From their website, “Last year, Ace Hardware customers across the three states donated more than 30,000 pounds of holiday lights to the campaign, raising $14,000 for families of children diagnosed with cancer and bringing the total amount of lights donated by local Ace customers since 2008 to more than 77,000 pounds. Local stores hope to increase this year’s donation by 50 percent and have set a goal of collecting 45,000 pounds of holiday lights and extension cords during the 2011 holiday season.”

“Each year, more than 200 million strings of incandescent lights are sold in the U.S., and most of them end up in the landfill,” said Linda Worthington, marketing director Lights For Life. “Just the small act of dropping your broken or old lights or extension cords in a collection bin at an Ace Hardware can make a big difference in the lives of the families of kids with cancer.”

Holiday lights and extension cords can be dropped off at participating Ace Hardware stores between November 15 and February 15. The holiday light recycling program adds to the growing list recycling programs offered by area Ace Hardware stores. Many Ace Hardware stores also accept used compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), mercury-containing thermostats, used cell phones and rechargeable batteries for recycling.”

Great idea!  I always feel bad putting my strands of dead icicle lights in the trash…I have a box to go to Ace today!  How about you?

While we ate our breakfast, each of the six round tables discussed 11 questions concerning community involvement.  They were great questions – I suggest you take a minute and think about the answers to them from your own perspective.

1. Have you arm twisted your vendors or suppliers to get them involved in the community?  How did that work for you?
2. Are government projects and iniatives appropriately steering resources to causes or are they taking funds away from other community groups and causes?
3. Has your company tied your community efforts back to business goals?  If so, how?  Any cause related marketing projects?
4. How do you find time for community efforts – for yourself or your company/employees?
5. What impact is the economic situation having on your giving now or in the future?  What about the overall impact on the nonprofits and the community?
6. Is it OK to self-promote your community efforts, or is that being disingenuous?
7. Do you measure your community efforts?  If so, how?
8. Are your employees involved?  What impact does that have on morale/productivity?
9. Is it good to have a narrow communtiy focus or more of a broad-based focus?
10. Is it appropriate for nonprofits to be invovled in political issues?
11. Black-tie dinners-enough?  Or bring ‘em on?  Alternatives?

The keynote speaker for the event was Peter Coors.  Peter currently is Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Molson Coors Brewing Company.  He previously served as Chairman of the Board of Adolph Coors Company since 2002, and was Chief Executive Officer from May 2000 to July 2002. Peter talked about the unique philosophy we have in the United States concerning citizen (and business) involvement in philanthropy as compared to many other countries where the government is expected to provide all needed servcies in communities.  He talked about business philanthropy being not an obligation for companies as no one is making us do it – rather he feels it is the right thing to do and makes good business sense.  People want to do business with people they think care.

Peter highlighted eight things for companies to remember when engaged in community involvement.

1. Keep your corporate hat on when working with nonprofits – bring business thinking to addressing community issues.
2. Encourage nonprofits to measure their results and business can help with that.
3. Help nonprofits measure their effectiveness using both quantitative approaches while also focusing on the harder to measure feel good factor.
4. Offer in-kind resources
5. Encourage employees and their families to get involved in community projects.  Encourage them to have the same giving philosophy as the business’ leaders.
6. Effectively use your business leverage to make things happen.
7. Be creative, shake up the status quo and look at things differently especially during tough economic times when dollars available have diminished – right now by 40%!!
8. Never doubt the Power of One!  Adopt one school, mentor one child, help one neighborhood.  One person or one business – can make a difference.

It great to have been invited to participate in this event and meet leading local business people who are so committed to supporting their local communities.  The Two Percent Club has a new website and is now actively looking to engage even more businesses as part of its membership.  I am glad to be a member!

Below the paragraph, the bulk of the ad is taken up with an alphabetical list of names of more then 800 organizations that Wells Fargo supports.  Very impressive! 

Four things I liked about the ad:

1.  Wells Fargo put the information out into the community about what they do so that everyone reading the paper has a sense of them as a company.   They went beyond just having a section on their website or in an annual report that goes to customers and other stakeholders.

2.  Wells Fargo provided a concrete dollar value for the support they have provided to Colorado nonprofits – $3.7 million represents a significant chunk of change and service hours provided to strengthen efforts to address local issues!

3.  They list the names of more than 800 organizations – it is a great visual but when reading the list, it is easy to see the wide variety of causes and organizations they support.  Says something about their community engagement for sure.

4.  While I usually am “all about” having businesses focus on fewer rather than greater numbers of nonprofits and causes to support, in this case that was clearly not the approach used by Wells…However, I am also “all about” tying a company’s community giving to its business goals.  In this case, Wells Fargo customers represent a wide cross section of the local population having many different causes they support.  Therefore, it is definitely in Wells Fargo’s business interest to support as many different types of organizations as possible in Colorado.  Absolutely fits with their business goals.

5.  OK…and I guess there is also a fifth thing I liked about this ad – Wells Fargo states they are about more than writing a check and instead provide other forms of support as well, including employee volunteer time.

There is more information about Wells Fargo in the community on their website.  On their community home page, it states company wide they are “Giving Hope: $266,000 per day to non-profits and 611,000 employee volunteer hours in 2007.”

Well done, Wells Fargo even though I no longer use you as my banking institution!  How can your company follow Wells Fargo’s lead and share what you are doing (whatever that might be and however comparatively small) with your current and potential customers?  It matters!