As an employer, you have a terrific opportunity to turn your employees into agents of change, whose growing sense of philanthropy will in turn influence others. Longfellow's philanthropy, for example, has proved contagious to its more than 200 full-and part-time employees. One of its aerobics instructors initiated a Dance for Heart event at the health club for the American Heart Association. Two others turned the club into a collection point for used coats and workout shoes, which were donated to the homeless.
Rhino Records, a young record company in Santa Monica, Calif., with annual revenues of $20 million, specifically rewards employees who engage in charitable activities. In one program, workers who contribute 16 hours of personal time per year in community service can take Christmas week off with pay. A second program kicks in for employees who exceed 16 hours of service. They can take equivalent time off, up to six days. Nearly all of Rhino's 100 employees participate in the first program and about half in the second, at a cost of about $20,000 a year to the company. The high participation rate is partly a result of the company's active promotion of social consciousness. It organizes monthly speakers on a wide range of social, economic, and political issues, such as the Los Angeles riots, old-growth forests, and Native American rights. Everyone who attends gets a free lunch.
While freedom of choice is Rhino's philosophy, it may be tempting to a company to channel employees toward a favorite charity. On one level it makes sense, too -- the more hours your company pours into a specific project, the greater effect you'll have. The question is, Do you want to dictate what your employees should care about? Many company owners solve that problem by giving employees the chance to work in both a cause of their own and a company-targeted charity.
Watering Inc., a publisher of automotive magazines in Bennington, Vt., has chosen that approach. One program is designed to improve parents' involvement in their children's education. Employees may take two days of paid vacation per year to go to school with one of their children. Childless employees can opt to accompany a neighbor's child or volunteer at a school. The downside of such targeted programs is that they don't inspire everyone to act. Only about 10 of Watering's 85 employees participate in the education program. But the company has 100% participation in another philanthropic initiative: it grants all employees $300 a year to give to the charities of their choice. In a separate program, Watering, which has annual revenues of $18.5 million, will match an employee's additional personal gift to a charity, up to $300.
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Attract Other Companies
Possibly the simplest and cheapest thing you can do to make a difference in the world is to be the first to take a stand on an issue, then involve others. For example, as part of his company's celebration of Earth Day, Longfellow's Hammel spearheaded an environmental task force at a local chamber of commerce. The group got 50 local businesses to sign a pledge to commit to following 10 environmentally sound practices and published it in the local newspaper.
Leveraging its reputation as an innovator for social change, Just Desserts, the San Francisco bakery, has persuaded 35 other companies to join with it to adopt an elementary school in a low-income area. "Some of the kids are malnourished, and many of them come from homes where they're abused," cofounder Elliot Hoffman says. "It's just a very poor environment for learning -- the next logical step from there is jail." Last fall the adopters got 100 volunteers to plant gardens and trees on the school grounds. In April about 700 volunteers, drawn mostly from the sponsoring companies, painted the school and refurbished 10 rooms, including classrooms, the gymnasium, the library, and the auditorium.
Serving as a role model is important when dealing with controversial or relatively unknown causes. Bill Seretta, of Harper/Connecting Point Computer Center, worried that his personal and corporate championing of a gay-and lesbian-rights bill in Maine would alienate some customers. Instead, Harper's public position seemed to validate the private opinions of other company owners. "I got a lot of positive response from other businesspeople," Seretta says. "They saw it as a brave thing to do."
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Leverage Your Company's Expertise
Lynn Gilbert Bignell was inspired to volunteer after reading The Day America Told the Truth, by James Patterson and Peter Kim (Prentice Hall, 1991), a book that paints a vivid portrait of America's social impoverishment. The question was, How could her executive-search company, Gilbert Tweed Associates Inc., make the biggest impact? Management-committee members considered and rejected allowing employees to volunteer on company time at a not-for-profit company. "Giving people time off doesn't leverage the talent we have here," she explains. "Certainly it has meaning, but it doesn't accomplish what we're capable of."
Instead, Bignell, cofounder Janet Tweed, and partner Stephanie Pinson decided to use their company's skills to enhance nonprofit operations. "Why send our 50 employees out as volunteers when Gilbert Tweed can teach nonprofit organizations how to recruit 500 better volunteers for themselves?" she asks. So the company ran a lottery for nonprofits devoted to health care or education. The winners would receive free executive searches for a high-level position; human-resources consulting services; or admission to one of the firm's seminars on selecting and retaining personnel.
The $5.8-million company, which is based in New York City, received more than 500 inquiries from organizations all over the country, including Alaska, and picked 20 winners. Bignell considers the lottery a far superior way to give back than the occasional pro bono work her firm used to do. "This is a much more concerted, proactive effort, as opposed to simply responding to a client that you couldn't say no to," she says.
Dough for Kids, one of Saint Louis Bread's philanthropic programs, also uses the company's expertise as a baker to help local public and private schools. In coordination with the schools, the company supplies students with $12.60 gift certificates for its products. The kids sell the certificates for $5 but reimburse the company only $2.50 per certificate. The schools' proceeds go toward equipment and supplies.
