I was taken aback this morning when I found out over 200 people have been killed from the 100+ tornadoes that have spawned in the southern states. There is nothing more eerie than hearing the sounds of a tornado siren, as we've had our own threats here in the DFW metroplex. However, we haven't seen the kind that took over the state of Alabama.

Frankly, there's a lot that has been a lot going on. The American Red Cross has been sure to respond to all the fires, floods and tornadoes taking place here in the U.S. and could use both funds and volunteer support.

We've created a group page at www.YourCause.com to support the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity and United Way Worldwide. Help us, help them by making donation to the following organizations here.

- Amy Chait

When an individual decides to support a cause, it‘s simply because they care. But how does one get inspired to care in the first place? Access to information around social issues and emotion-inducing stories play a large role in giving decisions. With this in mind, consider how you can create a learning culture and promote storytelling within your philanthropic culture, energizing employees to give.

To illustrate this point— our culture at YourCause is around community, supporting diverse causes and sharing experiences that are meaningful to grasp a greater understanding. YourCause Founder Matthew Combs and Account Manager Brian Lind were shocked that 16,000 children die each day from lack of food or nutrition and decided to understand a hunger victim‘s plight by challenging themselves to a three day fast.

Matthew and Brian‘s perspectives changed through this 72-hour journey, becoming more sympathetic to those suffering and grew more apt to support hunger organizations. They voluntarily kept a diary to document their experience and share the agony that results from hunger to influence others to care.

We aren‘t saying you should challenge your employees to a three day fast. However, you can create opportunities for employees to become active in causes they learn about and, in turn, inspire employees to cultivate stories that motivate them and others to take action.

1. Create a Learning Culture

Do you provide your employees the information, communications and tools to learn more about social issues they (and the company) support? If our team members did not have access to information around the startling statistics of hunger – then there would have been no challenge, no story and no action taken.

Simply spark employees‘ interests in causes by giving them the opportunity to learn more by sharing the company‘s philanthropic vision and aggregating information on nonprofit partners. In addition, community programs with interactive tools can facilitate communication between employees to gain more knowledge about what their peers are doing to make a difference.

2. Encourage Storytelling to Increase Participation

Philanthropy is more expressive than instrumental. Therefore, powerful employee storytelling within company culture delivers more impact.

Since philanthropy is voluntary and expressive, positive change must emerge from choices that givers make not because someone says they ‗should,‘ but because it excites and energizes them as givers,‖ said Katherine Fulton and Andrew Blau, Cultivating Change in Philanthropy.

Get creative in channeling inspiring stories through video, recognition programs, internal newsletters and more. Allowing employees‘ voices to be heard generates momentum in understanding what cause means to them, increasing participation in programs.

3. Utilize Storytelling to Influence Giving

If you have a learning culture and encourage storytelling – how does this translate to impact? Storytelling influences donor giving decisions and increases motivation to give back to a cause that inspired them.

People are twice as likely to give a charitable gift when presented an emotion-inducing personal story of one victim that focuses exclusively on his or her plight, according to Network for Good‘s Homer Simpson for Nonprofits.

The employee needs the right toolset to take action for the causes that inspire them. Therefore, employees need to know where and how to give once they have learned about a cause they care about. The power of storytelling lies in the end result of generating social value for the company.

Storytelling at YourCause

Hunger: More Than a Startling Statistic

A Three Day Diary Documenting the Reality of an Empty Stomach:

Hour 37 >> I have been thinking a lot about the children, even here in the US, that go to school every day without having eaten and who's schools don't have programs to feed them. I think of how hard it must be to simply pay attention and functional normally - let alone optimally. Being hungry is really forcing me to narrow my realm of focus and only really give my attention to those things that i truly need to focus on. Forget day dream, forget exploring new things.

Hour 70 >> These last 5 and now 2 hours are going by painfully slow. It’s almost hard to believe how slowly time seems to be elapsing, it makes me wonder if someone who doesn’t have a set schedule of when they get to eat, someone who can’t regularly depend on meals, is there a constant fear of the unknown? It has to be mentally almost as challenging as it is physically to not steal from or hurt someone who does have food when you don’t know when or where the next bite is going to come from.

...click here to read the full diary! 

Earth Day is right around the corner (April 22, 2011) and since we're a technology company, we know how fast electronic products become obsolete within a year.  We know that everyone has some unwanted electronic products sitting around, collecting nothing but dust. Don't throw them away.  Electronic hazardous waste (also known as e-waste) contains contaminants like lead, mercury and flammable retardants that can harm workers in the landfills, as well as neighboring communities and environment.

Instead, recycle your e-waste in a safe, no-cost and convenient way by using a program like ReConnect.  The program, managed by Dell and Goodwill Industries, allows consumers to recycle used computers and almost anything that can be connected to a computer. Recycling raw materials from lifeless electronics is the most effective solution to the growing e-waste problem.  Not only can a variety of materials be reused from e-waste, but air and water pollution is avoided as well. 

ReConnect has won multiple awards due to the fact that they have diverted more than 96 million pounds of e-waste from landfills and created about 250 "green jobs."  I myself located one of their 1,900 locations to drop off my unwanted electronic goods.  After it's all done I'll have done a little Spring cleaning, contributed to Earth Day and received a tax deductible receipt!

- Lizette Romero

San Franciscans are both technology-savvy and environmentally-conscious, so this public-private program makes great sense. This effort will help create shared solutions to the problems of e-waste and make our community a safer, healthier place to live. As a City, we are proud to support this partnership between Goodwill and Dell.

There's a lot of skepticism out there these days when it comes to trusting companies, which is totally understandable with multiple misleading claims from social responsibility efforts. For example, a major retailer claimed their bags were made in the USA, yet if you looked in the bag, they were made in China. Whoops.

Can we trust companies? Well, I felt differently about this issue when I was able to meet Chris Miller, manager of Corporate Consciousness for Seventh Generation, and joined his fireside chat session along with Diane Solinger at the Entrepreneurs Foundation Corporate Citizenship Conference to discuss CSR frameworks that outlast transitions.

Chris introduced a new term for me, 'radical transparency,' when it came to describing Seventh Generation's CSR framework. Little did I know Seventh Generation was the first company to fully disclose ingredients in their products and have been doing sustainability reports for seven years.

Although, what truly stood out for me is that they are completely honest with their consumers. They cover the good, the bad and the ugly in their sustainability reports. A 2010 Cone study revealed 87% of consumers believe the communication is one-sided, where companies share the positive information about their efforts, but withhold the negative.

Even when Seventh Generation had discovered contamination in their products, the CEO openly addressed their consumers with an explanation of what happened and how the issue was resolved. As Chris put it, you learn more from failure and said consumers become bigger fans when they tell them everything. And he's right. I became a fan, as I had so much appreciation for the authenticity and honesty Seventh Generation represents. For them, sustainability is more than a cause marketing effort, it's integrated into the core value of their culture.

There's a social contract between companies, nonprofits and consumers. So, it's alright for us to hold great expectations, but with those great expectations, we can also act on them by making ethical purchases. It's worth the effort to find out who practices what they preach.

- Amy Chait