year.  Meanwhile, businesses recognize that contributing on this Day of Service is the ultimate demonstration of corporate social responsibility.  Not only will participating in this day promote employee engagement, companies will also give their employees a rare benefit…an opportunity to feel great about themselves.

To participate in MLK Jr. Day activities, companies and their employees can find volunteer opportunities through Causecast’s Community Impact Platform.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once observed, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’”  On MLK Jr. Day, Dr. King’s dream of a nation of freedom and justice for all becomes every American’s dream as people throughout the country come together to answer his question.

Now that the economy is picking up steam, top talent is in even higher demand. So how can you make your company stand out from the crowd?

Three words: corporate volunteer programs.  But don’t just take my word for it; there are firms out there that actually research these things. For example, a 2011 Deloitte Volunteer Impact study found that 61% of Millennials would consider a company’s commitment to the community when making a job decision. The study also found those who frequently participate in workplace volunteer activities are more likely to be proud, loyal and satisfied employees.

For a real-world example that proves the connection between corporate social responsibility and recruitment, take a look at what Timberland does to help preserve Mother Earth for future generations—and increase their own bottom line.

Many recognize the iconic yellow Timberland boot, but few may be aware of the company’s consistent efforts to foster corporate philanthropy. Manufacturers of rugged outdoor footwear, apparel and accessories, Timberland sets a great example of how to attract employees, protect the environment and still maintain the corporate giving bottom line.

Everyone Rolls Up Their Sleeves

Timberland’s commitment to corporate social responsibility starts at the top and is supported by just about every employee on a volunteer basis. Their Path of Service™ program, which recently celebrated its 20th year, provides employees with up to 40 hours of paid time off for community service. Employees are also offered the opportunity to apply for extended Path of Service™ opportunity to serve in the wake of a disaster or to work longer term on a capacity building project for a nonprofit organization.  For over 20 years, the company has sponsored City Year, a type of urban Peace Corps, and for the past fourteen years they have sponsored Earth Day events all over the world. Employees (and sometimes their kids as well) have cleaned up New Hampshire beaches, planted trees were planted in Germany and Thailand, improved urban spaces improved in Spain, picked up rubbish picked up in Japan, and planted, weeded and fertilized a field of tree seedlings in China.

Senior Manager of Community Engagement Atlanta McIlwraith reports positive proof that Timberland’s community service and social responsibility activities help with recruitment. Timberland administers an Employee Global Survey every two years and the most recent survey showed 67% of employees saying they strongly agreed or agreed that the company’s commitment to the community and its Path of Service™ program played a strong role in their decision to work at Timberland.

Once approval for a particular non-profit is given by one’s manager, community service hours are tracked through the payroll system and results are provided each year in the company’s corporate social responsibility report. “Rather than just writing checks, if we support people in having a taste of the difference they can make in their community, hopefully they will take on more of that type of activity on their own time,” says McIlwraith.

In addition to recruiting great employees, the company sincerely believes that community service matters to consumers. As the general public becomes increasingly environmentally conscious, they in turn expect companies that they do business with to share their values in the products they offer and the way they operate.  That’s why Timberland continuously monitors and measures its environmental impact, whether it’s making products from recycled materials, volunteering in local communities or improving working conditions in suppliers’ factories.  “We are a values-driven brand,” McIlwraith concludes, “and when consumers see us show up in their community and serve, it just augments that impression of being authentic in our commitment to the environment and to communities.”

Pop quiz: if your employees ask you how you’re going to support their community outreach efforts, is the right answer “we don’t”?

That would be an emphatic no.

Which is why Warner Bros. recognizes that if it is going to continue to attract top talent and engaged employees, it must be the company of yes.

Indeed, when you’re one of the biggest entertainment companies on the planet, you’ve got a huge corporate social responsibility burden to shoulder.  But Warner Bros. employees don’t consider CSR a “burden,” and the proof is in the proverbial pudding – with the Warner Bros. giving program boasting a participation rate of 31 percent.  While this might not surpass some companies’ claims of 90 percent or more employee volunteer participation, it is in fact 12 percent above the corporate average.

That doesn’t come from a bunch of employees being “voluntold” – Warner Bros. doesn’t demand participation from employees.  Indeed, the company’s giving program didn’t come out of a desire at the C-suite for strategic philanthropy; rather, it grew out of employee demand for a civic engagement outlet.

Warner Bros.’ giving program, called Impact, addresses four areas that present some of the most fundamental challenges confronting humanity today: youth enrichment, global outreach, environmental stewardship and community engagement.  Whereas at most companies, different areas of community impact are divided up (for example, mentoring, general philanthropy, community service, and employee matching funds), Warner Bros. manages all community involvement under the employee-driven Impact program.  Employee contributions to the dialogue aren’t without management oversight; however, employees are the driving force behind where and how Warner Bros. chooses to give back to the community as a company.

The process of deciding where to get involved begins when Warner Bros. solicits employee engagement in the form of a survey.  Every two years, when the company looks for nonprofits to partner with, employees nominate nonprofit organizations that they consider important.  A steering committee reviews these nominations, winnowing the list down to 24 nonprofit candidates; Warner Bros. employees then vote on which nonprofits they think would work best for the company. This allows for targeted employee donations to any of 12 employee-selected nonprofit partners.

Impact boasts appealing features in more ways than one.  For example, the company’s volunteer grants program goes above and beyond what we’ve come to expect from CSR standards; when an employee volunteers for 30 hours or more, Warner Bros. gives a grant of $500 to the non-profit in question.

The company also provides matching gifts of up to $1,000 for every employee at the company. During select times of the year, Warner Bros. offers double matching donations, effectively tripling an employee’s donation.

And Warner Bros. believes that showing employees how they’ve contributed is essential to keeping employees engaged. This means more than just reporting back on dollars and cents. Photos of employees pitching in or anecdotal stories about how employee volunteer programs make a difference both go a long way toward concretizing the effects of civic involvement.

So where is all this community engagement going? Within the four cause areas that Warner Bros. targets, Warner Bros. employees work with local nonprofit organizations such as A Place Called Home, a youth center in South Los Angeles and Volunteers of the Burbank Animal Shelter, an animal service agency devoted to providing medical, social, behavioral and financial care for animals at risk.  Warner Bros. also works with global organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, the World Wildlife Fund and Doctors Without Borders.

The list of ways that Warner Bros. is involved in its community would be admirable for any organization, but it’s even more impressive because of the grassroots nature of Warner Bros.’ engagement.  After all, few companies can boast that their CSR efforts are almost entirely driven by employee demand, which is the most genuine, sustainable and effective kind of corporate philanthropy of all.

“Scale is sexy,” says Caroline Barlerin, director of global community involvement in HP’s Office of Global Sustainability & Social Innovation, who points out if all HP employees took advantage of the four hours of paid time off to volunteer the company offers every month, it would equate to more service than the Peace Corps. While she doesn’t believe the company will single-handedly change the world, Barlerin is cognizant of the impact a company as large as HP can make through sheer numbers alone, as well as how it can lead the overall dialogue around shared value.

The numbers are impressive: HP employees volunteered more than 1.4 million hours in 2012 to date, worth $80 million, which is a significant increase from the year before.  Yet, despite the high number of volunteer hours, the company is striving for an even greater number of participants in these programs, allowing it to further fine-tune best practices in employee volunteer programs, with a current focus on skills-based pro bono work.

HP seeks increased community engagement through a celebration of its employees making a difference, and then telling those stories about how skills-based pro bono work and other community service activities are changing the world both internally and externally. The benefits of this promotion speak for itself: not only are more employees using their paid volunteer hours than in years past, more are getting involved in the skills-based pro bono programs that HP is so assiduously advocating.

Employee involvement pays off in more ways than just additional volunteer hours clocked or more pro bono projects; it also pays off in stronger partnerships with nonprofits, a powerful tool for creating lasting community impact. In 2011, HP built its infrastructure to support these partnerships through 19 country gateways and now has launched 48 country gateways to enable employees to engage. This more than doubles the number of regions where HP and its employees are able to make an impact in a single year.

HP leaders and employees are proud to speak of the company’s ability to positively affect the communities in which it does business. When surveyed, nearly 90 percent of HP’s nonprofit partners said that HP helped them to offer “higher quality services”, “be more innovative” and most importantly, “serve more people”.

Further, the company has found that employee engagement increases when its people are given chances to volunteer. This engagement is even higher when employees are engaging in pro bono, skills-based opportunities. In fact, HP found that employees who participate in skills-based volunteer events are 59 percent more likely to feel that the company is a “great place to work”. This underscores a core tenet of HP’s community involvement: “We have a shared value approach at HP.” says Barlerin. “Economic interest and social impact are not at odds with one another. We truly believe they should work in tandem.”

Indeed, one of the biggest questions going in the world of shared value is how to balance doing good with doing well. At HP, however, this is a nonsensical question as the two are not considered mutually exclusive. “People are going to volunteer,” says Barlerin. “The challenge is figuring out how to harness that energy in a meaningful way that will make a tangible difference in communities. I want HP to be the example of how to do it. It has a multiplier effect upon the community, allowing us to attract and retain top talent and build a reputation in the marketplace,” Barlerin notes.

So what is HP’s strategy for community engagement? Local knows best. “HP is a global company with global goals. It’s not a simple matter of taking what we do in the United States and exporting it to China,” said Barlerin. And while the company works around the globe, it tailors programs and opportunities to each location’s specific needs. Some examples of how the company is changing communities include:

• An employee in Japan helped Doctors Without Borders to improve its IT security. This in turn helped the organization avoid security breaches that would interfere with its work providing medical care to war zones and disaster areas.
• Employees in Morocco helped teach high school students in Casablanca how to start their own business through Junior Achievement Morocco’s Entrepreneurship Master Class.
• Employees in Mexico are teaching young people how to craft resumes and cover letters that will help them to find gainful employment and provide for their families.
• Employees in India organized HP Hackathons that brought together programmers and developers to quickly generate new solutions to old problems. HP employees are providing mentoring services to Global Health Corps (GHC) Fellows, an organization that promotes global health equity by connecting outstanding young leaders around the world with organizations working on the frontlines.

The point is simple: HP employees are engaged in ways that align with the needs of their communities—from healthcare and education to sustainability and disaster response—as well as in ways that help showcase the power of technology to positively change lives. This process effectively engages talented professionals to make a tangible difference in the communities where they live and work and show how HP can provide viable solutions to everyday needs. “I’m shameless about asking people to step up and volunteer, especially when it leverages their skills in a new way,” says Barlerin.

Barlerin sees HP as just one company with a lot of leverage when it comes to the global conversation about volunteering and community impact. To be a part of this conversation, HP is involved with A Billion + Change, a national campaign to mobilize billions of dollars of pro bono and skills-based services from corporate America. HP Vice President and Deputy General Counsel David Bruscino will speak at the “Innovations in Corporate Service” thought leader summit in Palo Alto, a celebration of skills-based, pro bono volunteer programs. Companies pledging to A Billion + Change will come together to learn about the latest and greatest innovations in the world of service, the role of Millennial employees and collaborations between the public and the private sector.

A Billion + Change already has secured nearly $1.8 billion in corporate pledges and 12 million hours of time and talent to pro bono programs. If your company would like to sign on to A Billion + Change, go to www.abillionpluschange.org for more information.

At the same time, food waste is also epidemic.  According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the United States throws out 40 percent of its food every year. That’s not half-eaten sandwiches; that’s totally edible food that any hungry person would be happy to have.  All told, this amounts to $165 billion in food waste every year.

Enter Darden Restaurants, which is addressing food insecurity by reducing food waste.  Darden is the world’s largest full-service restaurant company, owning and operating – through subsidiaries – more than 2,000 restaurants, including such brands as Red Lobster, The Capital Grille and Olive Garden.  The company employs 185,000 people to serve more than 400 million meals a year, so it knows a thing or two about food waste.  That’s why, through its Darden Harvest Program, Darden is tackling food insecurity by giving away instead of throwing away.

Launched in 2004, the Darden Harvest Program partners with local food banks to provide immediate hunger relief.  This exercise in corporate philanthropy has tangible results for less fortunate families, with Darden donating 10.4 million pounds of food valued at $105 million in 2011 alone, and giving more than 60 million pounds of food to hunger relief agencies since the program’s inception.  The program has met with acclaim, with former first daughter Chelsea Clinton reporting on the program this year for NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.

The program helps not just the bellies of food recipients, but also their sense of self worth.  Angela Woods, Director of Darden Foundation and Community Affairs, notes, “When you’re at a local food bank you expect that what you get is what you get,” she says. “You don’t expect well-prepared hot meals from the Olive Garden. You don’t expect lobsters and steak.” Woods has clearly been moved by the experience: “It is humbling.”

The Darden Harvest Program stands as a profound testament to the power of corporate giving to make a measurable impact in people’s lives.  While donating to education and the arts are important, none of that much matters if someone isn’t getting enough food to eat.  Darden Harvest is making sure that families have enough food in their bellies to make their other engagement programs matter.

Food banks need more than just food, however, as the best meal in the world is decidedly lacking if a person has nothing to eat it off of. When Darden revamped menus across nearly 700 Red Lobster locations, they also changed out the plateware used to serve those menus. Rather than just throwing them in the garbage, they found different ways for their trash to become treasure for an entire community; over 330,000 pieces were donated to hunger relief agencies in need of new dishes or Habitat Restore Resale Outlets, allowing the latter to raise money to help build new homes in the community. More than just providing a more pleasant dining experience for people receiving food assistance, this is a significant chunk of money that hunger relief organizations will not have to spend on replacing old plates. Where Darden had plates it didn’t need, local nonprofits were in need of plates (or at least the funds they could raise from selling plates), making this a win-win all around for everyone.

That said, Darden Harvest is only one example of Darden’s community impact.  While hunger is the top concern for Darden Harvest, the Darden Foundation also targets education and preservation of natural resources, and local affiliates that drive community service ideas provide a diverse array of ways for Darden to get involved in the areas its restaurant serves.  For example, employees in the greater Washington, D.C. area work with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to clean up the bay.  And in Atlanta, 24 out of the 40 Darden restaurants in the city came together to help the local Boys and Girls Clubs improve graduation rates and college attendance through efforts like college fairs and help filling out student aid and college applications.

Darden’s commitment to engaging the people and communities where they do business all leads to more engaged employees.  “Service is innate to who we are as a company,” says Woods.  And a more engaged employee base has a number of benefits that are essential in the restaurant industry. “Our community outreach helps employees improve their effectiveness at work. They feel better about being at work and in turn, improve their interactions with our guests. It’s an essential morale booster that consistently improves engagement across the board.”

Indeed, when reaching out to local communities, the Darden Foundation relies on employee engagement for maximum results.  For example, Red Lobster and Longhorn Steakhouse worked together in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas to donate $8,000 for local food banks, mobilizing hundreds of employees to help package canned goods at local food banks to ensure that hungry locals would get fed.

Engaged employees also act as a motivator for Woods. “The fact that employees contact me asking how we can help makes my job so meaningful,” she notes, remembering a time that an employee reached out to her about another surplus at a Longhorn Steakhouse location. “She called saying that they had excess steak knives and wondered what we could do with them.” This is in keeping not just with the corporate values, but also Woods’ own personal ethics. “If we have a surplus of something, we need to provide for those in need.”

Still, while employee engagement is important for any company, it’s not the primary motivator for Darden. “There’s an obligation to the communities where we live and work,” notes Woods, “both personally and as a company.”

Fuse Corps is dedicated to helping entrepreneurial professionals spend a year supporting governors, mayors and community leaders across the country to drive meaningful social change.  The company identifies local projects that serve a national need (such as education, economic development or health care), then recruits and deploys highly-skilled professionals and entrepreneurs to help develop and implement innovative solutions.

Fuse Corps sponsors this change to the tune of $90,000 per annual stipend, allowing selected “fellows” to make a difference at the state and local level in a high impact/high profile project.  While $90,000 sounds like a lot of money — and it is — this actually represents a pay cut for many of the people working with Fuse Corps.  But these funds are sufficient to allow Fuse Corps to attract top talent, giving its fellows a year to do nothing but improve their communities.

“Ten years ago this couldn’t have happened,” says Jennifer Anastasoff, co-founder and CEO of of Fuse Corps (along with the likes of the co-founder of McKinsey’s Social Sector Practice, Lenny Mendonca, author and entrepreneur Peter Sims, and Points of Light executive, Ayesha Khanna).  However, she notes, Millennials entering the workforce are demanding that their employers provide them with ways to give back to the communities where they live, making corporate community outreach a necessity for attracting top talent.  Indeed, the Millennial generation has taken the baby boomers’ 60’s idealism and paired it with their 80’s entrepreneurism to find innovative, market-driven solutions to the major problems confronting humanity.

Fuse Corps chose its first five fellows in March of this year, selecting from a pool of a hundred of the most motivated and impact-oriented applicants for their program.  The results stand as powerful testimony to the benefits of breaking down the walls between the private and public sector, which allows for creative problem solving and innovative solutions.  “These boundaries are just not as important as they used to be,” says Anastasoff.

Some Fuse Corps fellow success stories?

• Jeremy Goldberg is working closely with San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed to develop a program called the Silicon Valley Talent Initiative, which serves as the recruiting, coordinating and top-level management organization for any Silicon Valley government agency that wishes to receive no-cost cognitive problem-solving assistance from the incredible talent pool that exists in Silicon Valley.  Working at a grassroots level to provide strategic support and help in implementing this program, Jeremy is seeing firsthand how local governments can begin to change the way corporations reach out and re-tool the processes by which they govern.

• Lisa Gans works with the D.C. Promise Neighborhood Initiative, which hopes to increase the number of children who complete their education from cradle to college and enter adulthood as productive participants in the 21st century economy and in the civic life of their communities. Lisa is spearheading increased collaboration between public schools, private schools and daycare infrastructure in the Beltway, with a goal of reaching every child in Ward 7, one of the most underprivileged areas of a city known for its high poverty and crime rates.

• Erika Dimmler, a former CNN producer, is working to revitalize the economy of Sacramento through close consultation with the mayor and and his senior staff as a part of the Greenwise Joint Venture, which seeks to attract clean technology projects to the city while developing a workforce qualified for employment in clean energy and a community engaged in a greener future for its city.  In addition to working with the mayor’s office, Dimmler also consults closely with small business leaders, green technology proponents, and community stakeholders to oversee the adoption and implementation of her projected goals for Sacramento.

What do these fellows have in common?  Drawn from different backgrounds and different sectors of the economy, there is necessarily a lot of diversity among this crowd. However, Anastasoff did identify some areas where there were common threads that successful fellow applicants shared, including a history of relentlessly pursuing results; a successful track record of entrepreneurship or business management; and a sense of flexibility and humility that allows fellows to recognize themselves as serving the community and able to make compromises where needed in the name of getting things done.

Proof is the ultimate test of one’s results, and while the program is less than a year old, the last several months have indicated that Fuse Corps has a bright future.  In addition to attracting top talent in the world of social engagement and entrepreneurism, the company has been able to place its fellows in situations where they can have a measurable, tangible impact while also raising enough money to keep the program going.

“While some of the fellows who take sabbaticals from full-time employment return to their jobs after the year is over,” says Anastasoff, “others will be looking for another way to give back full time once their fellowship has ended.”

More than just another blip on the corporate philanthropy map, Fuse Corps might well represent the future of community engagement.  Which is why Fuse Corps is such a perfect partner for A Billion Plus Change, a national campaign to mobilize billions of dollars of pro bono and skills-based services from corporate America.  Indeed, Fuse Corps is a key participant in A Billion Plus Change’s upcoming “Innovations in Corporate Service” thought leader summit in Palo Alto, which will serve as a special celebration of skills-based and pro bono volunteerism. The conference will gather A Billion + Change pledge companies to learn about emerging service trends, such as public-private collaborations, the growing role of the Millennial generation and new innovations that the technology community is introducing to the field of corporate service.

A Billion + Change has already secured nearly $1.8 billion in corporate pledges and 12 million hours of time and talent to pro bono programs.  If your company would like to take the A Billion Plus Change pledge, go to www.abillionpluschange.org for more information.

Lourcey isn’t alone. The younger generation has even more community service ideas than Gen Y. While schools often highlight excellence in academics, athletics and the arts, recognition for volunteer services hasn’t caught on in quite the same way yet. Pawtucket, Rhode Island-based Hasbro believes that these kids are making a real impact. To that end, they are a founding partner of generationOn, the youth wing of the Points of Light Institute. Indeed, the global-branded play and entertainment company has invested $5 million into its partnership with generationOn, a clear case of a company putting its corporate social responsibility money where its public relations mouth is. Karen Davis, Vice President of Community Relations at Hasbro, calls the company’s partnership with generationOn, “our largest commitment next to the Hasbro Children’s Hospital.”

GenerationOn includes a Youth Advisory Council of 14 young people between the ages of 13 and 17 with a demonstrated track record of excellence in community engagement. Tiffani Alexander, 14, of Covington, Georgia, connected the care and nurturing of insects to how we treat our fellow man. Tyler Bleul, 14, from Stamford, Connecticut, is taking the lead in presenting positive role models and mentoring. His project, A Few Good MENtors, works with kids living in battered women’s and children’s shelters throughout New York City’s five boroughs. Links of Love 2 Chains of Hope, the project of 16-year-old Zachary Odegard of Dallas, Oregon, organizes young people for community service. The volunteer community currently includes 140 participants — approximately one percent of the city’s total population. Tharon Trujillo, 16, of Plumas Lake, California, invented a new helicopter design at the age of 10 to help people in disaster areas. His group, Whooz Solutions, helps to deploy this innovative technology. These are just four members of the board, all of whom are contributing to their communities in ways that would be outstanding for people twice their age.

What were you doing in high school? What are you doing now?

These kids are an inspiration to their communities, but also an inspiration internally at Hasbro. “Helping kids find their voice through service is a very big part of Hasbro’s philanthropy,” says Davis. “Employee volunteerism is in our DNA.”

To that end, it’s not uncommon to see Hasbro employees using their four hours of community service time per month to also expose their kids to the value of lending a helping hand. More than just providing for basic needs, Hasbro believes in improving the quality of life for those most in need through its employee volunteer programs. Employees visit local shelters once a month to throw birthday parties for kids and distribute toys to needy children over the the holiday season. It’s impossible to overstate the social impact of such an undertaking; kids who are used to wondering if they’re going to have a roof over their head and a hot meal in their stomach at night get treated to something that they might have only dreamt about before.

At Hasbro, employee engagement goes far beyond the four walls of the workplace.  One way that Hasbro’s community outreach goes beyond simple corporate philanthropy is through match parties for kids waiting for adoption. “It’s a chance for kids to get to know prospective parents in a casual, non-threatening sort of way. There’s a lot of game play and food. Sometimes it’s the only chance kids get to see their siblings who have been adopted.” Such a party can change the face of a child’s entire life, giving them a chance for the caring love and affection of a forever home that they’ve either forgotten about or never known. “We do this during the holiday season when everyone is tired and busy, but we wouldn’t give that party up for anything in the world. It means so much to so many people,” Davis says.

So what’s the connection between Hasbro’s broader CSR programs and the Hasbro Community Action Heroes, other than the obvious answer — kids?

Kids engaged in service act as an inspiration to Hasbro’s employees engaged in community service. Davis met a young man through Hasbro’s outreach whose father was an abusive alcoholic. “The young man slept on a couch,” she says, “It made me really sad.”  But this young man used volunteerism as a coping mechanism, as a way to escape his dysfunctional family life. He later went on to graduate from Vanderbilt University. “I was so inspired by this kid and the difference that service made in his life and the lives of others,” she says. In this case, good corporate citizenship helped create good personal citizenship.

“If you can catch those kids and help them find that good feeling that comes from giving back, it can be incredibly transformative.”

In their May 2012 Crowdfunding Industry Report, Crowdsourcing.org reports that about $1.5 billion dollars was raised via crowdfunding in 2011.  Crowdfunding platforms (CFPs) like Kickstarter and global site Indiegogo facilitate crowdfunding efforts with big number successes;  since 2009, Kickstarter has raised over $250 million in pledges while Indiegogo has funded over 100,000 projects from more than 196 countries.  Given the rising popularity of crowdfunding, it’s not surprising that the number of CFPs is expected to increase to 530 by December 2012, up from the last count of 452 in April 2012.

Beginning in 2013, the federal Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, (JOBS Act) will start permitting companies to trade equity in exchange of products and services for crowdfunding investments.  The hope is that crowdfunding will open up more opportunities for financial resources to jumpstart startups that in turn, will help grow new businesses and ultimately, create new jobs.

Crowdfunding can also be also used for non-profit fundraising as supporters increase awareness and promotion for their cause by using their social networks to encourage others to donate and make a significant community impact.   A recent, highly publicized example of crowdfunding is the outpouring of public support for bus monitor and bullying victim Karen Klein.  After viewing the online video of students verbally abusing Klein, good Samaritan Max Sidorov created a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to raise $5,000 with the intent to give Klein a nice vacation; the campaign ultimately raised $703,000.

That is one really nice vacation.

CROWDFUNDING FOR GOOD

This example is proof of the power of crowdfunding and how it can be used to do good on a massive scale.  Which is why non-profits are getting into the act and fundraising for specific projects or campaigns using CFPs.  Acting as a catalyst for giving, what these CFPs all have in common is that they give web users an easy way to contribute to specific philanthropic projects without having to donate large amounts of money.  Donors simply choose their cause and give what they can.  A variety of crowdfunding platforms such as Causecast’s Community Impact Platform, Start Some Good, and Kiva have been created to specifically service non-profit fundraising, disaster relief and/or social change causes.  Through group effort, these platforms enable teams of people to collectively contribute to a cause.

What does crowdfunding for a cause look like in action?

Last year, Los Angeles non-profit Do Good Bus used Start Some Good to help reach its ambitious fundraising goal of $100,000.  Do Good Bus organizes volunteers and transports them by bus to go into various communities and help local non-profits.  Because of their successful Start Some Good campaign, the bus was able to travel to 22 cities and recruit thousands of people who were interested in giving back by doing volunteer work in their local communities.

Kiva is a micro-credit crowdfunding platform that allows individuals to make charitable, interest-free micro-loans to entrepreneurs (social and otherwise) around the world.  Kiva partly distinguishes itself by providing lenders an international opportunity to help better the lives of people in need.  Take the case of Frenchman Javier Irastorza Mediavilla, who used Kiva to contribute to a loan for a group of Peruvians in the small village of Ccorao.  A small group of residents needed money to buy farming supplies and finance businesses to attract tourism for their economically challenged town.  When Javier visited Peru in 2009, he went to Ccorao and saw firsthand the results of his loan.  Local merchant Marciano Choque Raya, who was one of the loan recipients, took Javier on a tour of the town to see the thriving handicraft and restaurant businesses that the Kiva loan funded, which ultimately helped to empower the locals to work toward achieving economic sustainability.

Some CFPs are committed to supporting a specific group, such as Sprigster, which focuses on raising resources exclusively or military veterans.   One of the latest crowdfunding platforms to enter the field is HelpersUnite which links commercial ventures with charitable causes, requiring project creators to donate at least 5% of funds raised to a cause of their choice.  And sometimes the CFPs get into the corporate philanthropy game themselves to make the world a better place.  For example, Causecast employees used team building and a little friendly competition to create a competitive crowdfunding effort, all of which increased donor activity towards local animal rescues, as documented in their case study When Corporate Competitive Crowdfunding Goes to the Dogs.

Although crowdfunding is clearly one of many important fundraising ideas, fundraising experts warn that non-profits should view crowdfunding as nothing more than an added source of financial support and not the answer to all of an organization’s fundraising prayers. How CFPs can best help a charity is by providing additional funds once a campaign has already gained traction from a non-profit’s existing group of supporters.  Many sites will also allow donors to set up fundraising pages on behalf of charities they want to support or allow donors to set up tangential pages attached to a non-profit’s master page that they can use to recruit support from their social networks.

Ordinary people can do great things when they act collectively, so crowd psychology can play a big part in the success of non-profit crowdfunding efforts.  Meanwhile, I’m still wondering where retired bus monitor Karen Klein went on that $703,000 vacation.

“Unthinkable.”

“Unprecedented.”

“Devastating.”

The worst superstorm in 100 years has left the Northeast, Cuba and Haiti reeling from historic damage.  Deaths, floods, power outages and wreckage comprise the plight of communities across the East Coast.

Now is no time to sit on the sidelines; millions of people need your help.  Companies can – and should – step up and demonstrate their leadership by engaging their employees in disaster relief for communities affected by Hurricane Sandy.

To that end, Causecast has created a disaster response and recovery campaign which is available right now within its Community Impact Platform.  If you need any help launching a disaster relief campaign, please do not hesitate to contact us immediately.  We will get you up and running right away.

Whether you’re using Causecast’s platform or not, the most effective step your company can take is to encourage workplace giving donations to relief agencies like Operation USA and AmeriCares.  But volunteers are also needed as a part of the massive clean-up effort across the Northeast; and it’s not just physical labor that’s needed – skills-based volunteers are in demand as well.  After disasters like this, legal advice, accounting help, translation skills, and even real estate help will be needed in the days and weeks ahead.

Here are some organizations that have indicated a need for volunteers:

New York Cares is accepting volunteer applications through their website, especially if you’ve attended a New York Care orientation sometime in the recent past. Updates about where to volunteer will be updated throughout the day but for now potential volunteers should create an account so they can be contacted if they are needed.

John Jay High School in Park Slope, which was set up as an evacuation shelter, is looking for volunteers to work six to eight hour shifts helping out. They are also seeking belts and clothing for men and children.

The Red Cross is looking for volunteers to assist in shelters throughout the region. Shifts are 12-hours and volunteers work over multiple days. Training will be afforded to those without experience. Sign up by filling out an online application here.

This Google crisis map shows area Red Cross shelters and NYC evacuation centers. Borough President Marty Markowitz Tweeted this information earlier urging people to help.

Lower East Side: Lower East Side Recovers is an effort to match volunteers and givers with people who have needs in the Lower East Side, coordinated by the folks at Occupy NYC and community organizations on the ground.

Astoria: Astoria Recovers is connecting volunteers and givers in the Queens neighborhood.

Red Hook: Red Hook Recovers is connecting volunteers and givers in the Brooklyn neighborhood.

Brooklyn Shelters: Councilman Brad Lander says volunteers are needed at both the Park Slope Armory (8th Avenue between 14th and 15th streets) and John Jay High School (7th Avenue between 4th and 5th streets). He says you should be willing to put in a 6-8 hour shift. Kids cannot volunteer and should stay at home.

Queens Shelters: The office of Queens Borough President Helen Marshall says city shelters in Queens are in need of volunteers. They recommend checking nyc.gov for shelter locations.

Staten Island: Staten Island Recovers is connecting volunteers and givers in the borough and@SIrecovers

Far Rockaway: So far minimal information available for the Queens neighborhood, but the Far Rockaway Facebook page has been collating questions and needs.

New Jersey: Newark Mayor Cory Booker says that volunteers can check Jersey Cares for volunteering opportunities near them.

A volunteer emergency response hotline can be reached at 1-800-JERSEY-7 (1-800-537-7397) – they’re looking for trained volunteers who are affiliated with an emergency response organization to volunteer their services. Gov. Chris Christie’s office says the hotline is getting an overwhelming response, so another number to try is 609-218-0460.

The Food Bank For New York City has different ways for you to get involved: you can donate by texting FBNYC to 50555—or you can see if your local pantry or kitchen can use volunteers by going to the locator.

You can also look into the following opportunities across several states:

New York

Long Island Volunteer Center

The Volunteer Center

New Jersey

State of New Jersey Volunteers press release

Jersey Cares

Pennsylvania

American Red Cross Spontaneous Volunteers

Rhode Island

Serve Rhode Island

And nationally, you can contact the following organizations about volunteer opportunities no matter where you are:

American Red Cross

The Salvation Army

Red Star Rescue – part of the American Humane Association

Q4 budgeting season.

For Corporate America, 2012 has already faded in the rearview mirror.  The focus now is all about figuring out how budgets will be allocated to increase market share and maintain (or gain) a competitive edge in 2013.  Often lost in this bottom-line frenzy is financial consideration for how workplace giving and corporate volunteering programs will be implemented or improved next year.  But if you’re mindful of how these programs are increasingly important to employees and consumers alike, it’s time to think about strengthening your corporate philanthropy muscle now, before your company’s 2013 dollars are all spoken for.

Need a refresher on why you should care?  Let’s start with the magic trifecta of increased employee engagement, employee retention and employee recruitment.  Corporate volunteering and workplace giving programs are assuming an ever more important role in helping staff feel connected to their companies and broader communities and in helping organizations behave in socially responsible ways that resonate positively with the public.

As Kenn Allen notes in The Big Tent: Corporate Volunteering in the Global Age, a book based on the Global Corporate Volunteering Council research project by the International Association for Volunteer Effort, companies that invest in employee volunteering respond to workers’ concerns about the quality of life in their working and living environments; increase and reinforce workers’ skills, particularly in leadership and participatory decision-making; respond affirmatively to the public’s expectations of its involvement in community problem-solving; and demonstrate moral leadership, “doing the right thing,” which redounds to the ultimate benefit of the company.

The jury is in: everyone wins when workplace giving and volunteer programs are put in place and operate efficiently.  So why, then, does Allen ultimately conclude that “despite the growing importance of employee volunteer programs, most are not given serious attention or the necessary resources for success”?

It’s not enough to pay lip service to your volunteer program.  You don’t treat other parts of your company as an afterthought, so if you believe in the triple bottom line power of giving and volunteering programs (as you should), why starve them of the modest budget they need to function well?  If you want your giving and volunteer program to deliver maximum social and business returns – if you want it to operate with the same high-performing quality that you expect from the rest of your business – you need to invest in modern online tools to ensure its success.

It doesn’t take much to properly equip your volunteer program with a robust platform that makes it easy to generate compelling fundraising ideas (like corporate competitive crowdfunding), a snap for administrators to manage your company’s efforts, and inviting for employees to participate.  A variety of providers offer online tools to manage giving and volunteer programs, so when looking around (or assessing your current solution) make sure that your platform includes at least the following few features and benefits:

• One-stop central platform that enables both donation processing and volunteer sign-ups
• Ability to handle in-kind donations
• Ability to handle dollars for doers programs
• Ability to handle dollars for matching gift programs
• Real-time, automatic tracking and reporting for volunteering and giving
• Ability to create your own campaigns or select from a constantly updated library of seasonal/ topical campaigns
• Ability to customize the platform to match your company’s brand
• High quality relationships with a wide range of nonprofits that your employees can connect with directly to find carefully vetted volunteer and giving opportunities
• Mobile application so that employees can access the system in the field
• Social media capabilities so that employees can easily recruit their networks to support your company campaigns
• International capabilities for global reach
• Single sign-on to create easy access that operates like a company intranet

Above all, do your homework.  Stellar references, an impeccable record of customer service and an active development cycle with new features constantly in the pipeline are a must.  Your new employee cause engagement platform should be as nimble as your company, always looking forward, not backwards toward the last century.

As you immerse yourself in 2013 planning, plan for a high return on the investment of time and human resources associated with your giving and volunteer program by allocating appropriate dollars to fuel these efforts.  If you want these programs to serve a smart, strategic business function, you need to give them the tools to function at peak efficiency.

Corporate competitive crowdfunding is the hot new buzzword helping to define one aspect of corporate giving, a charitable category that has been on the rise.  In fact, according to a 2011 report by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, 65% of corporations increased their corporate giving from 2009 to 2010, and 53% gave more in 2010 than they did before the economic downturn in 2007. With so many companies jumping on the corporate philanthropy bandwagon, it’s important to not be left behind.  Crowdfunding is an excellent tool to lead the way.

One type of crowdfunding is crowdsourcing, where ideas rather than dollars are collected.  For example, the Toyota 100 Cars for Good program uses crowdsourcing to engage its consumers.  Every day for 100 consecutive days, five nonprofit organizations are featured on the Toyota Facebook page and fans are encouraged to vote for their favorite charity; the winner receives a new Toyota vehicle and each of the four runners-up receive a $1,000 grant.

Or take the example of Fido, a mobile company based in Canada that partnered with environmental nonprofit Evergreen in 2011 to create the “Share Your Care” challenge. Members of the public shared ideas on different sustainability projects, and the idea with the most votes won $27,000 (which was directed to a reforestation nonprofit).

BRINGING FUN TO THE WORKPLACE WITH CROWDFUNDING

Although these ideas engage members of the community, this same concept of crowdfunding and competition can be used to engage employees in your company.

So what’s the benefit of getting your employees involved in your corporate fundraising efforts?  Well, for starters it helps workers feel connected to the best part of your organization’s ethos – its corporate social responsibility values.  All of which helps to improve employee engagement, a bottom-line benefit that can’t be underestimated.  These days, employee disengagement is rampant, and when workers don’t feel that their company is inspiring them to do their best, productivity losses follow.  In fact, the Corporate Leadership Council reports that companies which enjoy high engagement rates have 87 percent lower staff turnover rates and 20 percent better performance.

With so much at stake, could adding corporate competitive crowdfunding to your workplace help nudge employee engagement in the right direction?

For pro-social technology leader Causecast, the answer was yes.  In fact, employee engagement was top of mind when they organized their own competitive crowdfunder.  Using its Community Impact Platform to create a fundraising challenge for two local animal rescues, Causecast leveraged social media, real-time reporting, peer recognition, instant donation processing, automatic tracking, micro and macro funding abilities, and good old competition with incentives to fire up the team and get them engaged in giving back.  Causecast discovered an electric effect when they put the fun in fundraising, yielding company-wide engagement and plenty of friendly inter-office smack talk about who would win, which egged everyone to crowdraise more intensely.  In the end, the biggest winners were the dogs at the rescues that Causecast raised a heap of cash to help.

In 2011, corporate giving totaled $14.55 billion and accounted for five percent of all charitable giving.  With some added games and incentives, a mix of social media and the right online tool to make it all easy and fun, competitive crowdfunding raises the stakes and creates company-wide engagement around corporate giving.  And if the employees at a small company like Causecast could make a big difference for their community while strengthening engagement at their own organization, think of how effective competitive crowdfunding could be on a larger scale.

Want to try out your own corporate competitive crowdfunder?  Download Causecast’s Corporate Crowdfunding case study and find out how.

First and foremost, Integrate’s success highlights the importance of employee engagement. A new employee was amazed that Integrate didn’t recycle and quickly took matters into her own hands, raising a hue and a cry, inspiring Integrate PR to exercise greater responsibility when it comes to curtailing waste. When the time came to give back to the community, it was a no brainer. Electronics recycling “seemed like a great service to offer the companies in the building, but also the surrounding community,” said Allie Herzog Danziger of Integrate PR.

One problem the company immediately encountered was that its people don’t always know what counts as a “recyclable electronic device.” Sure, people know about computers, MP3s players, tablets and cellphones. But rarely do they think about less exotic devices like hair dryers. “We needed to to explain that basically everything with a wire needs to be recycled,” said Danziger. No small task to communicate to the public. So how did they do it?

Social media helped but came with its own challenges. After all, it’s hard to list everything that can be recycled in 160 characters. Rather than limiting itself to Twitter, Integrate PR partnered with local green electronics recycling business Compucycle to get the message out via longer blog posts, and they connected with other local businesses looking to recycle their own electronics responsibly and engage the broader Houston community in doing so. Operating on the principle that “a picture speaks 1,000 words,” the joint effort used photographs to communicate the myriad items that need to be recycled responsibly.

In 2012, many firms might ignore traditional media in favor of social media. Not Integrate PR and not for its recycling drive; the company worked with local media outlets. No stories were run, but the company did get on event calendars. This hit a key demographic that would have been missed by social media, a demo that is probably not aware it needs to recycle electronic waste responsibly in the first place: seniors. Employees even went above and beyond most corporate volunteer programs programs and pounded pavement to get the word out on college campuses, another perfect place for finding recyclable electronics. In a mix of old and new, Integrate PR reached out to renters by acquiring email addresses from landlords and property managers and conducting a direct email marketing campaign.

BREWSKIS HELP SAVE THE PLANET

One interesting and unique way that Integrate PR connected with its community was by partnering with a local brewery. The incentive? For every piece of recyclable electronics someone brought down on the day of the drive, the donor received a free beer. At a cost of nothing to Integrate PR, the community was engaged with an incentive that just about anyone can enjoy. And never doubt the marketing potential of free beer in getting the word out.

Of course none of this would have been possible without engaged employees. At least one employee has a passion for recycling. What of the other seven? This helps: Integrate PR permits every employee who works past 6 p.m. to arrive half an hour later for every hour worked past six – and time spent on company-approved volunteerism counts in the same way as time spent on regular work.

That 40 dedicated hours for this effort was divided over a team of eight. This means that each employee only had to pitch in five hours of their time to net the results of over a ton of electronic waste. Integrate PR was able to do a lot in a little bit of time using time-tested techniques (direct mailing and flyering), educating the public about the benefits of recycling and the usual social media blitz, all in the service of effective corporate philanthropy.

And, of course, as Danziger says “free beer doesn’t hurt.”

According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS), over 1.5 million non-profits are registered in the U.S.  While many of them receive assistance through corporate philanthropy and employee volunteer programs, in general all of them compete for a limited giving pool.  So how can nonprofits stand out among all the noise, especially if you’re a small, grassroots organization championing an underserved and mainly unnoticed population like foster children?

“One person, one volunteer, one company at a time,” says Zaid Gayle, Executive Director of Peace4Kids (P4K), a South Los Angeles non-profit that provides programs and services for foster and at-risk youth from ages 5-18, and after they transition to adulthood until age 24.  Because foster kids rarely have a permanent home or family, Peace4Kids is dedicated to empowering foster and at-risk youth by providing its own community as family. The P4K creed is that no matter where their foster kids are moved or what challenges are thrown their way, P4K wants them to feel that they will always have a family at P4K.

SMALL STEPS, BIG IMPACT

Since funds remain a never-ending need for this grassroots non-profit, the small P4K staff is constantly brainstorming charity fundraising ideas.  Due to cuts in government funding, P4K’s financial livelihood relies heavily on the personal networks of its volunteers and supporters. These jolts of support usually start with one person who is so passionate about P4K’s work that he encourages and recruits his friends and co-workers to get involved.

For example, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, a Los Angeles-based coffee franchise, began its relationship with P4K in 2006 by simply donating coffee and pastries to P4K events at the request of one of the company’s employees, Joe Ponciano, a P4K volunteer and board member.  Coffee Bean is proud of its longstanding prioritization of bold corporate social responsibility programs, such as building schools in the overseas countries where they buy coffee beans and launching employee engagement activities where team members take non-paid days to do community impact volunteer work.  No surprise, then, that when Joe introduced the Southern California district of Coffee Bean to P4K, the company welcomed the opportunity to support kids in need.

As P4K grew, Coffee Bean’s involvement with P4K evolved accordingly.  One of Coffee Bean’s corporate fundraisingcampaigns involved donating school supplies to P4K, where the company provided new backpacks and encouraged various stores to set up donation centers for customers to drop off school supplies.  Employees later filled the backpacks with donated supplies and presented them to the P4K kids, enabling the kids to meet the new school year fully prepared.

In another corporate volunteering effort, Coffee Bean managers participated in several workshops to teach P4K teens such real-world skills as interviewing, presentation and job-seeking strategies.  The managers role-played with the teens, gave them feedback and professional advice and taught them how to fill out Coffee Bean’s online application.  And when employment opportunities opened up at local Coffee Bean stores, some P4K teens even found themselves with new jobs.  For many foster kid youths, this was their first job, and for those transitioning out of foster care to life on their own it was a vital step towards financial stability.

Coffee Bean is P4K’s longest contributing corporate sponsor, and over the years individual employees have also donated time and money.  As Joe puts it, “Zaid just has to ask and if we can do it, we will.”  As the Executive Director of a small non-profit with a big mission, Zaid is more than appreciative. “We are so proud of our relationship with the Coffee Bean. They have impacted hundreds of our youth and have been the greatest support in giving our older foster youth work opportunities, which has literally prevented many of our kids from being homeless. Joe and the Coffee Bean have been shining examples of what I think corporate social responsibility should look like in communities.”

The relationship between P4K and Coffee Bean proves that sometimes it takes the infectious enthusiasm and passion of just one company employee to make a profound difference in the cause of a non-profit, no matter how large or small.

No matter how much a company praises the corporate volunteering efforts of its employees, it can seem like so much hot air without making a commitment of its own. A photo-op or feature in a company newsletter is one thing, but with the growing importance and visibility of corporate social responsibilityefforts globally, smart companies are doing more than just patting employees on the back for their charitable efforts.

Enter Dollars for Doers programs, which match employee volunteerism with corporate donations. Unlike a matching gifts program, which matches an employee’s donations with corporate dollars, these programs match employee volunteer efforts with company dollars.  If you’re looking for ways to promote employee volunteer work, better integrate your company into the community, and help attract and retain socially-minded professionals, it might be time to create or expand such a program of your own.

Here’s a look at three companies that have embraced Dollars for Doers and are doing it well:

CAMPBELL’S SOUP COMPANY

A surprise for this list? Maybe. Though not always mentioned in the same breath as some of the major corporate philanthropy heavyweights, Campbell’s Soup Company has developed an effective and still-growing Dollars for Doers program worthy of attention.

Campbell’s donates $500 to community nonprofits for every 25 hours of an employee’s volunteer time, coming out to $20 for each hour of service. And the company offers its matching gifts to time spent volunteering during the actual workday in addition to off-hours, so employees aren’t forced to choose between time spent with families and time spent serving their favorite charity.

All this combined to generate more than 23,000 hours of service from Campbell’s employees throughout the U.S. and Canada in 2011, a 25% increase over its 2010 mark. The company’s Dollars for Doers program hit a new record of $233,500 in volunteer grants (up over 50% from its 2010 levels), supporting the work of over 2,000 service-minded employees.

IBM

IBM has created a volunteer grant program that not only rewards its employees for serving, but offers an extra incentive when employees do so together.

Through its IBM Services Grants program, the company gives volunteer teams the chance to request up to $7,500 in donated equipment and services to build the capacity and IT infrastructure of their chosen organizations. This team volunteer grant can have a great impact for eligible schools and nonprofits and it motivates IBMs employees to join together in service to their communities.

The company also offers individual volunteer grants, with an emphasis on sustained service commitments. Employees who volunteer a minimum of eight hours a month for five months out of each year can earn $3,500 in equipment and services or $1,000 in cash for their non-profits.

As an added benefit, IBM retirees remain eligible for the company’s volunteer grant programs, which reached a value of $10 million in 2011.

EXXON MOBIL

Granted, corporate giving isn’t overly burdensome when you hold the number one ranking on the Fortune 500 list and generate annual revenue to the tune of some $486 billion, but credit should still be given where credit is due. Exxon Mobil has put together a well-structured, well-run Dollars for Doers initiative through its Volunteer Involvement Program.

For starters, they keep their program pretty open to those with a calling to volunteer. Not only can active Exxon Mobil employees take part, but company retirees, spouses, dependent children, and even surviving spouses of deceased employees and retirees are all eligible. In short, the company’s Volunteer Involvement Program fosters a sense of family through its service efforts – a great way to promote employee engagement.

The program awards a $500 grant for every 20 hours served, offering a leading rate of $25 per volunteer hour, and individuals can apply for volunteer grants up to four times each year. In 2010, the company contributed more than $8.5 million to over 4,300 nonprofits in support of its employee volunteer efforts.

As these companies can attest, a Dollars for Doers program encourages your employees to increase their community impact and is a smart move to strengthen your CSR standing. But the benefit doesn’t stop there.  These programs also foster a sense of engagement and connection among employees that can factor directly into personnel recruitment and employee retention success, not to mention on-the-job performance. By encouraging your employees to get out and volunteer – particularly if you urge them to get out and volunteer as teams — and letting them know you’re right behind them with corporate giving, you’re taking a strong step towards building a more engaged and emotionally invested staff.  It shows you care about what they care about, and gives employees an empowering ability to help shape where and how a company shares its wealth.

Here’s the stereotype: a big corporation needs some PR and a tax writeoff.  They cut a big check to a non-profit and walk away, patting themselves on the back.

Closer to CSR reality these days is the experience of Mattel. A participating company in A Billion + Change, a national campaign to mobilize billions of dollars of pro bono and skills-based services from corporate America, Mattel isn’t content to give a chunk of change and wash its hands. On the contrary, part of the corporate culture at Mattel means being deeply involved in all of its philanthropic projects, leveraging employee skills for pro bono volunteerism.

“We’re part of a global movement,” around skills-based volunteering, explains Deidre Lind, Director of Mattel’s Corporate Affairs and the Executive Director of the Mattel Children’s Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping children in need.  This year, Mattel has flexed its skills-based muscle towards remodeling the Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA, with toy designers at Mattel volunteering their services to make the hospital more kid friendly. “What’s important is figuring out how we leverage employee engagement and our skill set to maximize our community service activities.”

Keeping with the axiom that one “think globally and act locally,” Mattel is looking for the best ways that its employee volunteer programs can move the needle the most in the communities where they work. “The greatest impact we can make is through leveraging the skills and knowledge base here at Mattel,” says Lind, in this case, applying what their toy designers know about the importance of play to making a children’s hospital a more inviting place for kids. By doing so, they aren’t just giving kids a place to have fun when they get sick. They’re actively promoting a healing environment for the children treated there.

The Children’s Hospital was initially designed by renowned Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei. While certainly not lacking for architectural excellence, the hospital was a typical piece of Pei: clean, linear, white and stark. This is great because it makes for a bright, light place for children. However, the starkness of the design isn’t entirely conducive to recovery. “We know the importance that play and escape and emotional play has in a hospital setting, especially for children,” says Lind. Indeed, the Mattel corporate motto, “We are creating the future of play,” underscores a simple truth best stated by Fred “Mister” Rogers: “Play is really the work of childhood.”

While changing a wall might not seem like a lot, Lind is quick to point out the tangible difference it made. “When you see the way that they have transformed these white walls into a playful environment, you see the change in the children.  The nurses say that it has really transformed the way that care is given at this hospital.” More than an isolated case of Mattel checking the CSR box, it’s a clear example of how skills-based volunteerism can truly make a difference.

There are no employee motivation incentives provided by Mattel other than a desire to do good, though the company does maintain a matching gifts program.  “Employees were not given additional time or a reduced workload to be a part of this project,” Lind says. “They did this because it was the right thing to do.”  Mattel employees don’t generally need much more incentive, however, with the redesigned Mattel Children’s Hospital standing as a testament to virtue as its own reward being an outstanding motivator. “At a time when there were a lot of deadlines and pressures, people were giving back. They had an incredible sense of what it is they were doing.”

Mattel generally eschews terms like community service and corporate philanthropy. “We never use the term ‘philanthropy’ anymore,” Lind explains, “we prefer the term ‘social impact.’  We organize around a social issue and find ways to meet those needs.” This is a sort of outside-the-box, reverse-engineered form of corporate social responsibility. Rather than finding ways for the company to make its approach work toward certain goals, it tailors its approach to goals it’s trying to meet.

And goals are an important part of the process. “Right now we’re looking at what exactly our goals are,” she says, noting that it’s important they’re both public and measurable. This provides a way for the public to relate to the corporate social responsibility goals at Mattel, but also helps Mattel know whether what it’s doing is working. The learning process around the best way to do good is a key component of community impact.

In a movement dedicated to giving by doing, Mattel is always looking for new ways to engage its employees in pro bono corporate giving. Still, Mattel doesn’t see itself as doing anything terribly special. “It’s our responsibility as a corporate citizen,” says Lind.

This commitment to CSR excellence is why Mattel has chosen to participate in the A Billion + Change campaign. “A lot of times the corporate sector can become very insular while working on an individualized basis,” says Lind. “Working together across sectors and industries is what we believe in and it’s what A Billion + Change is all about.” Lind cited the need to learn from other companies through interaction as the primary reason for involvement.  In addition to the benefits gained from collective action, Mattel sees an opportunity to get a fresh perspective on its own efforts by seeing what other companies are doing and how they’re doing it.

The corporate giving program at Mattel is about pro bono work more than anything. In the final process of participation with A Billion + Change, employees are armed with the knowledge brought back through collective participation. The communication is not one-directional, however. Mattel seeks to impart its own knowledge to the broader A Billion + Change community as well. Thus, a feedback loop of sorts forms: as a participant in A Billion + Change, Mattel is able to find ways to make its own efforts more effective. It is then able to act as a more effective participant in A Billion + Change based on what it learns from working within it. The effects of such a rigorous attitude toward corporate citizenship cannot be overvalued.

A Billion + Change has already secured nearly $1.8 billion in corporate pledges and 12 million hours of time and talent to pro bono programs.  If your company would like to take the A Billion Plus Change pledge, go to www.abillionpluschange.org for more information.

All too often, corporate citizenship is an afterthought.  Sure, Fortune 500 companies frequently offer employee volunteer programs and matching gifts, and contribute pro bono work on a massive scale. However, incorporating corporate social responsibility as a way of life rather than just treating it as an extracurricular activity is more often the exception rather than the rule. And oftentimes, smaller companies assume they simply can’t make the same impact as the big boys.

On both counts, Matthew Manos of design consultancy VeryNice believes he’s found answers.

At VeryNice, pro bono work isn’t something that employees do off the clock, with or without incentives. Rather, it’s just business as usual. In fact, the company contributes half of its time to pro bono design work for nonprofits. When Manos started the company at the tender age of 19, while still in college, it existed only to provide pro bono design work. While the realities of paying bills in the world caused Manos to rethink his business model, he did not let go of his desire to provide services at no cost.

“Usually corporate philanthropy is a one-shot deal,” says Manos, “like a marathon or what have you.” Manos appreciates the impulse, but wants his company to be all about finding ways to finance its own pro bono projects. Inspired by Toms Shoes’ “One For One” campaign, which provides a pair of shoes to someone in need for every pair purchased by a consumer, Manos set about creating a business model with room to provide services to nonprofits free of charge. Indeed, this is the raison d’être of VeryNice.  Everything it does facilitates giving back, rather than giving back being a side project.

Manos is hardly alone with his prioritization of skills based volunteering.  Indeed, VeryNice is a pledge company with A Billion + Change, a national campaign to mobilize billions of dollars of pro bono and skills-based services from corporate America by 2013.  Launched by the Corporation for National and Community Service in 2008, A Billion + Change has already secured nearly $1.8 billion in corporate pledges and 12 million hours of time and talent to pro bono programs.  The campaign’s increasing success highlights how the pro bono movement is sweeping the country, as savvy businesses turn to skills-based volunteering as a way to impact their communities while engaging their employees.

The most common way for businesses to give to the non-profit community is through donations, but the need for volunteering is acute.  And Manos knew that skills-based volunteering would be a more helpful organizing principle for his business than “day and done” volunteering, benefiting nonprofits in far more substantial ways and also serving as a more rewarding experience for volunteers.  “I read in Harvard Business Review that nonprofits spend $8 billion each year on services,” Manos says, “That was a big shocker and the starting point for figuring out how to alleviate some of those expenses.”

So how does Manos build his business model around giving back? He sums it up in a single word: “volume.”

Armed with his desire to do good, Manos sought out the ultimate in fundraising ideas: a way to make volunteering and service the cornerstone of his business. He eventually came up with an algorithm that showed him the path to realizing his goal. “I figured out that I could give away half of my efforts and still make the same profits as a standard design firm… provided that I was able to get twice as much work.” While this is a challenge, it’s one that VeryNice has been able to rise to thus far.

There are other challenges as well.  Employee engagement is a must when so much of a company’s work product is given away. The company collaborates extensively with volunteers to ensure that the services offered are as high-value as possible to both the non-profit and volunteer.  “We want to give the same attention to a pro bono project as any other, but you can’t be as assertive with volunteers as you can be with salaried employees,” Manos explains. His solution is to work closely with volunteers in a very hands on way, rather than just delegating assignments and walking away.

No one said that it would be easy, but if anyone is up to the task, it’s Manos. With four regular employees, only two of whom are full time, VeryNice has limited resources to move the needle on causes. But his enormous energy and focus provides a template for how smaller businesses can make a big impact. Indeed, despite his company’s modest size, community service isn’t just a PR tool for Manos, but an imperative business priority. “From my perspective, it’s an obligation to give back using whatever skills you have,” he says.

VeryNice’s small-business success in making a big impact is why A Billion + Change is including Manos in its first campaign event on the west coast, “Envisioning the Future of Corporate Service: A Discussion on Corporate Pro Bono and Skills-based Volunteerism” on Oct. 1, 2012 at the California Endowment.  Leaders in policy, academia, industry and civic engagement will gather at this Los Angeles event to showcase how innovative businesses are shaping the future of corporate service to tackle the major challenges of the 21st century.

A list of pledge companies, and information about how to take the A Billion + Change pledge, is available at www.abillionpluschange.org.

Case in point, a corporate fundraising effort by AT&T to support Cell Phones for Soldiers, a project that stemmed from the hearts, minds and piggy banks of Robbie and Brittany Bergquist, 12 and 13 years old at the time of the project’s launch eight years ago.  Since the Bergquists launched their effort, Cell Phones for Soldiers has paid for over 150 million minutes of talk time and $75 million in communication expenses for American military personnel, including free cell phones. CPS has also recycled over 10 million phones in the hands of America’s servicemen. Other companies sponsoring CPS include Chevrolet, BJ’s Wholesale Club, Comcast, Recellular and Verizon.

AT&T saw the program as a natural opportunity for employee engagement, not to mention a way to make a direct, immediate and measurable positive change in the community. Few things are going to cheer up a soldier faster than hearing a friendly voice on the other end of the phone.  CPS also gives back in the form of responsible electronics recycling of a related product, in this  case getting cell phones in the hands of enlisted men and women.

In addition to helping veterans through corporate giving, AT&T is committed to friendly hiring practices that support vets.  “From a company perspective, we place a huge effort in recruiting and hiring former military personnel, which is based on our desire to hire competitive talent,” says Beth Shiroishi, Vice President of Sustainability & Philanthropy at AT&T.  With an eye toward their triple bottom line, Shiroishi says this hiring policy isn’t just about getting veterans in the door but “helping to support their transition. These are people who make for high-quality employees.”

AT&T isn’t content to just throw money at thorny issues like employment for veterans; they want their employees engaged in good corporate citizenship.  This engagement has prompted AT&T employees to volunteer a total of over 6 million hours in 2011 alone, which includes time spent collecting cell phones for CPS as well as other causes.  Many volunteer projects involve support for the military in some fashion; for example, one employee, under the auspices of AT&T’s Do One Thing Campaign, was able to collect 1,000 bottles of talcum powder (used to mark explosive locations) for the military.  AT&T employees are also active in putting together care packages for American servicemen and women abroad.  “When you talk to people who are not in the military, it’s just as meaningful to them.  People appreciate what our military does for us,” says Shiroishi.

Chris Norton is the Military Talent Attraction Manager at AT&T, or as he calls himself, “the military guy.”  With 16 years in the Army Reserve, five years of active duty, and an Iraq deployment and stateside service post-9/11, Norton’s veteran bona fides are unquestionable.  At AT&T, his work doesn’t just include raising money for cell phones; he also helps veterans transition back into society with a mentor-like program provided by AT&T. Thus, Norton is able to make a community service both on and off the clock.

Norton himself needed assistance in transitioning back after his 2009 tour in Iraq.  He has, in turn, paid back the services offered to him by helping others.  His charitable efforts help to transform just another job (“Work is a four-letter word,” Norton jokes) into a place where “employees can be involved with our fellow man beyond work,” which, according to Norton, “is directly responsible for employee retention.”

AT&T employees are certainly not limited to supporting military causes.  In fact, AT&T offers a matching gifts program and offers a number of corporate fundraising opportunities for employees. This leads to numerous opportunities for engagement on the employee’s own terms, a situation which leads to different problems of the type every CSR director in the country wants.  “Our challenge is not in getting participation,” says Shiroishi, “it’s trying to figure out where we put our time and effort.  There are so many good causes and so many things that employees care about.”

AT&T recognizes a very basic fact of giving back to communities: labor and capital must work together to select innovative ways of providing support for causes that employees care about. To that end, AT&T engages its employees, looking for the best place to concentrate CSR efforts and soliciting employee feedback on how these efforts are working. Without this kind of two-way communication, engagement is just a pipe dream.

The triple bottom line(also known as 3BL, the three Ps and the three pillars) puts into concrete terms what we already know: there’s more to business than just making money.  You could even say that there’s more to making money than making money…at least the traditional way.

The three pillars are a key component to good corporate citizenship through sustainability.  3BL is a holistic approach to business that sees people, the planet and profitability (the three Ps) as equal pillars in a corporate mission.  This mission has become so popular amongst the public that it’s now a widely heeded business prerogative by global brands ranging from FedEx Kinkos, Nike and Tesco, by small mom-and-pop shops like Jessica Alba’s non-toxic baby product company, The Honest Co., and by companies everywhere in between.

So what are the 3 Ps all about?

THE THREE PILLARS DEMYSTIFIED

Profit is obvious. It’s the golden mantra of every businessman. But 3BL sees profit as only one part of a business plan. Profit is seen in terms of total value, with all input costs deducted, including tied-up capital. Further, profit in this case is seen as what economically benefits society at large.

Planet is the pillar concerned with environmentally sustainable business practices, achieved by maximizing benefits while minimizing detriments. This can range from electronics recycling to business plans that eschew the use of dangerous chemicals or destructive practices. Dell provides an outstanding example of what happens to companies who ignore this “P.” In 2002, the company provided a way to recycle computers in Europe (for a fee), but not in the United States. Why? Because it was required by law in the EU. This was bad publicity, as was using conscripted prison labor when they finally started offering computer recycling.  It took six months of public pressure to finally get Dell doing the right thing by recycling any computer a consumer brought to them.

People respects labor, the community and the region in which a corporation does business. Businesses that write the triple bottom line into their business plans seek to increase benefits for all stakeholders without exploiting or endangering any. Fair trade, where small producers in developing countries practice sustainable business, is perhaps the best example of this pillar in action.

WHY EMBRACE THE TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE?

An ethic of corporate social responsibility is a powerful reason to bring the three Ps to your business plan. However, it’s not the only one. A recent MIT study is only one of many that shows how corporate sustainability is profitable. The results are somewhat intangible, related to competitive advantages, brand reputations and improved innovation. Perhaps most strikingly, the study found that companies must set concrete goals and draft targeted plans to reap the benefits of sustainability; in other words, sustainability needs to be treated seriously to really pay off.

3BL opens new markets and expands existing ones. Think of how many people prefer to purchase fair trade options wherever possible. Or consider geotourism and ecotourism, which have brought even more tourists — and their much-needed hard currency — to places like Lebanon and the Dominican Republic. Perhaps most importantly, if non-renewable resources or indeed the planet itself are depleted, there’s nothing left for anyone to profit from. The planet pillar views profits on a longer, sustainable timetable.

As part of an overall corporate social responsibility plan, the three Ps provide tangible benefits in the form of employee retention and employee engagement.  Active CSR programs translate into higher levels of engagement, and studies show that companies with a high level of engagement are more successful than those with lower engagement. Still other studies show that more engaged employees create a more effective culture of social responsibility. Thus, there is a feedback loop between the right employees and the right corporate culture that benefits your company while helping the community.

One need not have any interest in the philanthropy part of corporate philanthropy to see the benefits of the triple bottom line, only an interest in operating the most successful company in your industry. What CEO could refuse such a prospect?

This past September 11th, representatives of MyGoodDeed rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in memory of the victims of the terrorist attacks 11 years ago.  The literal ringing in of the day by this nonprofit served as a clarion call for community service, putting the world on notice that September 11th is no longer just a day for mournful reflection.  Thanks to the efforts of MyGoodDeed, the Corporation for National and Community Service, Action America and other organizations, September 11th is now also a day for individual community impact and inspirational corporate philanthropy.

In 2009, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act established September 11th as a National Day of Service and Remembrance.  This observance encourages citizens to spend one of the most tragic days in American history engaged in an act of service to their communities.  Signed into law by President Bush, the National Day of Service and Remembrance was first celebrated by presidential proclamation the same year.

PAYING RESPECT BY PAYING IT FORWARD

The National Day of Service allows Americans to demonstrate unity through the healing power of service, providing a fitting tribute to those lost eleven years ago today.  The objective isn’t about engaging in any particular cause; rather, the day is meant to give back to communities in ways that best suit the interests of volunteers.  Because this observance is directed at every citizen, it serves as an entry point to volunteerism and service for thousands of Americans who would otherwise be sitting at home.

Congress charged the Corporation for National and Community Service with helping to support this effort across the country, in the hopes that citizens from every state will join in to create a popular day of volunteerism.  As a result, the National Day of Service has grown to become the nation’s largest annual day of charitable service; for the 10-year anniversary of September 11th last year, more than 33 million people participated.

“Even today, when there are many pressing issues that divide us throughout the nation, it is remarkable and inspiring to see how the country joins together each 9/11 to remember and pay tribute through good deeds and charitable service,” said David Paine, CEO and co-founder of the 9/11 Day Observance.  ”Over the past 11 years, Americans have kept their promise never to forget the victims and heroes.”

“The anniversary of 9/11 represents a moment in time where every American has a personal and emotional story,” said Tim Armstrong, AOL Chairman and CEO. “This anniversary is a time for us to come together and help raise awareness for volunteerism and service, in an effort to honor those impacted as well as helping to create a movement of inspiration and encouragement.”

This year, the Corporation for National and Community Service awarded grants to seven organizations to engage Americans in service during the 2012 September 11th National Day of Service and Remembrance.  The grants support a range of service efforts, including educating citizens on disaster preparedness, developing emergency plans, promoting fire safety, and building affordable housing for veterans and military families.

“Each year, more and more Americans are recognizing that service to others is a fitting and appropriate way to honor the memory of those who were lost on September 11,” said CNCS CEO Wendy Spencer. “Service and remembrance can help rekindle the spirit of unity and compassion that swept our nation after 9/11 to help meet the challenges we face today.”

COMPANIES LIGHT A LASTING SPARK OF SERVICE

While community impact relies heavily on individual volunteerism, corporate social responsibility plays an important role as well.  The National Day of Service and Remembrance offers companies the opportunity to show a commitment to corporate citizenship.  For the business community, it’s a chance to rally their troops without the need for employee incentive programs; after all, not much arm twisting is needed to recruit employees in tribute to fallen victims and first responders.  Participation shows that companies see the day as not just another day to make money, nor a day of mournful paralysis.

What does corporate giving back look like?  For Clear Channel it meant participating in a campaign called “I Will,” which calls on listeners to perform good deeds and charitable acts to honor 9/11 victims, survivors and those who responded to the attacks nearly 11 years ago. In August, Clear Channel Outdoor digital screens in Times Square displayed images of military veterans, first responders, 9/11 family members, supporters and members of the general public as they took turns standing on a 30-foot “I Will” sculpture and declaring what good deeds they will perform this year (their “I Will” pledges) in observance of 9/11.  Clear Channel also aired tens of thousands of advertisements on 850 radio stations throughout the country between August 20 and September 11th to encourage participation in the National Day of Service and Remembrance.

For NYSE Euronext, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, it meant serving as one of the primary underwriters for the National Day of Service.  For AT&T, it has meant demonstrating the company’s cultural commitment to corporate volunteerism by turning out in force to the tune of 140,000 employees and retirees.  For Best Buy, it has meant donating $500,000 to MyGoodDeed, while for JPMorgan Chase it has meant a donation of $50,000 to 9/11 Day and an encouragement to employees to participate.

The best legacy of the National Day of Service can be the momentum it provides towards an ongoing, every day commitment to giving back.  As companies increasingly realize that corporate volunteerism is a gateway to employee engagement, the National Day of Service serves as an excellent trigger to get staffs civically involved throughout the year.  For the company with no employee volunteer program, the National Day of Service highlights the mutual benefits of starting one now.

There’s something about having your cake and eating it too that appeals to me. The benefit of getting something extra without added effort or expense is hard to resist.

Serving as the beneficiary of a company’s non-profit fundraising ideas can be this sort of cake. That’s because workplace giving programs offer non-profits the perfect opportunity to receive “found” money while also benefiting from an added bonus – a marketing campaign that grows awareness of their organizations.

A double whammy: funds and awareness.  Double the reason to look at corporate donations as a nonprofit consulting alternative.

Employee volunteer programs and corporate giving programs have become a centerpiece of corporate philanthropy efforts.  An estimated 89% of leading companies have a formal domestic employee volunteer program, 94% offer a matching gift program that supports employee giving by doubling or tripling employee donations – and the average giving per employee of leading businesses reached $628 in 2010, according to the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy.  So being chosen as the beneficiary of a company’s workplace giving program will certainly reap financial fruit.

A non-profit’s ability to market this relationship, however, is critical to maintaining a company’s interest.  Companies like to know that their staff’s fundraising is mutually beneficial, so it’s important to highlight a company’s contributions when it directs its corporate giving programs towards your nonprofit.

To that end, here are three ways that you can make sure a company’s campaign on your behalf gets all the promotional play it deserves:

1. Push the press:  Good press for doing good is always welcomed, so establish dates for sending results of the program to the nonprofit press and public.  Work with the company’s PR department to ensure that your messaging is consistent and complementary and that you’re each targeting different press outlets.

2. Blitz the blogosphere:  Put your social media skills to work and get the online word out about your fundraising company’s largesse.  Three thousand dollars is vague; images of homeless vets eating a meal are not.  A picture speaks a thousand words and social media channels can yield hundreds of thousands of hits.

3. Create case studies:  White papers featuring a fundraising benefactor reward companies for their hard work on your behalf and help them establish a permanent legacy for others to admire.  And outlining past successes helps future organizations understand what they need to do to make an impact with your non-profit.

When you get the word out about how a company’s volunteer and giving program helped your organization, you demonstrate a savvy gratitude that encourages future corporate partners to work with you.  The more you give, the more you’ll get, so be smart about promoting the good work of your business angels.

Join Causecast For Nonprofits

Outside of direct corporate outreach, there’s a new platform for getting donations and volunteers from corporations.  Causecast for Nonprofits takes your organization to the corporate volunteering and workplace giving programs of its corporate partners. When you’re a part of a platform that connects you directly and regularly to a pool of employee donors and volunteers, you’re five steps ahead of the game.

Remember, without funding your cause will run out of gas fast.  A savvy non-profit executive knows how to get donations by aligning the ideal with the practical, in such a way that principles are preserved while opportunities for impact are maximized.

Corporate volunteerism is on the rise, yet companies still face challenges getting employees engaged.  According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, six out of ten companies have now implemented employee volunteer programs.  While these programs are growing, engagement is not following suit, with some studies showing that volunteer participation is holding steady at 25 percent.

But Freudenberg-NOK is not one of the companies struggling to get its employees involved.  Freudenberg doesn’t mandate participation in any corporate volunteering program, yet the company never wants for volunteers.  Indeed, Freudenberg-NOK’s Your Community Partner (YCP) plan saw 5,000 employees completing 40 community service projects in the first year of its existence. The company averages 15 volunteer hours per employee per year, putting annual volunteer time at more than 55,000 man hours. This extends to all levels of the company, which is why Cheryl Eberwein, Director of Corporate Communications was out of the office on volunteer assignment for eight hours during her first week on the job.

How is Freudenberg-NOK able to achieve such high levels of employee engagement?  First, the company hires employees who are on board with the company’s vision of corporate philanthropy. “If we’re hiring people who believe in the principles we value, we find we have higher rates of satisfaction and engagement,” says Sarah O’Hare, Vice President of HR, Health, Safety and Environment and Corporate Communications.  But it’s another component that really keeps employees engaged: the entire process for finding places to volunteer is largely employee driven. “Each plant has its own means to implement the program,” O’Hare explains, but the common thread is that employees play a huge role in the decision-making process.

The employee-centric quality of YCP allows not just for greater engagement, but also greater community impact. Local employees clearly have a closer view of the community than corporate headquarters. Local YCP programs include education for underprivileged Brazilian children, vaccines for some of the most impoverished parts of Mexico, refurbishing shelters for homeless dogs in Malaysia and helping get a daycare center for unemployed parents up to code in Ypsilanti, Michigan.  Every employee giving campaign approach is very different, but each recognizes and provides assistance in the areas where it is most needed in that particular region.

Without a trace of cynicism or opportunism, Freudenberg-NOK recognizes that the benefits of corporate social responsibility are complex and many.  As many as 16 young men and women who went through the Brazilian education program became Freudenberg-NOK employees later in life.  Further, O’Hare believes that such programs inspire employees in ways that are unpredictable. “We’ve had people look at cotton candy and come up with a new idea for bandages,” she says with a laugh.

You might be surprised that beyond making volunteerism a core value, the company does little to incentivize volunteering among employees. There is no matching gift program or other forms of recognition at Freudenberg-NOK as a rule, though the company does have programs for special corporate fundraising opportunities, such as disaster relief volunteer initiatives.  “The only reward comes from the volunteers’ own intrinsic reward,” O’Hare says candidly, getting at the heart of what gets people engaged in the first place. “I doubt they do it for a free t-shirt, but we do make it easy for them. Often times they can volunteer on company time.”

Joe Grima, Director of Corporate Facilities for Freudenberg-NOK, certainly didn’t help rebuild the two Ypsilanti daycare centers for a free t-shirt.  He’s project managed two major renovations for SOS (the daycare center for unemployed parents), and persuaded Home Depot to contribute $4,500 to help.  When the project ran out of money, Freudenberg stepped up to the plate, increasing its budget.  “Freudenberg encouraged us to bring our kids and our families out to the project,” creating a greater sense of community.  Nothing, however, was more powerful than the difference he had made. “You could see changes almost immediately in the children.”

Sarah O’Hare, Vice President of
HR, Health, Safety and
Environment and Corporate
Communications

Engagement comes from passion more than reward and O’Hare believes the company has a very high rate of engagement due to its corporate social responsibility.  Every two or three years, the company hands out a survey that, among others things, asks employees how well the company is fulfilling its own corporate vision. “We don’t use traditional engagement metrics, we use the survey and we also measure our performance.”

While the company certainly provides a model for other corporations looking to be more engaging to their employees, no one at Freudenberg-NOK is content to rest on laurels. “We’re at a very good place in our journey from where we’ve been. There’s continuous improvement.”