Today marks International Corporate Philanthropy Day (ICPD), a day annually celebrated on the fourth Monday in February that honors corporate community partnerships.  ICP Day should inspire businesses around the world to engage further in philanthropy.   It appears as though making money and doing good in the world is no longer something to hide under the rug.  Yes, businesses can help themselves by helping others.   And together, the Community Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy,the Board of Boards CEO Conference and the United Nations meet today in New York City to share insights, best practices, and ways to advance the business case for corporate community investment. 

Voted as one of the Top Executive Gatherings in Weber Shandwick’s annual Five Star Conference Analysis, even the Empire State Building and the clock tower at Wrigley Building in Chicago light up in blue and green to commemorate International Corporate Philanthropy Day.

If you're wondering how you can help celebrate ICP Day, here are a few ideas (taken from the CECP website):

• Tell your company’s philanthropy story and be proud. Promote it through blog, your website, a newsletter, etc.
• Further engage senior management, employees, and nonprofit partners in your giving programs.
• Raise awareness of the important role of corporate philanthropy in fostering stronger relationships across sectors.
• Publicize your company’s philanthropic initiatives, benefiting from the added media interest.
• Enhance relationships with peers and thought leaders in the corporate giving community.

 

 

- Lizette Romero

This month we interviewed our corporate partner, Dell, to give insight on their internal communication tactics for their Make a Difference (MAD) community tool. Surely enough, we found a correlation between Dell's monthly communication campaign launches and new user growth.

We worked with Dell to develop a platform capable of wide-spread, group and event messaging to enhance their internal communication tactics and make it easy to keep employees engaged. In addition, the MAD community is a multilingual platform and increased international employee engagement by providing the tool in their native languages.

Check out the full interview with expert Jennifer Friday Jones below and look forward to monthly CSR Insights from the YourCause team!

- Amy Chait

Voting has officially opened for Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship's Film Festival 2011, in which companies demonstrate their community impact through videos.

I'm happy to see two of our corporate partners are up for the running, Dell and Cummins, and wanted to share theirs! They are truly great corporate citizens.

All videos can be viewed and voted for here.

- Amy Chait

We're excited to announce one of our latest features for the CSRconnect employee engagement platform, where our corporate clients can now customize a tab in their internal communities dedicated to company-specific charity programs!

Whether clients want to support a month long or annual campaign, they have total control to turn the program on and off as they please.

For example, if 'Youth' is a focus program that supports various nonprofits around the world, then the program can be sorted into sub-categories that display youth nonprofits by region.

In addition, volunteer opportunities and groups correlated with the program are aggregated under one tab.

If you're a corporation looking for CSR solutions, then we'd love to schedule a demo to show you the new feature and what all CSRconnect has to offer to increase employee engagement participation! Contact me achait@yourcause.com.

- Amy Chait

Valentine's Day in the U.S. means nearly 200 million stems of soft petaled roses will be presented as symbols of love, romance, devotion and affection.  Where they came from,however, is not always such an affectionate place. 

The roses get shipped from across the world (South America, Africa, Central America, and beyond) where flower farm workers (mostly female) are subject to sexual harassment, poor wages, and unsafe working conditions.

In Ecuador, amongst the highest spot near the equator, tall straight roses grow to bring more than 250 million dollars in revenue.  Along with the money, however, are rumors of horrible working conditions.  In a Frontline documentary, one flower farm worker says her employers fumigated greenhouses while she was still inside, wouldn't allow her medical leave, and refused her pay when she became pregnant. 

Thousands of people still work under poor conditions in flower farms.  In Kenya, workers reported being forced to work 12-hour days for less than a dollar wages.  Others say they've been raped while on their dark 5:00 am walks to work. However, now there is an alternative.  You can choose to buy Fair Trade roses, grown from more environmentally conscious farms that focus on improving work conditions.

Support flower workers around the world by choosing Fair Trade roses this Valentine's Day.  You can buy them at Whole Foods Markets nationwide.  Look for the Fair Trade Certified logo on your next batch of roses.  If it has one, it means you've purchased flowers that guarantee growers meet strict social and environmental standards.  It also means that workers receive a premium to invest in community delevopment with a portion of purchases assisting projects like scholarships, housing, health clinics and micro-enterprises.

-Lizette Romero

They always say 'any press is good press.'  But is this true?  Especially when mocking philanthropy?

On Superbowl Sunday, the well-known daily Groupon coupon company decided to do such a thing when they released faux-philanthropic PSA (public service announcement) ads that favored saving money for yourself over helping some serious causes.

You can see the following Timoth Hutton's Tibet ad and decide for yourself.  Clever? or poor taste?

However you decide, you should know that Groupon actually does branch out from a philanthropy site (ThePoint.com). Criticism, though, is that a company worth 15 billion dollars is not really doing as much as it should.

Consumers may pick up on the edginess but will it be well or poorly received?  So far, mostly criticism exists.  It has left Groupon struggling to respond and explain their commercials to the masses.

In a most recent blog, Groupon responded by saying:

Since we grew out of a collective action and philanthropy site and ended up selling coupons, we loved the idea of poking fun at ourselves by talking about discounts as a noble cause...And if you’ve saved enough money for yourself and feel like saving something else, you can donate to mission-driven organizations that are doing great work for the causes featured in our PSA parodies. If you guys pony up, Groupon will contribute matching donations of up to $100,000 for three featured charities—Rainforest Action Network, buildOn, and the Tibet Fund—and Groupon credit of up to $100,000 for contributions made to Greenpeace.

In my opinion, Groupon would've been a lot better saying this at the end of the commercial, rather than at the end of the criticism.

-Lizette Romero

Most of you reading this are probably feeling the snow, ice and freezing wind in which they are calling a storm of 'historic proportions.'  After all - it is affecting more than 30 states and 100 million people.  Here in Dallas, where YourCause is located, we are feeling zero degree temperatures, 47 mph winds, airport closures and more.  The weather here, however, is easy compared to other states.

A 1,500 mile slice of the country is feeling the impact.  Tulsa, Oklahoma received a record breaking 13 inches of snow.  Interstate highways have closed throughout Oklahoma and Missouri.  Up to 16 inches of snow is expected in Michigan.  Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma and Kansas are in states of emergency to bring extra resources to bear.  Iowa also activated guard members. Arkansas Governor declared a state of emergency as the entire northwestern portion of the state has received power outages. Chicago is expected to receive 13-22 inches of snow by Wednesday.

We don't usually talk about weather on the YourCause blog but we can only imagine that there will be some serious affects and repercussions from the storm.  Inches of snow and ice accumulate, power lines crumble, emergency vehicles have come to a hault, airlines shut down, and crops are freezing out.  Also, at YourCause, we make it our job to inform our clients, community and followers about states of emergencies - both domestic and global.

We will be sure to inform you, if conditions get worse and a natural disaster is amongst us.  But in any case - we always provide the ability for groups of people (whether its your church group, neighborhood watch, community homeless shelter, etc.) to raise money and support for a cause of your choice.

For our corporate clientele, we offer disaster relief response.  Learn more about it here or input your inquiry at anytime here  (ReliefRequest.com). 

- Lizette ROmero