Here at Socialbrite, we’re always looking for sterling examples of how the corporate sector is contributing in genuine ways to the social good. Those bridges between the for-profit and nonprofit/social good sectors are becoming increasingly vital.

So I was jazzed to see the presentation by Beth Kanter and Kami Huyse of Zoetica yesterday at NewComm Forum in San Mateo, Calif., on what they’re calling “lethal generosity” (a term from Shel Israel’s “Twitterville”). The discussion provided some clarity around the difference between corporate social responsibility, cause marketing and what the Zoetica folks call lethal generosity: “when a corporation applies its core competencies to advance social change in a way that contributes to business results and gives it a competitive advantage.”

Without going into whether the term will catch on (I think it probably won’t — it’s really just CSR done right), here are four fantastic examples of how large companies have been contributing to the social good in compelling ways:

Molson Coors & responsible drinking

1.Over the years, Molson Coors Canada has used CSR to advance its brand — and is one of the few major corporations to take advantage of social media in doing so. (Shel Israel wrote about Molson in his book Twitterville.) As Beth mentioned yesterday, Molson Coors invests more in responsible drinking education than on alcohol-centered events. Molson reaches out to the community to find ways to spread the message of responsible drinking, putting money behind the TaxiGuy program (for those who’ve had one too many) and covering the cost of free public transit on New Year’s Eve.

Shel recounts the story of the holiday season of 2008 when the Toronto Transit Authority canceled its New Year’s Eve free-ride transportation because of budget cuts. Molson stepped in and launched a campaign to replace public funding with private sector donations, starting with its own $20,000 donation.

Molson has a small social media team led by Ferg Devins, who is not only responsible for selling beer but for outreach to communities in need. The team uses Twitter and blogging to initiate community generosity projects.

• Molson’s Responsible Drinking Program (see image at top)
• Molson Coors blog — they even have a Socialbrite-style Twitter conversation widget at the right
• @molsonferg on Twitter (Ferg Devins)
• Molson Canadian Facebook page

Tyson Foods & hunger relief

2.Tyson Foods offers another example of a major company tying its corporate social responsibility efforts to its core mission. Tyson has committed its brand to efforts to relieve and ultimately end childhood hunger, and in the past few years been integrating social media into its hunger relief efforts.

Tyson connected with the Social Media Club and began a string of extraordinarily smart and effective efforts to enlist the community. For example, it launched a campaign in Austin in which it agreed to donate 100 pounds of chicken to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas for every comment posted on its blog. They received 658 comments in two hours and loaded up two trucks filled with chicken for the hungry, Beth said. They repeated the success in Boston and San Francisco, launched a user-generated video contest in Minnesota and sponsored a day of service for its social media team.

• Tyson Hunger Relief Blog
• Tyson Hunger Relief: Our Commitment
• Tyson Hunger Relief blog post on outside Twitter accounts involved in hunger relief
• Tyson Hunger Relief on Twitter (Ed Nicholson)
• Tyson Foods Hunger Relief on Facebook
• Sustainability – It’s In Our Nature: Report on Tyson Foods’ economic, social and environmental efforts (PDF)

Haagen-Dazs & honeybee preservation

3.Honeybees are disappearing at an alarming rate — and that’s bad news for the global food chain. Haagen-Dazs decided to create a microsite to raise awareness about the issue: “Honey bees are responsible for pollinating one-third of all the foods we eat, including many of the ingredients that define our all-natural ice creams, sorbets, frozen yogurt and bars.” Again, smartly tying it back to the company’s core mission.

The company is donating a portion of proceeds from its Haagen-Dazs honeybee brand to research on the topic, and it launched a modest Twitcause campaign through the #HelpHoneyBees hashtag, raising $7,000 in two days last November (“Bee Buzz generated: 643,748 tweets”).

• Help the Honeybees microsite

Greenopolis & recycling

4.Greenopolis was developed to serve as an educational tool to teach people how to be more environmentally sound as they go about their daily lives. The goals for the Web site are summed up in its tagline: “Learn. Act. Reward. Together.” Greenopolis was created by, and is wholly owned by, Waste Management Recycle America, but operates independently. Last year, Beth said, they took part in a Social Media Breakfast in Houston.

Greenopolis has a presence on several social media sites, offers a daily look at some interesting metrics (Total tons of WMRA recycled: 5,367,009), offers on-street recycling kiosks and has a rewards program (Think Green Rewards earned: 4,074,988) that lets people cash in points for small items. “You get points for blogging, they use the community to create content and they license their logo to qualifying organizations like the Green Housekeeping seal of approval,” Beth said.

• Greenopolis on Twitter
• Greenopolis Facebook page
• Greenopolis YouTube channel

Related

• Beth Kanter: What is Lethal Generosity?
• Kami Huyse: Definition of Lethal Generosity
• Pamela Hawley & JD Lasica on BlogTalkRadio: The power of giving & corporations doing social good
• Transcript of podcast on corporate social responsibility

The post 4 examples of corporate social responsibility done right appeared first on Socialbrite.

For my first go as a podcast host, this came out extremely well, so much so that the UniversalGiving team transcribed our conversation. (Idea: BlogTalkRadio should offer transcriptions as a premium service.)

Click the above player to listen to parts of the 40-minute podcast on the power of giving, which BlogTalkRadio featured on its own blog.

A few highlights from our talk. Pamela on donations to Haiti:

You want to make sure that the organization you’re donating to has been vetted, and that’s one of the things we do at UniversalGiving. One way to really help ensure that is going with a small or medium organization. There’s less administration; there’s less layers of personnel because they have to be scrappy. They have to be nimble, and they have to be focused and quick with their resources. One that we promote that is very strong is Action Against Hunger, which helps with the long-term and short-term sustainable solutions to hunger. And they operate in 40 countries across the world, including Haiti. They may not have the Red Cross brand but they’re extremely accomplished because they’re so focused in one area, which is combating hunger and doing that in 40 countries across the world.

Pamela on corporate social responsibility:

You do need to have a plan of action (with CSR). And ideally with your plan of action, it’s tied into the business objectives of product adoption and your profit center. You want it to be tied in there. And so ideally it’s not just something that’s coming from the foundation or the community relations department, but is also something that’s tied into the marketing department and also to the CEO’s office and what their bottom line objectives are as far as product adoption and profit objectives. …

CSR absolutely can be used first of all as a retention tool that makes people really feel good about their company, and they want to stay. Second, it makes the employees more motivated, wanting to build whatever business or business unit they’re involved with, because they believe in the company and the company’s values. And third, it is a great recruitment tool. You will certainly find that with people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, they’re really seeking that company that’s doing good in the world.

I hope to continue the conversations with Pamela and turn this into a series on CSR and social media. Maybe I’ll even get to meet her in person one day!

First timer on BlogTalkRadio

A note about BlogTalkRadio: This was easier to set up and do than I expected. (I wasn’t aware, until a few days before the podcast, that there’s a training session for new hosts held every Wednesday.) The host’s dashboard is nicely laid out, with a great countdown until your next episode.

For those who don’t know, the service is free — just hop on and start your own podcast!

Some of the interface could be a bit more intuitive. When I first registered, I wasn’t sure what was being displayed to the public and what was for account purposes only. Thus, “Chief Cat Herder” instead of my name is being displayed on my page.

Because I may do a BTR podcast only sporadically, I’m not sure I’ll need the Premium Host Services, which include switchboard moderation, switchboard outdial, increased show promotion, the ability to edit and replace episodes and more. But if you host a regular BTR show, those seem like essential tools.

Disclosure: I’ve met BlogTalkRadio CEO Alan Levy and had dinner with him a couple of years ago.

Resources

• Universal Giving

• Living and Giving: The Pamela Hawley Blog

• Center for Corporate Citizenship

• CSRWire

• The Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthopy

• Socialbrite.org

The post The power of giving & corporations doing social good appeared first on Socialbrite.

Following is a transcript of the inaugural podcast of the new Social Causes Show on BlogTalkRadio with host JD Lasica, founder of Socialmedia.biz and Socialbrite.org, and guest Pamela Hawley, founder and CEO of UniversalGiving. See JD’s blog post on Socialbrite.

JD: Today we have Pamela Hawley, founder of UniversalGiving to talk about some of the corporations making a big splash, a big impact through their CSR efforts.  But first we’ll begin by talking about the situation in Haiti. … Pamela, thanks for joining us.

PH: Good morning, JD. Thanks for having me.

JD: Why don’t we start with your background? I believe you co-founded VolunteerMatch in 1996 and more recently UniversalGiving, is that right?

PH: Yes that is. Right out of college, I had the opportunity to be involved in the web and using the web to help make it easier for people to get involved in our communities. And so, that’s the whole point. How can we create these websites and marketplaces that help people know where are the most effective ways to get involved. And I think particularly if you noted what’s going on in Haiti – it’s just absolutely devastating with the 7.1 earthquake on Tuesday – and what we’re really striving to do, just for people who want to be aware, there are some very key ways to help the earthquake victims in Haiti that are noted on the UniversalGiving homepage, on our website underneath the spotlight.

One that I really like to point to is there’s an emergency response team with an international corps that provides supplies to the earthquake survivors that need that immediate relief. And second, there’s another one that provides educational resources and aid. So a lot of people need to know how to actually get their kids eventually back to school. And so that’s something that you know we don’t think about immediately, that we have first of all the immediate needs of people needing to watch out for their lives and to take care of themselves. And then there’s the other side when people start to normalize, they need to know how to start to get their lives back in order: where they can live; where they can get clothes; where they can send their kids to school. So we want to think in a crisis like this about both short and long-term needs. So if you’re interested in helping out that way, we have both short-term and long-term development projects that are on the UniversalGiving.org homepage.

JD: Right. It seems like the news coming out of Haiti is getting worse and worse every day. There’s a shortage of medical supplies, a shortage of water, a lack of just basic human needs. Now the latest figures suggest more than 200,000 people have died so far. I’m you know, I think I’m like a lot of people I’ve got a lot of messages coming at me, bombarding me all the time through e-mail, through Twitter, even on my text phone asking for donations. What would you recommend as far as where’s the best place for people to start? What do they have to keep in mind when they want to have the most impact with their dollar?

PH: You know what, such a good question, JD. I think one of the key points is that sometimes we have sort of this go-to, default of going through a maybe larger organization, or well- known brand; and what we need to actually look at is what are the organizations that can be the most helpful locally, on the ground, who know the local relationships, know how the local country operates. And so what we strive to do at UniversalGiving and what we encourage you to look for is try to find organizations that are either very focused on serving in a crisis; they know to how to respond to a crisis. They’re used to working in very tough pressure situations; they are used to responding and understanding how to best meet the local needs. They know the landscape; they know the geography. They know where the local resources were or did exist. So there’s not just a large organization coming in blindly. So we really try to gear towards local organizations who have those relationships.

An example — one of our partners is called Hope Alliance, which works with worldwide communities and helping them with their lives across numerous areas of basic human needs. So that’s number one. And the second is that you want to look for sites that talk about quality and trust. You know there’s a lot of organizations that jump on the bandwagon that say, “Okay, I can increase all these donations to help get funds to these nonprofits, but have they really vetted the organizations? And I think it’s something that’s critical that you talk about – both someone who wants to give during a crisis as well as for companies.

So here to give you an example for UniversalGiving, we have a QualityModel^TM whereby we vet all the organizations by a 20-stage QualityModel. So in advance, any partner on our site is one that’s already been vetted, that has been vetted for finances, for terrorist activities, for project results and success. Also with management and leadership review so that we know we’ve got strong leadership in place. So what you’re really looking for is that long-term perspective that the group you’re with has indeed been vetted, and that’s an important cardinal rule for any type of giving, crisis or not.

JD: You mentioned vetting and the credibility of these organizations, but there’s also always concern about overhead involved with donating to even major relief organizations like the Red Cross. And I know a lot of my friends say that, you know, they want to make sure that every dollar that they give actually goes to the victims, to the people that are going to get the most impacted by that. So is there also something on your site, or is there a way for people to find out how much of their dollars actually go to the intended recipients?

PH: Absolutely. Overhead is certainly an important part of one of the criteria that we look at. And we do have to be honest, however, JD, that, you know, organizations take funds to run. You know we love it that all of the money goes directly to the victims of the crisis, and that certainly is important. But you know, we need to also pay for people to strategize about the best way to get the resources there and pay for them to be able to have the trucks and the gas and the resources, so that they can get the food available the victims. So certainly your front line is definitely going to be to look at overhead, and we put that on our site. And donors are different. Some want 10% overhead or less, which is very rigorous. Other ones are willing to go up to 25%. We don’t recommend more than 25% overhead. In fact, in general we say staying within the 15-18% range is very reasonable.

But every organization is different, so I think you definitely want to take a look at that as far as overhead. And then also what you want to do is again make sure that the organization’s been vetted; and that’s one of the things we do at UniversalGiving to make sure the most money possible is going to these organizations. One way to really help secure that is going with a small or medium organization. There’s less administration; there’s less layers of personnel because they have to be scrappy. They have to be nimble, and they have to be focused and quick with their resources. They don’t have a lot to rely on. So you know another one that we look at, that we promote that is very strong is Action Against Hunger, which you’ll also see on our website, that helps with the long-term and short-term sustainable solutions to hunger. And they operate in 40 countries across the world, including Haiti. So that’s another I think great opportunity that maybe not everyone has heard of them. They may not have the Red Cross brand but they’re extremely accomplished because they’re so focused in one area, which is combating hunger and doing that in 40 countries across the world. You also want to look at an organization that isn’t one thing to everyone. You know they’re not too spread thin across too many different areas. So that’s another reason to go with a smaller organization that’s in one focus area.

JD: You know the last major global crisis that I remember similar to this scale is the tsunami in South Asia. And back then, years ago, social media was really in its infancy. Twitter didn’t even exist and Facebook certainly not the amount of it that it is. You know off the top of your head, do you think that social media, social networking is having an impact on relief efforts in Haiti? And can people do things more by networking together that they wouldn’t just be able to do by donating to some organization for instance?

PH: Absolutely. I mean I think it makes it more accessible to people and a lot of people to take action more quickly because you don’t necessarily have to be at your computer to take action. You can actually take action on your phone. One of the examples is AT&T. And as we talk about companies, they actually facilitated text messages that allow people to give donations of $10. And so you’re seeing a company, you’re seeing a company that knows its system well, knows its business well, and they’re thinking, “How can I help leverage what we do well as a business, phone services, and help allow people to get involved.” Now the only caveat on that is just that because of social media, we have a greater rapidity to get involved. And the key there is we have got to be really, really sure we’re not sacrificing quality because what happens is we get so excited, we get involved in the momentum, but then as we look at it, we don’t know: “Is this making an impact?” And, “Is this organization trusted?” So the rapidity of getting involved is great but we need to marry that with the long-term vetting and trust of the partners who are involved.

JD: Why don’t we turn to the topic that you and I have been talking about these last few weeks: Corporate Social Responsibility. Pamela, how would you define it – what is CSR?

PH: Well, I think that Corporate Social Responsibility is really a company being able to manage the positive results that are necessary to grow their company and marry that to making an impact within the community. Corporate Social Responsibility is this sense of – it’s not even really necessarily a responsibility. It should be referred to as a business objective. It’s almost “Socially Responsible Business Objectives” rather than a responsibility because it really is an important part of their business and their operations that affects: 1) their bottom line goals and 2) also the community. So “responsibility” can be a little misleading because truly a responsibility is more, “Well you should.” This is really a “You should because it meets the bottom line and also benefits the community. So I almost want to change it to “Corporate Social Bottom Line Objective Which Serves the Community.”

Now of course that’s too much of a mouthful, but the point is that it should meet your bottom line and serve the community. And the ways that most companies go about this is really doing this by defining objectives that help promote their service and their product in an ethical way and too getting their employees involved in a way that can help their bottom line objectives but also serve the community. And I think the three ways we probably see this the most, although it’s not linked to this is in philanthropy, in volunteerism and in product donations. So those are the three that are most readily watched for when you’re getting involved in CSR. But again those aren’t the only ways.

JD: I’m hearing a lot more and more companies that are actually getting involved with Corporate Social Responsibility, and it’s now like a must-have for these companies. So the main components to have a successful program are what?

PH: The components there are, first of all, you do need to have a plan of action. And ideally with your plan of action, it’s tied into the business objectives of product adoption and your profit center. You want it to be tied in there. And so ideally it’s not just something that’s coming from the foundation or the community relations department, but is also something that’s tied into the marketing department and also to the CEO’s office and what their bottom line objectives are as far as product adoption and profit objectives.

You need to make sure that first of all you’ve got a plan in place that: 1) helps meet the profit-minded goals of the organization, of the company; 2) also translates that into community value as well. So you’re looking about how you can: 1) help build the business; and then 2) help build the business through some of the community programs. And so that I think is really the first, to make sure you’ve got a good plan that is accepted by headquarters, accepted by the CEO and that’s accepted by your foundation, community relations and marketing departments. And that synergy is really, really important to achieve when you’re first starting out. So I would say that’s number one.

And number two, once you do get that defined, the second, equally important part of the planning process is to make sure that you include your local offices. You know, it’s such a tough balance when you’ve got certain corporate headquarter objectives but at the same time you’ve got to balance that with what local employees know on the ground. They might see something very different as far as what the community needs are, what the local needs are; and in that case, you want to make sure that you can marry headquarter objectives with local needs as well. Otherwise those employees in 30 countries outside of your headquarters may not feel franchised to really take action to benefit the communities in the way that they see best and they see the most needs as well.

JD: That makes a lot of sense. But it hasn’t always been that way, right? You’ve been involved in this area for more than 15 years now, so can you maybe paint us a picture of how it’s evolved over the years?

PH: Sure. Let’s point to some of the visionaries. GE in 1910: their board made it possible for all of their retirees to be involved in their volunteer program – very, very visionary. They looked at any employee who’s ever been a part of GE. And they said, “You are going to be part of our culture, our family, our business objectives and our business service to the community.” And so very, very smart, they looked at anyone who was involved could continue to stay engaged through a company-supported volunteer program all over the world – very, very revolutionary. And again, getting the board involved. So you know, even though it hasn’t been that way across the board with all companies, we do have to point to some visionaries such as GE that have done a phenomenal job putting a stake in the ground when it was not very popular at all. So that’s really exciting to see models like that.

I will say before, most of it – let’s say 15, 20 years ago – most of it happened to be from some CEOs or foundations that felt it was the right thing to do. A lot of accolades should go to them. For example, Levi’s – late 1960s, they were operating abroad with factories, and they’ve been involved in giving and volunteering since the late 1960’s. Again, another pioneering company that should be recognized not only for doing CSR, but for doing it on a global level. But I don’t think those are the norm. And it is starting to become more the norm, which is most exciting. And I think what we’re starting to see now is not just a few outliers who think it’s the right thing to do; it’s becoming a business objective as the right thing to do for the bottom line and for the community.

JD: When we chatted about this recently, you pointed out something I hadn’t thought about; for a lot of these large companies, Corporate Social Responsibility is used as both a recruitment and retention tool. So that I guess employees have a sort of stake in seeing how their company’s benefiting the local community and the global community. Can you tell us more about that?

PH: Definitely. I think, you know, when you look at the companies, one of the most important aspects of what they’re doing is they don’t realize that part of their bottom line is making sure that they don’t have too many costs as far as turnover with employees. That’s certainly a part of your bottom line. It’s not only getting more people to buy your product or increasing your sales team, but it’s the other side for companies, is cutting down costs. Some ways you can do that is by putting in a strong retention program for employees. And that has definitely been proven, I know from studies done that employees who are allied with companies that are doing good in the world are much more likely to stay with their company.

And in fact, what’s starting to happen now with people just graduating and people age, you know, 22 to 30, they’re demanding that of any company that they would join. That’s why the biggest question that they ask in an interview: “What does your company do to serve the community?” Because if they’re going into the for-profit world, they want to know that what they’re doing is tied to a greater good. They’re going to want to know that the company that they’re going to work for, even if their day-to-day isn’t involved in it, has programs that allow them to feel a part of the community, allow them to feel a part of a greater good.

So what we’re seeing here is that CSR absolutely can be used first of all as a retention tool that makes people really feel good about their company, and they want to stay. Second, it makes the employees more motivated, wanting to build whatever business or business unit they’re involved with, because they believe in the company and the company’s values. And third, it is a great recruitment tool. You will certainly find that with people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, they’re really seeking that company that’s doing good in the world. And I think that’s a question that comes up in nearly every interview.

Cisco as an example of great CSR

JD: Great. Let me get down to the specifics here. I think it might be helpful to our listeners to hear some practical examples. Can you give us an example or two of companies that might have different approaches to CSR, but they’re successful in doing it?

PH: Yes. I think one of the companies that has done a really great job with this is Cisco. First of all, let’s point to some of the positives that Cisco has in place that could be emulated by other companies. First of all, they’ve got – and this is hard to do sometimes, JD – but they’ve got strong support from the CEO and from the executive office. So John Chambers supports their CSR efforts. He is often at volunteer opportunities. He actually flew down to Mexico earlier this year to talk about the importance of technology and education, focusing on education and made some speeches to that effect. And Cisco actually put in some very strong resources in Mexico and Latin America. But first of all, of course they do build Cisco’s business, but secondly – and equally important – they help engage Mexico and other Latin American partners by helping them with education and technology in philanthropy and volunteerism.

So first of all, you’ve got this headquarter involvement by a CEO, which is very important. And second, you’ve got business units, the foundation and community relations, backing up John Chambers, which is just wonderful. So there’s actually an execution arm. So at Cisco there’s a very strong community relations department and then public benefit investment that helps disburse grants as well.

Cisco is in more than 30 countries across the world. They also have something called “Civic Council,” and in each country or area, they have a civic council lead who then helps lead and engage the employees. And this is very important because once you get a headquarter directive, you’ve actually got to have the resources to execute on it. These are the individuals, local, on the ground, in-country, who are setting up websites, sending out newsletters, qualifying and identifying nonprofits that employees can get involved with, sending out strong marketing messages.

And to that effect, if you even look at what Cisco did during this crisis for Haiti, one of the things they did, which was very smart but not a lot of other companies did, was provide an employee donation match of up to $1 million. So a lot of companies will point out or give money to an organization, but what Cisco did was really take it to the next level and say, “We’re going to provide an employee donation match.” And I think that really demonstrates the strength of how they’re thinking as well, of not only giving from the foundation, but also encouraging and leveraging their employees to give.

JD: OK, are there any smaller size companies other than huge global companies like Cisco that you would point to as doing a pretty good job with CSR?

PH: Well, I think sometimes what we have to look at as well is: what are the companies that are local that are doing good work as well? I would say sometimes we want to look at the maybe a little bit smaller companies that might not be on the Fortune 500 list. You, as a smaller company, can also be doing a lot to help. And one of the organizations that we’ve seen help do that is the Entrepreneurs Foundation, which was started by Gib Myers, a local venture capitalist here in the Silicon Valley. And what he does is help create a forum for entrepreneurs that are starting companies and really encouraging them very, very early on to get a CSR program in place. Now a lot of startup companies don’t have a lot of money or cash early on, but what they can do is they can provide links for employees to get involved; they can actually help fund a project together as a team. They can actually give. For example, at UniversalGiving, we have something called GiftPackages where you can give a gift of $50 to feed a family in Sudan.

And they actually encourage their managers to give gifts to their employees for the holiday season again kind of showing their care for the community. And the other thing that a smaller company could do is volunteering, put up volunteer opportunities and allow your team to get involved or do a team building event around the volunteer opportunity. So I think we want to look at the great fortune 500 companies such as Cisco, and then we also want to look at groups such as The Entrepreneurs Foundation that are encouraging very, very important startups who well might be the next HPs Ciscos of the world and encourage them to start CSR early. And so it’s never too early to start that and to get that into the system and DNA of your culture.

JD: You want to know my big complaint about CSR? That they still haven’t moved into the social media arena. They see this as OK, they’re going to hand this off to their PR department, maybe they’ll get a write-up in a newspaper or two, or a magazine mention or Business Wire and that’s it; they don’t do anything with their corporate philanthropy or CSR programs with the community, with having conversations, with getting out there and getting people excited about the opportunities out there. Do you see an opportunity for companies to use social media to get the word out about CSR, to get people involved more?

PH: Certainly. I mean, I think everyone can get better at that whether you are a for-profit, nonprofit; there’s lots of different ways that you can get involved. And I think we all need to get better at that. It’s not just companies. I think we also have to give companies a break in the sense that, you know, their business objective is to make money for the shareholders. They need to do that, or they won’t exist. So they’ve got to stay focused on that. So they can’t just pull all their resources to go into CSR when a crisis hits. I respect the companies very, very much who get out there and provide some information about it because we need to remember that this is not their core business. Philanthropy is not necessarily what they know how to do. Their business may be creating routers, or telephone services or grocery stores; so we have to give them a little bit of I think credit that way, first of all in their response.

Now I do think that with social media there’s a lot that managers can do. Managers can send out text going out to the people reporting to them. I think it doesn’t always have to come from the top. So a lot of that can occur from managers and smaller business units taking a lead individually. So my hope really is that it’s not just coming the CEO headquarters; it’s not just only coming from the foundation or community relations but also coming from the individual managers who can have such power and such an amazing impact on our world and our community by simply going to their business units of 10, 20 or 30 or 50 people and providing some ways for them to get involved as a team.

How CSR will evolve in the future

JD: So I’m glad you agree with me on that. Why don’t we talk a little bit about the future and the way you see it going for Corporate Social Responsibility?

PH: I think for the future what is very exciting about it is before it was something, JD, very much of a “nice to have.” You know, “This is something that is nice to have, it’s a good, feel-good thing to do, and we want to be nice.” I think what’s really, really exciting is how do we begin to tie this into the bottom line. And it’s hard. You know when you look at employee retention and recruitment as we talked about earlier today, how do you really tie that in to the fact that it’s due to a CSR program? And I think to some extent, certain surveys are helping us determine that. And we can see that people are excited or more likely to stay at their company – usually 80, 90% bracket – if the company is going something positive. But what’s going to be really hard to determine is what is in the realm of CSR and philanthropy and strategic giving and strategic volunteering. What are really the programs that point, for example, to employee recruitment and retention? Because is it that the foundation gives money, and they just feel good? Or is it really a team event like a volunteer opportunity that allows employees to feel that they are part of a team and giving and involved that way and forging relationships not only within the community but with other team members within their company?

I think that we don’t know; what we have to watch is if in fact CSR is really helping with recruitment and retention, then what factors of CSR are truly driving that? Because that’s going to help companies grow their bottom line in a more productive way, help engage employees in a more productive way and then really help grow their business and their impact on their community.

So today what we have seen on the surveys are, “Is it likely that you would stay in the company longer because they have a CSR program in place? Or is it motivating enough for you to know that the foundation is giving out money? And that you have an employee match? So you’ll see those percentages will be 70, 80, 90% but what we really want to drill down for the future is what part of CSR? What part of those philanthropic programs, what part of them are motivating, so that we can really enhance those to help companies with their bottom line and the community. Now that is just one area JD, we are also looking at how do we increase product adoption and again looking at CSR specifically. Not just the CSR program, what aspects of the CSR program are helping with product adoption? What aspects of CSR are helping with client attraction and client retention? What we need to do is get more specific. How is CSR really a) helping our community and b) helping drive better bottom lines for our companies. And I think with that specificity CSR is going to be less of a responsibility and more of a business and social objective.

JD: If there are any companies or individuals out there listening to this program and want to learn more about CSR, where would you point them?

PH: There’s a couple of services. First, you can definitely go to our homepage, and at the bottom right-hand corner it says “Corporate Services,” and you can find out more about CSR there. The second is that there’s a great organization called CSRWire. And they have a lot of press releases and information about companies. They’ve been around for quite some time and they just do wonderful work, so I would definitely recommend them as well. Another one that I think—two others that I think are very positive, would be The Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthopy, run by Charles Moore, and also the Center for Corporate Citizenship , run by Brad Googins. So those provide some helpful resources to people, and people are also welcome to contact me, if I can provide them with any more resources.

JD: Great. And the Center for Corporate Citizenship, I think, is at Boston College and they’re online at http://bcccc.net. So that’s another good resource. Let’s wrap up by—let me ask you a couple questions here about how you personally, Pamela, what drives you? What’s your passion? How did you get involved in this field?

PH: You know, I’ve always had a very strong balance between wanting to do things efficiently and effectively, but at the same time, I always wanted my product to be something that really, really serves the business community and the—I’m sorry, the social community and our world. So it’s a balance for me, between the bottom line of striving to really accomplish results, balanced with the fact of, I want to serve our communities. And I think that’s always been something that’s been very strong for me. So I went into the for-profit world early on, out of Duke, and worked in sales and marketing and really appreciated it, but I wanted my product to serve the community. So it was exciting for me, with the advent of the web, out of school, to help me see, wow, we can create marketplaces, places that allow people to give and volunteer of their time, and we can make it efficient and effective and easy for them. So that was a huge motivating factor for me. And with UniversalGiving, on the company side, it’s just a no-brainer, because companies already have expanded globally all across the world. So they need that help, not only understanding how to be efficient and effective in philanthropy and CSR across the world, they need to know how to do that domestically and internationally. So for me, that’s a passion in helping companies know how to do that, and I think, second, you know, we all are striving—especially in this tough economic time—we all are striving for meaning. We all want to be effective, but we also want that meaning. And so for me, it balances the both. CSR allows me to balance both the business side and the community side, so that I can use both aspects of myself to serve the community. And I always kind of switch back and forth in a very positive balance. When I was twelve, I went on a family vacation in Mexico—we just saw devastating, devastating poverty as I walked down a cul-de-sac with my dad, and that struck me at a very, very young age, that I wanted to do something. And then, combined with the business skills that I had in sales and marketing and broadcast journalism and helping businesses, it really just started to become a natural growth—out-growth of caring about the community and caring about business, caring about both, which led me to really, truly appreciate CSR and to be committed to it.

JD: I should mention that to follow Pamela or UniversalGiving on Twitter, just go to http://twitter.com/universalgiving or http://twitter.com/pamelahawley. What’s ahead for UniversalGiving, Pamela? Any plans?

PH: Yes, we definitely have a lot planned and going on. I think that as we continue to expand our corporate services, I think it’s quite a fascinating time, especially on the vetting front. We have never faced such a time where vetting and third-party accreditation and vetting services are extremely important for any company getting involved with nonprofits. And so what we’re seeing the big trend here is that, companies are saying either, A, help us source nonprofits that meet our objectives and vet them, or B, please vet organizations we currently have, because if you have that third party source and accreditation, if anything happens or there is a debacle regarding a terrorist incident, or anything of that nature, the nice part is that you have a third-party accreditor who can help take and field that responsibility when that occurs. So, I think companies need to be very careful. Especially if we are operating in a very volatile world. Companies are expanding globally; they aren’t stopping. It’s something that we can help them with.

We are expanding our vetting services to really start drill down in to the local level. What are the cultural regulations? What are the legal regulations? What is it about philanthropy on the local level in Japan, in Germany, in Somalia? Is it even possible to go to Somalia? All of these different things that we can look in to as experts to understand how to approach CSR on the local ground. And that is where we have become – experts in helping companies. We see it’s going be even more important as companies expand globally. What do you have in place that is both quality and effective regarding CSR on the local level? And that is what we can really help companies with.

JD: Right. When I started out researching this area of CSR for our new site Socialbrite.org several months ago a lot people did point me your way, Pamela. So you are one of the go-to people in the CSR field. I guess we are going to continue to have discussions about this in the months and weeks ahead: some blog posts, maybe some podcasts. Anything else you want to add while we wrap up here?

PH: “I think what is really critical is making sure that for anyone who wants to be involved with CSR is it’s not a light endeavor. I think that some people think it’s a PR push, and it’s not. PR and Marketing are an important part of CSR, but you really have to have the right intentions and right motives getting involved. You need to make sure that is communicated very, very thoroughly throughout your organization, through marketing and communications channels. It is possible to tie it to your bottom line. Its very possible. It does take some work, and it does take some patience. But I think we are getting better that way.

I guess that I would really emphasize is that as we move forward in exploring this topic of CSR, we have to look at both people and corporate organizations and non-profit organizations. Increasingly the focus is going to be on quality. That is what the focus is going to be on. It’s going to be on quality, on trust of relationships, on appropriate vetting measures that take place because we want our companies to succeed and we want our communities to succeed. So I think trust and quality. Less is more is going to be important both in CSR as well as on the web. So for example, when you come to UniversalGiving, we don’t have a billion non-profits up there and the reason why is because we have trusted relationships with these non-profits that we have cultivated over the years. And we are going to continue to do that. I would say that in CSR as well as our world, some of the things that seem mundane or maybe unexciting are the most important things that we can establish. Integrity, values, trust, long-term relationships, and we will talk about that more in CSR. If people would also want to look on my blog, Living and Giving, which is at wordpress. You can go to pamelahawley.wordpress.com. You’ll see more of what I have written about CSR there, but I think we have to really take a look at that trust and integrity as we move forward in CSR.

JD: Really great insights, Pamela. So thank you so much for being here.

Resources

• Universal Giving

• Living and Giving: The Pamela Hawley Blog

• Center for Corporate Citizenship

• CSRWire

• The Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthopy

• Socialbrite.org

The post Transcript of podcast on corporate social responsibility appeared first on Socialbrite.

Marketing for charitable causes from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

The smartest guy I know in the cause marketing space is Chris Noble, CEO of 8-year-old Kompolt. With the help of a grant from eBay, Chris’s team at Kompolt is organizing the nonprofit track Thursday at BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas.

Some $6 billion was raised online in 2008 for charity and nonprofits — less than 5 percent of total US charitable giving. Chris thinks we’ll see that trend follow the same growth curve as ecommerce over the next 10 years, and as it does, cause marketing and cause campaigns will play an increasingly important role.

In this 13-minute video interview, Chris talks about the rapidly evolving field of cause marketing — working with companies to promote a social good. Major brands have begun backing charitable causes, and celebrities have as well. Now social media, and participation by online communities, is throwing an extra dimension into the mix.

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo. Some highlights:

• The first cause marketing campaign was by American Express in 1980s. A penny of each transaction was donated to renovating the Statue of Liberty.

• Social media is the latest wrinkle in cause marketing, enabling users to have a higher level of direct engagement with a brand.

• Wal-mart and its 11 Moms campaign, where Wal-mart reached out to 11 mommy bloggers, is is just one example of where companies are giving back to the community.

• During Valentine’s Day 2009 Kompolt ran an engagement campaign for Electrolux, the appliance manufacturerer, which wanted to highlight its new baking products. They ran a virtual bake sale on Faceboook, and for every cupcake sent to a friend, Electrolux donated gave $1 to ovarian cancer research. Kompolt sent out close to 200,000 cupcakes during the week and the Electrolux website got 40,000 new registrations.

• Chris cites examples of celebrities such as Carroll Shelby, creator-designer of the Ford Mustang, rallying people around a cause. Kompolt ran a campaign for Restoration Hardware around the 1967 Shelby Cobra and the branded page drew 700,000 unique visits over 10 days. Shelby’s charity supports organ donations for children.

“We see the nexus of celebrity and charity as one that’s only going to grow from here on,” he says. “A lot of under-50 celebs have grown up in a culture of giving back, and it’s very much a part of Hollywood culture now. … It’s not about celebrity but it is about community.”

As Causeitsmybirthday.com demonstrated this past week, anybody can now get online and rally friends and supporters around a cause, raising hundreds or thousands of dollars for a single charity. “That’s incredible,” Chris says.

What’s enabling this is social media. “It allows all of us to run our own little door-to-door campaigns inside our own social networks,” he says.

The post Cause marketing with celebrities, social media appeared first on Socialbrite.

We had a fascinating conversation over a lunch of yummy falafels at GoodVision, an Israeli consulting company that specializes in planning and managing corporate social responsibility processes in firms and governmental agencies. General manager Ivri Verbin took us through the site’s mission and mentioned these sites, which also support community efforts:

• The Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire, a good U.S.-based resource for news about the space.
• Global-demos.org, which describes itself as “a transnational civil society platform. It pools the globally dispersed and fragmented knowledge on the social and environmental performance of corporations. It empowers citizens, unites civil society and democratically embeds global business practices.”
• Koldor.org, the first Jewish global platform of young leadership. established seven years ago by professionals around the world.

But the highlight came when six young people trooped into the room. Ariel Markhovski, Moran Haliba, Polina Garaev, Yael Rozanes and Gregory Karp were brought in to discuss perceptions of Israel around the world, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other high-minded issues. (Two of the young women wore their Army uniforms.) Their view of the prospects for peace ranged  from skepticism to hope. “I think when our own children grow up, then there will be a chance for peace,” said one.

Said another: “Today every kid who graduates can go and start a company at age 20. There’s a spirit that tells you you can do whatever you want.”

But they only really let their guard down — you could see their body language change — when I asked them about whether they and their peers were using social media tools like YouTube and MySpace.

Nearly all of them said they were using Facebook and YouTube because their friends do.

Deb Schultz asked: Why YouTube and not Israel-based Metacafe?

“What’s popular in the U.S. becomes popular here, because we have friends over there,” said one of the 20somethings.

Scoble has already posted a Qik video of our talk with the youths, taken with his cameraphone, here.

Bialik-Rogozin School

One of the week’s most touching visits came during a stop at the multicultural Bialik-Rogozin School  in Tel Aviv. The school enrolls 726 students, chiefly children of immigrants and migrant workers. The children, ages 5 to 16, hail from 29 countries, such as the Philippines, Nigeria and 33 who escaped killings in the Darfur area of Sudan.

“It’s the only place where the kids feel safe and are accepted regardless of their background,” an official told us.

The school has an extraordinary agreement with the immigration police not to raid the school for undocumented immigrants. They’ve worked with the Israeli government to get citizenship for 230 of the students so far.

“Hiding kids in a Jewish state is someting that is very loaded,” said Yossi Vardi, creator of the pioneering instant messaging program ICQ, who insists on not receiving recognition for his philanthropic contributions to the school. Dozens of volunteers and numerous organizations contribute as well.

Vardi pointed out aptly that education is not just about learning facts and imparting knowledge. “It’s also about what value system do you give to the kids. It’s about teaching young kids to be a mensch.”

We spent a few minutes chatting up the kids in Hebrew (um, I had a translator) and watching classroom instruction. Inspiring.

Robert Scoble has a great post about his experience at the Rogozin School here.

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