Some time back, a new women’s fitness clothing store, Lucy, opened in Cherry Creek here in Denver.  I have enjoyed shopping there as I like their often unusual yet functional sporty apparel designs.  As part of their commitment to being green, they switched in the past year from sending mailers to sending emails.  A recent email newsletter caught my eye as I had not been aware previously of their commitment to community involvement.  So after some research on their website and re-reading past newsletters, I now like Portland, OR-based Lucy even better!

At Lucy, “our passion is to inspire women to achieve their personal athletic goals, despite obstacles both large and small. We support charitable organizations that advocate these same values. With every lucy store grand opening, we donate 10% of the event’s sales to a designated non-profit organization from that store’s community. We also donate clothing to organizations in need and participate in charity race events throughout the year.”

In early September, the emailer about Hatha Yoga pants had the following:

Lucy is clearly dedicated to partnering with their employees and customers to take action in their communities – through donating a percentage of purchases and other activities and events in which they participate.

How can you let your customers see what you stand for?  How can you invite them to join forces with you for positive change and to show caring in the community? Doing something to give back and be supportive, no matter how small it may seem, is great — AND so much more can be accomplished by connecting with people inside and outside your company walls to work together in pursuit of a common goal.  What can you do? How can your company be an agent of change?

Did you get your New Year’s Resolutions set for your company’s 2008 community involvement?  Did you set specific goals?  Did you develop a written action plan with goals, tasks, and responsibilities clearly defined?  We are almost two months into 2008 now, how are you doing?  Have you stayed focused?  Made progress?  If you did not do a plan yet, it is definitely not too late…start one today!

The beginning of a new fiscal/calendar year is a perfect time to revisit your company’s community involvement mission and strategy and to make specific plans for the coming year.  If you don’t have a written plan, it is way too easy to dilute your impact by being all over the map with your contributions, become overextended with your scarce resources, and cause confusion among employees and other stakeholders about the focus and true commitment of your company’s philanthropic actions.  Also, without a written plan as your map, it is hard to know when you have achieved what you set out to do.  While the feel good part of community involvement is great, there is the potential for much more significant impact for all concerned with just a bit of planning and strategy

The following are the two minimum steps we suggest all businesses take at this time of year.  In the first step you need to revisit last year’s contributions – even if only briefly.  In the second step, you need to set some goals and targets for the upcoming year. Hopefully, you already have instituted in-depth systems for both these processes.  If not, this should help get you started.  If you need help, send us an email at info@bnconnections.com.

The following series of questions are meant as food for thought as you or a committee of employees and/or other stakeholders make your 2008 plans.

Reviewing 2007:

• What organizations or causes did our company support over the past year?
• What process did we use to select them?  How did that work?
• How did we support them (dollars, in-kind, people, commerce)?
• What was the total dollar value of all of our contributions (not just the tax deductable amount)?
• What percentage of either our gross revenue or net profit was our total contribution?
• What significant benefit did our support leverage for the community?  For our company?
• Were our community involvement efforts consciously tied to our business goals?
• What lessons did we learn this last year?  What do we want to be sure to do again?  What do we want to change?

Planning for 2008:

• What resources (cash, in-kind, people) do we anticipate sharing in 2008? How much of each?
• Do we have options for engaging in commerce-based activities with nonprofits?
• What is the target percentage for our overall contribution? (1%, 2%, 3%, 5%, 10%, 100%,??)  Of sales?  Profit?
• What is the targeted total dollar value?
• Are there financial trends for our company that we need to pay attention to when thinking about our community involvement?
• Given this projected level of resources, what strategy will we use to allocate our resources this year?
• What causes or organizations will we focus on working with or supporting this year?  Why?
• How will we select them?  Is there a process or is it first come, first served?
• Do any of these link with our other business goals for 2008?  If so, how?
• Are there times of year that are not good for heavy involvement due to existing commitments and work flow?
• How will we time our various types of involvement for this year?  One big project?  Something each quarter?  Ongoing?  Or…?
• What are our specific goals?
• What action steps do we need to achieve our goals?
• Who (person, department, team or??) will have responsibility for which pieces?
• What are our tracking and reporting expectations?
• How and with whom will we share information about our effort?

Today I got the first issue of the free BNC Newsletter for 2008 completed and sent to our subscribers.  In the newsletter, we listed our February webinar offerings.  In case any of these are topics that might help you as one of my blog readers, I am will list them here, for your information.  If you want more information on any of these, go to Events.

BNC WEBINAR: Community Involvement 101

February 13, 2008  Time: 4:00 – 5:00 pm (ET)   Where: Online at your desktop

Community involvement (CI) is an essential consideration for companies of any size committed to sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR). CI requires strategic planning and action to be effective — just like the” other” components of CSR (ethics and governance, human rights, and marketplace, workplace, and environmental policies and practices). Don’t default to using to a shotgun approach for your company’s community contributions. Instead, invest scarce resources in ways that provide mutual benefits – maximizing impact on the causes you care most while also positively addressing your business goals. This webinar will debunk the five myths of community involvement, give you an overview of the menu of options for contributions and commerce with nonprofits/NGOs, and present four types of business benefits beyond the obvious “feel good factor” and tax deductions.

BNC WEBINAR: How to Conduct a Community Involvement Audit

Thursday, February 21st, 12:00 – 1:00 pm (ET)  Where: Online at your desktop

Do you know value AND the impact of your company’s contributions to nonprofits last year? How did your efforts really benefit the nonprofit(s)? Your company and its bottom line? This webinar will show you a three-step process for (1) summarizing and valuing the total contributions made by your company last year to nonprofit organizations, (2) assessing the effectiveness of your internal organizational systems and decision-making for community involvement and (3) assessing the true impact of your community involvement strategy (or lack thereof) and actions on the nonprofits you supported. After doing a community involvement audit, you can tweak your efforts in the spirit of continuous improvement to make sure there is more ROI this year!

BNC WEBINAR: Moving Beyond Checkbook Philanthropy

Tuesday, February 26, 2008   Time: 2:00 – 3:00 pm (ET)   Where: Online at your desktop

Is money tight? Do you think that you can’t support community nonprofits because you don’t have a giving budget? Think again! There are many other very effective ways to provide needed support that do not involve cash and may be even more effective in building a win/win relationship and helping you meet specific business goals. Learn about your menu of options for contributions and commerce with nonprofits/NGOs.

On December 18th, there was a little announcement in the Colorado Business section of the Denver Post about Junior Achievement of Colorado Springs and Papa John’s International Inc.’s new national partnership to help local JA offices.  Junior Achivement is a nonprofit that “seeks to educate and inspire young people to succeed in a global economy.”  When I went to the JA website, I noticed they had a little ticker tape update running across the top of their site with news of various new corporate support.  I liked it.  Nothing about Papa John’s there though- it has rolled off since I clipped this last month.  However, I did find the press release in their archive.

The news announcement I saw mentioned that Papa John’s would donate $2.00 to JA for each customer who placed an online order at www.papajohns.com and uses the online coupon with the JA logo.  I thought sounded like a nice cause marketing effort.  When I read the press release, I discovered this is actually a much broader and more integrated partnership – which I really like to see.  When a business mobilizes multiple resources to support one nonprofit organization, there can be much greater impact for both organizations.  The release said, “Papa John’s International, Inc. (NASDAQ: PZZA) and Junior Achievement (JA) today announced a national partnership that will help local JA Offices deliver work readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy lessons to U.S. students. Papa John’s will donate two dollars to JA for each customer who places their pizza order at www.papajohns.com and uses the online coupon displaying the Junior Achievement logo.

In addition, Papa John’s franchises and corporate-owned restaurants will conduct “job shadow” events at which JA students can experience first-hand what it is like to own and run a Papa John’s restaurant, and Papa John’s employees will be encouraged to volunteer to teach JA classes at schools in their communities. JA Offices can also expand the partnership to include recruiting Papa John’s franchisees and local market team leadership to serve on their boards of directors. “

I am hungry and in the mood for pizza (even if it doesn’t fit my New Year’s Resolution…), so where do I look for the online coupon so my $2 can go to JA if I am going to order pizza anyway?  Don’t see it on the JA site…  On the Papa John’s site, after clicking a link for online specials and coupons and entering my delivery address, I found the specials listed.

Next time you order pizza for lunch at the office, remember Papa John’s!

I just ran across a question in LinkedIn posted by Tracy Chambers, a management consultant from Vancouver (http://www.linkedin.com/answers/management/corporate-governance/MGM_CGV/154082-17019495.) “Have you tied your corporate giving and volunteering program to your corporate strategy?”  Rodger Keesee, President, Kinetix Technology Services,  commented that ROI and volunteering were antonyms and that his company’s community involvement had no expectation of a return.  Loretta Mullany, President, The Mullaney Group, felt her company did get a return in terms of employee skills and goodwill and name recognition for marketing purposes.  “Frankly, we do this because we believe in it and because it is something we can do to give back to society. We don’t bother to formally measure ROI. I do sometimes have to make sure our volunteerism doesn’t hurt ROI by distracting from more profitable activities. It is a balancing act.”

My take is as follows and is what I commented to Tracy.  In my work, I sometimes hear an ambivalence from companies about whether it is OK to expect some “return” from their community involvement or to tell others about what they are doing.  If your community support/engagement comes from a place of authentic values and is not an attempt to whitewash other offenses, I think doing double duty – providing a benefit to both the business and nonprofit – is great and the only way to go.  Having a “return” to your business is not sacreligious.  I recently interviewed leaders from 50 companies of various sizes for a book I am writing for businesses on how to do more effective community involvement.  They all felt their community involvement had a positive impact for the company – everything from “feeling good” to strengthening their business reputation, customer loyalty, increasing sales, employee skills and retention, and access to capital. 

While I believe that doing something in the local community is usually better than doing nothing – just offering up your scarce resources for any social issue (whether cash or time or whatever else) on a first come first served basis can be a missed opportunity to synergize a greater impact in the community and to strengthen your company.  My mantra is “one pack of hotdog buns to every nonprofit that asks has no real impact - for the community or the company.”  Having a strategy about how to best use your company’s resources, skill sets and overall comparative advantage in service to the causes you choose to support with a link to business goals only makes sense to me and is the basis of my company, Business Nonprofit Connections, Inc.’s work with businesses of all sizes. 

My message is similar with nonprofit clients.  With nonprofits, I always emphasize the need to think about themselves as assets in the community and to think about engaging with businesses from a sense of win/win “partnerships” — not just the old school paradigm of checkbook philanthropy. The business also needs to get something out of the engagement or it is likely to be an unsustainable relationship.  The nonprofit will find themselves beating the bushes for new donors next year for their silent auction or other resource development activities which is really time consuming. With some tweaks, both sides can and I think should benefit.

One of the difficulties I have encountered talking about business engagement with nonprofits and other community organizations is the varied terminology that is used depending who I am talking with.  Terms I hear a lot include:

• Community involvement
• Business philanthropy
• Corporate philanthropy
• Strategic philanthropy
• Strategic partnerships with nonprofits
• Strategic alliances with nonprofits
• Community relations
• Community investment
• Giving Back
• Charitable giving/contributions
• Charity
• Paying it forward
• Philanthropreneurism
• Venture philanthropy
• Social (civic) entrepreneurism
• Social enterprise
• Corporate citizenship

And the list goes on.  It is mindboggling!  To me, while many sound similar, they have subtle differences under the surface.  So which to use?  I have struggled with this terminology issue for years!!  What is the best term to represent my philosophy and vision concerning the interaction between organizations labeled as businesses and those labeled as nonprofits in the eyes of the IRS?   Do I use one in common usage and define it for my purposes or do I create something new and have the uphill battle to get it recognized and understood like the LOHAS folks?  Generally, I have opted for the terms “community involvement”, “strategic partnerships”, or “business nonprofit connections.” 

Some people strongly prefer “community investment” because it indicates more clearly the notion of two-way benefit and the need for some ROI for the business, as well as the community.  Though growing in popularity, it is still not a term used by the bulk of businesses – especially smaller ones.  I am all about mutual benefits and all-win approaches but I am still lukewarm to using that term in my work.

For years, I also shied away from using the term “philanthropy” because I felt it can imply a sense of noblesse oblige – where the “rich” company (or business person) is providing a handout to those less fortunate from a feeling of burden or guilt.  That certainly doesn’t feel like a strategic partnership or “teach a man to fish” approach to me.  It can seem more like a one way grand gesture from the powerful to the weak that does not fully acknowledge the assets and experience in the trenches of the nonprofit colleague.  Also, it seemed easy to confuse individual and business forms of philanthropy.  However, when I looked it up in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary the definition seems fine:“goodwill to fellowmen; especially : active effort to promote human welfare.”  That’s not so bad, right? “Philanthropic,” however, is defined as “dispensing or receiving aid from funds set aside for humanitarian purposes.” Coming out of the international development field where there was a lot of talk about “trade not aid”, I tend to associate some forms of aid to continued dependency – not breaking cycles poverty and other social issues.  Instead, I sought a term that implies a greater sense of partnership and potential synergy for positive social change that can result from different types of organizations with their varied skill sets, networks, and other assets working together.  So which term IS best for that? Frankly, I have been stumped.  I also have not wanted whatever word choice to seem ”old hippy”, “granola”, or political because I feel that business engagement in communities is for everyone.

The truth is that as much as I originally avoided the term because of the undertones I perceived it had, business people do use “philanthropy” all the time to talk about their efforts as evidenced, for example, in their online search terms to find more information about how to strengthen what they are doing; business people that have good intentions and want to grow their companies and actively show their values through their engagement and support of communities.  Those are the people with whom I want to work.  So why shy away from it anymore?  Why not get off my idealistic high horse and go with a commonly used term?  Wouldn’t that be the easiest path in to a substantive dialogue – later sharing my specific philosophy and principles to help businesses rethink and tweak what they are doing to be more strategic and “all win”?  I now think so – hence the name of this blog!

What terms do you prefer? What do you see as their shades of meaning? What do you see as trends in how people are talking about such activities and initiatives?

Community involvement is one of the five essential components of business social responsibility.  Community involvement (CI) refers to the myriad ways businesses can draw upon their unique expertise, resources, and connections to actively engage with community organizations to address local and global issues.  Most commonly, companies provide contributions of cash, in-kind, and people to support the work of nonprofit organizations.  However, more and more companies are now engaging with nonprofits through commerce. 

To be most effective, community involvement needs to be authentic, strategic and linked to a company’s specific business model, mission, and needs.  Community involvement initiatives, while providing benefit to a nonprofit, also need to be designed to help the company address such issues as reputation/visibility, customers, employees, and investors.  

There are more than one million nonprofits in the United States today – and all need business support.  Therefore, companies need to be very intentional about the causes and organizations with which they choose to get involved.   There may be some very worthy organizations that are best supported as part of your individual philanthropy but for a variety of reasons may not be an optimal choice from a business perspective.   I am not suggesting businesses should support causes they don’t really care about just to make a buck.  What I am suggesting is that “all win” choices are good.  If you would like your employees to be stronger as a team, choosing to support an organization that really needs volunteers for a project might be a wiser choice than one that only wants a silent auction gift certificate.  

Food for Thought

How have you selected which nonprofits are supported by your company?

What benefits did your support provide for the nonprofit?  For your company?

Front and center on Seventh Generation’s homepage is a quote from the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy: “In every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” Its name comes from this quote, and the company does everything possible to ensure that its product, business, and community involvement embody this tenant. This idea, and name, holds the company together as it “reflects not only [its] philosophy but [its] dream of restoring and protecting the earth for our children and all who will follow in our path.”

Seventh Generation is now the leading US brand for non-toxic and environmentally friendly household products. Seventh Generation’s 50 plus products are offered online and in retail stores across the country, in both natural focused stores as well as national chains. By providing non-toxic, recycled, environmentally friendly products the company has already saved 327,800 trees, 233,000 pounds of greenhouse gases, 1.3 million gallons of petroleum, and 124 million gallons of water.

For this exact reason, the company recently received the ‘Pioneer of Precaution’ award from the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, the Environmental Research Foundation, and the Science and Environmental Health Network. It also gives grants to local community organizations, consistent with the mindset of focusing on the future. Grants are approved on a case-by-case basis, and the company has chosen to focus on environmentally and family oriented community organizations. These grants have also helped the company in its goal of being a community based business.

But it’s not stopping at that. Seventh Generation is trying to get even more involved, and taking time to think critically about how its involvement can best affect the next seven generations. As it evaluates opportunities for nonprofit and peer business relationships, it’s making sure to engage in internal dialogue, so as not to over-commit and to maximize its influence. By considering a wide variety of options and extensively internally collaborating, it is a rather slow process of change. Despite the fast-paced focus in business today, Seventh Generation believes that this approach will prove to be a long term advantage.

To this end, it’s bringing in a ‘regenerative strategic planner,’ looking at research from the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College, and planning on hiring a consultant (as the company is only 42 employees strong) once it crafts a solid vision for the involvement. This thoughtful approach is linked to one piece of advice that Director of Corporate Consciousness, Gregor Barnum, gave: focus internally first. This means making sure that there is a strong internal dialogue, transparency, and real community between employees at the company. By understanding the purpose of the company all employees, and thus community programs, are more likely to be aligned and successful.

The company admits it has forgotten this at times in the past, and failed to follow up on grants given to nonprofits. Changes in the program will seek to prevent this lapse in the future, as Seventh Generation wants to support sustainable and long term relationships. Barnum describes the changing mindset as an epistemological change, trying to move away from traditional linear thinking to a more holistic approach.

Even in how the company has chosen to change its approach to community involvement, it is embodying the mission it laid out for itself. This is perhaps the most important lesson from the Seventh Generation case: not losing sight of your true values in times of change.

By Louise Doyle
Based on interview with Gregor Barnum, Director of Corporate Consciousness at Seventh Generation, conducted by Susan Hyatt.

More information on Seventh Generation, Inc. can be found at: http://www.seventhgeneration.com/

In order to meet changing demands of employees involved in workplace giving, CreateHope, Inc. and Charities@Work have partnered to pioneer a new program. CreateHope is a business geared towards managing and advising business and government on community involvement. Charities@Work is a non-profit alliance. Together, they are offering a ‘workplace-giving management solution.’ The solution aims to utilize the technology of CreateHope to streamline the process and offer employees a wider variety of giving options through the Charities@Work network. Employees also have access to Create Hope’s evaluation of transparency and financial accounting within charities. Charities within the network will ideally benefit from increased donations and a decreased need for traditional and expensive marketing campaigns. The new program comes out next month. Charities@Work boasts that they can customize a workplace giving program, giving employees more room to decide how to contribute. CreateHope offers both products and services to customers needing help adjusting to the rapidly changing environment of corporate philanthropy and involvement.

For more information visit the CSR Wire Press Release at: http://www.csrwire.com/PressRelease.php?id=5809

Charities@Work: http://www.charitiesatwork.org/

CreateHope, Inc: http://www.createhope.com/