CECP Programs | National Corporate Philanthropy Day - February 27, 2006

A great opportunity to engage senior-level management is during a strategic review (which can include establishing a signature campaign, or determining grants for specific focus areas). Creating a senior executive committee can increase executive involvement and understanding of your program and ensure further commitment to your success.
Ask the following questions when conducting a strategic review of your giving department: “Does our giving strategy suit our company today (e.g. values, assets, culture)? Does it take advantage of our capabilities? Could we be doing more in terms of both social and business impact?"
Review your strengths for untapped resources. For some companies, a volunteer-aligned strategy taps the strengths of a wide-ranging local store/office base. For others, a deep-rooted international presence allows companies to build an international giving strategy relatively efficiently.
Developing a compelling giving strategy that generates positive publicity and pursues impactful signature philanthropic initiatives can prove immensely helpful in unifying and preserving a company culture that has thousands of employees and multiple business units scattered around the world.

Return to top

MAKING THE BUSINESS CASE

Do not try to achieve all possible business objectives of corporate philanthropy. Instead, review your company’s business plan, employee needs, global locations, and target markets, and develop your business case accordingly.
Develop two documents that can be distributed internally that make the case for business philanthropy - one tailored specifically to senior management, the other for staff. Recognize the distinction between internal and external business objectives which may be relevant to different parties.
Look to develop programs or partnerships that achieve multiple business objectives. For example, group volunteer initiatives can have employee benefits (professional development, team building, retention), internal and external communication opportunities, and brand recognition/awareness benefits; funding career-track scholarship programs achieves similarly multiple benefits.
Communicate internally how your company’s business will be impacted by challenges that have a “social” or “community” component (e.g. lack of education, global warming, etc.) to help make the case within your company for corporate philanthropy.
Determine which business units at your company your department has the best chance of assisting, and tailor the business relevance of your corporate philanthropy accordingly. If your business case involves Human Resources, you may want to look at employee impact and how your focus area choices will impact other departments; if it is Marketing - look at what social causes your customers are most interested in, and what fits with company branding goals and its product/industry.

Return to top

SENIOR MANAGEMENT ENGAGEMENT

Focused and engaged senior leadership sets the social tone for the company, and can quickly and easily foster community interest and involvement among employees. To reach your CEO, provide regular status updates to make sure they stay well informed. In addition, ensure your CEO is helping to set strategy and making decisions to keep them engaged and active with your philanthropy.
Staffing your CEO’s nonprofit involvement can promote the giving department internally, build important connections with the CEO and help raise his/her level of social-awareness.
Careful and strategic selection of your Board's/Committee's membership can enhance internal engagement, and improve internal communications.
Providing opportunities for senior colleagues to serve on nonprofit Boards can have both company-specific benefits (aiding professional development, increasing community presence, building brand awareness) and giving department-specific advantages (motivating senior-level engagement, expanding nonprofit partnerships, inspiring “socially-aware” culture within the company, especially among future senior leaders of the company).
Building Board membership opportunities into nonprofit grants can ensure multi-tiered engagement with nonprofit partners. In turn, encourage your CEO to establish internal Board membership requirements of management.
Build out a network of “partner champions” at non-HQ locations, so more senior level executives can become engaged and champion philanthropy to others in your company.
Utilizing a CEO as spokesperson can enhance the company by promoting the CEO, and through extension, the company as socially-aware and responsible.
Look for hands-on volunteer projects that business leaders can direct, or team projects that managers can rally their employees around.

Return to top

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT / VOLUNTEERISM

When developing a volunteer program, consider how it will be coordinated, based on the overall decision-making process of your giving department. The management needs may be different depending on whether you operate through a decentralized decision-making structure vs. a centralized process (see “Decision-Making” section)
Company-wide “days of volunteerism” are media-friendly, and can provide a focused and strategic platform to engage employees and senior management, in addition to their deep (although short-term) community impact. However, manufacturing companies and decentralized giving departments may find them a challenge to execute.
Providing employees with paid time off to volunteer at organizations of the employees choosing can be an effective way of serving individual employees’ charitable interests and may fit better with their work schedule.
Set up a website (or outsource to a web technology company) to inform employees about available volunteer opportunities and to track individual volunteer time (for measurement and benchmarking purposes). This site can be a valuable source of information and can be accessed for information on employee interests when selecting future focus areas and signature initiatives.

Return to top

INTER-DEPARTMENTAL ENGAGEMENT

Remember the importance of “internal networking” in building out philanthropic initiatives. Know a key manager in every department, and educate yourself on their needs.
Regularly communicate your corporate philanthropy activities to all departments to ensure that they know what you are doing and you can collaborate with them.

Return to top

INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

Push information to employees through email, mail, newsletters, live events, etc., instead of presenting information in a manner that forces them to seek it out (e.g. exclusively via a website/Intranet).
For larger companies especially, with operations in multiple communities, paid advertising or public relations offers a useful platform to reach employees.
Utilize your CEO more effectively in communicating your giving - have them tape mini-segments to announce new programs, endorse efforts or provide direction. Encourage them to serve as spokespeople for your company’s philanthropic efforts. Ensure that company-wide emails, newsletters, video presentations, etc. that discuss your company’s philanthropy come from the CEO.
Work with key managers to communicate to the staff they manage; make it the responsibility of the manager to ensure staff awareness.
Create an opt-in volunteer serv-list, allowing your giving department to push emails to employees who have expressed interest in your philanthropic efforts.
Hold a Charity Fair and invite local nonprofit organizations to company locations to meet with employees during specified times. This allows employees to get involved with charities in which they are most interested.
Conduct live events and “meet and greets” at local offices/stores/units to allow employees to ask questions and seek information from your giving department.
Support new technologies such as blogs and online journals.
Host webcasts twice a year for employees that cover important community-related topics.
Utilize the internal new hire training sessions conducted by your company to communicate to new
employees about your corporate philanthropy work and opportunities for involvement.
Include community-related or philanthropic challenges in your professional/managerial development programs for new/junior executives.
Encourage your CEO to deliver a recognition award to employees who are especially involved in their communities and/or your company’s philanthropic efforts.

Return to top

EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

Good public sentiment and media awareness regarding your company’s philanthropy can be a valuable resource should a potentially negative story regarding your company’s ethics, business dealings, governance, etc. become news.
Be sensitive to the external environment when publicizing your philanthropy (negative business environment, corporate challenges, layoffs, etc.).
When researching causes or focus areas, pick a cause around which public opinion must be mobilized. This ensures that a comprehensive PR strategy can be developed in conjunction with the grant, and makes the publicity vital to the grant’s success.
The media is sometimes more inclined to report about a company’s philanthropy if it coincides with a newsworthy event or occasion, rather than a constant stream of “good deeds” stories. The occasional use of PR firms can be an effective use of limited resources.
Applying for “awards” or inclusion on various “best-of” lists can be an interesting external communications tactic that includes traditional and non-traditional PR. Success in this area can boost morale, show added value to senior management and improve your brand positioning and awareness. It also lays the foundation for building a stronger media and public response to your future philanthropic endeavors.
Leverage your unique resources to break through the “clutter” in corporate giving publicity. For media companies this could be the airtime you control. For retail locations, this may entail signage in stores or radio broadcasts. For manufacturers, this might involve messaging on packaging.

Return to top

PARTNERSHIPS

Sometimes a company does not need to look for a new nonprofit to develop a signature initiative, but can find one within its current partnerships. The exploratory work of a small grant or limited short-term partnership can become the future long-term engagement.
Build additional attributes into your grants to nonprofit partners such as opportunities for employee
involvement, senior representation, and public relations/marketing opportunities.
The clients you represent, your employees’ skill sets, governmental relationships and marketing platforms can be effective and beneficial resources to a nonprofit. Many times there are only limited incremental costs associated with tapping these resources on their behalf.

Return to top

FOCUS AREAS

When selecting a focus area, survey a variety of stakeholders (employees, customers) to determine what issues are most important to them, and what issues they would like to see your company support. Consider other topics, such as if it matches company goals, aligns with your brand, can be communicated easily, is a cluttered issue, if you can make an impact, and if you can execute.
Try to not be reactive in selecting a focus area (responding to negative publicity or sudden consumer interest in “hot trend”). Be strategic and careful, as your choice of focus area is the bedrock of your philanthropic commitment.
Consider exploring niches within a crowded area, or engaging causes where no one is currently operating.
Having a clearly defined focus assists headquarters and other business units in gracefully turning down funding requests.
Ensure your focus area ties into the company’s culture, as well as its business mission.
Develop focus areas that allow you to tap all of your resources - employee skills and interests, business relationships, technologies, systems and processes, etc.
Be aware of your limitations - “owning” any category, or at least acquiring a presence, requires a significant financial and time commitment, which some departments do not have.

Return to top

OPERATIONS

Develop a hybridized decision-making model. By utilizing other department’s employees on a less than full time basis (and sometimes employees in a volunteer capacity), some companies were able to vastly expand their national philanthropic footprint, and engage employees in their communities across the country.
Leverage other departments (e.g. Human Resources, Communications, Marketing) to fill some of the functions that larger giving departments manage internally.
Leverage third-party relationships (e.g. vendors, suppliers, wholesalers, etc.) to enhance philanthropic commitments (via additional funding, in-kind resources, employee time, etc.). Typically, these third parties will want to make themselves supportive of your company, and the causes important to your employees.

Return to top

DECISION-MAKING

One method of creating a successful hybrid model is to allow the national giving department to determine the overall strategy and relevant focus areas that guide your company’s philanthropy, while letting local offices/business units refine their own strategy based on their local community needs.
Look to strike a balance between flexibility and rigidity - an initiative that is important in one location may not be so in another. Plan your decision-making accordingly.
Decentralized programs may want to set up a committee that meets to share information, disseminate best practices and coordinate activities between departments/divisions. This can be especially helpful if the staff is chosen to represent a broad cross-section of the company’s individual departments/business units.
Communication can be challenging in the hybrid model, especially if the giving department operating in a hybrid model is organized by business unit (which can entail different Intranets, newsletters, and so forth). Many hybrid model giving departments find that successful communication occurs through platforms that incorporate information from across the company, such as an Annual Report or Corporate Responsibility Report. Inclusion of your CEO in these efforts can also be valuable, via either email, voicemail, or CEO.

Return to top

Return to the Giving Officer page

CONTACT INFORMATION

212.825.1256,
info@CorporatePhilanthropy.org