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Charity Begins at Work
May 01, 2008
By Margery Weinstein
Few company leaders would ever discourage volunteering on behalf of a favorite charity. In fact, unlike the old days, when donating time was strictly for workers' weekends and days off, more CEOs are encouraging employees to use their professional expertise, corporate resources, and even work time to aid community projects. What do they get in return? More than the satisfaction of doing a good deed. Participation in public service programs can be an effective way to improve teambuilding, leadership development, and strategic thinking skills.
Companies with Causes
 For General Mills, involvement with community projects is more than a string of isolated events. The company's General Mills Foundation provides grants and organizes employee volunteers for worthy causes, many of which it has an ongoing relationship with. "Volunteerism is one of the great ways we live out our corporate values," says Associate Director of Community Action Donna Svendsen. "It has been a historic part of our culture from when the company first started." With the Foundation established more than 50 years ago, and a formal volunteer program in operation since 1982, contributing time and effort to charity is engrained in its workers' mentalities, with support for community involvement extending throughout the company. "Our CEO and all of our senior leaders serve on nonprofit boards, and are engaged in the community," Svendsen explains. "They understand the issues in our community, and employees see that and get that." The message computes so well the company boasts that 78 percent of employees volunteer in their community.
As good a deed as helping a worthy charity is, group participation in volunteer efforts also is a powerful way to jumpstart initiatives. Approximately five years ago, following General Mills' acquisition of Pillsbury, leaders in the company's Meals Division rounded up the newly merged team of employees to volunteer on behalf of the Perspectives Family Center in St. Louis Park, MN. When Meals Division President Jim Murphy met with the merged workers to discuss how teambuilding could be strengthened, volunteerism was the overwhelming suggestion. Perspectives, a nonprofit focused on helping families in transition, receives ongoing support from General Mills meal division employees on projects such as painting child-care center rooms, participating in school supply drives, and delivering Christmas trees. "Their involvement," says Svendsen, "grew out of a business motive—bringing teams together—but now it is part of their way of doing business."
Thanks to the continued volunteer efforts of meal division employees, Murphy is currently a member of Perspectives' board of directors. "So," notes Svendsen, "they now have his expertise in marketing to draw from as a resource."
 The Meals Division isn't the only General Mills department demonstrating strong nonprofit support through volunteerism. The company's customer service center works regularly with Catholic Charities USA, beginning with employees serving meals to homeless people, and currently includes participation in the organization's St. Joseph's Home for Children, a shelter for children taken out of their homes. Once a month, customer service workers visit the shelter to support a nutrition and fitness program the General Mills team developed. They teach these young people about the food pyramid, and how to maintain a healthy diet, and also sometimes lead fitness activities. Customer service employees also pitch in on projects such as redecorating rooms in the shelter. "They found a niche for themselves, and a need [to fulfill] at that particular organization," says Svendsen. "For the customer service center, that's now a core part of who they are, and what they do."
Yet another General Mills division, Yoplait, partners with the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery, a residential child-care and family services organization. Every other week, a team of Yoplait employees visits the nursery to cook meals for the children it serves. Like Murphy, the meals division president serving on the Perspectives board, Trent Blain, director of Yoplait New Product, serves on the board of the nursery, lending business know-how.
Whatever charities such as Perspectives, St. Joseph's Home for Children, and the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery receive from General Mills in the way of manpower and expertise, they return to the company in skill development. Company leaders understand the learning that can be gained from such experiences and communicate it throughout the organization. "We encourage people to remember to bring their volunteer experience back to the office," says Svendsen, "using those skills, and talking about it with managers as part of their development plan." Volunteerism is accepted not only as a way to gain skills but to keep employees happy. This makes General Mills a savvy organization, according to Samantha Taylor, founder and president of Reputation Dynamics, a consultancy that helps companies align social responsibility initiatives with nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations. "It's become another way of retaining and motivating employees," says Taylor. "Companies such as Accenture, Google, Hitachi, and American Express have active employee programs, where it's about impacting their lives, uniting them, and sending messages about the company's values and mission."
That message of gaining competencies and fulfillment through volunteer work is remembered at General Mills because it has support from throughout the company. "Our chairman, Steve Sanger," emphasizes Svendsen, "has said employees are developing leadership and other skills by working and volunteering in the community."
Extending Expertise
 Sometimes corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are best contributed to by a training leader willing to share the expertise of his or her department with needy communities. Such is the case at Deloitte, where Global Chief Learning Officer Nick van Dam mobilizes support from employees on behalf of e-Learning for Kids, a foundation he founded and chairs. The charity makes e-learning in subjects such as English as a second language, math, science, computer skills, and life and health skills accessible at no cost to children in more than 90 countries, and enjoys global support from more than 120 Deloitte employees annually. These volunteers range from instructional designers, who develop e-learning modules, to employees who translate courseware into other languages. Employees also help by sharing potential e-Learning for Kids content with their own children, thereby enabling the material to go through a pre-rollout review with end-users to ensure high quality. "If you don't have the opportunity to go to the right schools and universities, it's challenging in our knowledge economy to be successful," says van Dam of his reasons for starting the foundation. "There are so many places around the world where children do not have access to high-quality education." van Dam was inspired to create free e-courseware for children based on the positive research he's read about the impact of e-learning on young people. "Research has shown that if you develop engaging e-learning, that can be an exciting way for children to develop their skills."
With that learning power in mind, more than 80 courses have been built since the foundation's launch in 2004, and have been delivered to children in countries such as Ghana, Vietnam, Argentina, Thailand, India, and Tanzania. To ensure as many children as possible benefit from the courseware, the foundation partners with organizations that provide computers with the modules pre-loaded on them to needy schools. For orphanages and educational institutions lacking Internet access, the foundation provides the modules on CD-ROM. Though Deloitte didn't found the charity, the company contributes funding to the foundation, along with other companies and organizations, and all its employees have access through the e-Learning For Kids Learning Portal. "We include e-Learning for Kids in newsletters to our employees," says van Dam, "and encourage them to share it with their communities."
It’s no surprise van Dam so readily finds volunteers. Taylor says companies looking for pro bono help usually find it easily. "Employees, for the most part, have no problem doing volunteer work because it motivates them," she says. "So, there isn't resistance. It's not like 'We're promising an extra bonus this year.' But ultimately, it will retain talent, and make them more productive for the company."
Indeed, participation in charities such as e-Learning for Kids has proven valuable to Deloitte, which prides itself on demonstrating corporate social responsibility. Employee involvement in philanthropy and community work helps inculcate the right values in its workforce. "Corporate social responsibility is an important topic for us," says van Dam, "and it only works if you can get people excited to help, and do something they feel will make a difference."
Donating Development
 As any learning professional can attest, the best gift isn't giving a person something—it's teaching them how to do it themselves. It's this ethos that led pharmaceutical company Novartis to support REPSSI, an East and South African-based philanthropy focused on providing emotional and psychological support to children affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Novartis' trainers provide REPSSI's managers and employees with leadership development training that enables them to take the initiative for themselves. The charity, funded and supported by the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development along with Swiss and Swedish development assistance programs, seeks to grow from its current level of servicing 500,000 children to aiding 5 million by 2011. The problem? Its managers need some additional business skills training to ensure their plan is effectively carried out. "They had big challenges in the areas of leadership, organization, and project management skills," says Head of Global Learning Frank Waltmann. "We provide money, but we also can provide experience and knowledge."
That expertise takes the form of Novartis trainers, along with staff from training vendors Novartis partners with, creating a custom curriculum for REPSSI. Novartis trainers believed it was essential to put together a tailor-made program for the charity. "We identified their needs," says Waltmann. "We didn't just take a Novartis corporate learning program and deliver it in Africa." To ensure the curriculum would meet REPSSI's needs, Waltmann and his team conducted interviews with organization leaders to determine precisely what skills up-and-coming managers needed. From there, they took Novartis corporate programs and transformed them into modules specifically suited for REPSSI.
As a young organization that often manages through other nonprofit organizations, REPSSI has many training needs, says Waltmann. "They needed the basic skills of communication, providing feedback, managing difficult conversations, intercultural competence, and more advanced skills such as [knowing how] to manage without formal authority," he explains. And, overarching all these skills, the organization's employees needed guidance in how to effectively manage projects.
Throughout the process, Novartis also provided REPSSI managers with coaching to help them adapt to work life in a large organization. This is essential, says Waltmann, as many of these employees have psychology, teaching, or social work backgrounds rather than corporate experience.
The material is delivered through a mix of live, instructor-led coursework and e-learning modules, with Novartis and training vendor partners—including top business schools—sending speakers at their own expense to Africa. "The good thing was in each of our partner organizations," Waltmann notes, "there was at least one person who had experience teaching in developing countries." To make it more likely the learning stuck, instructors were available for follow-up conversations by phone after the course wrapped up. "Whenever REPSSI had an issue or challenge, they could call us," Waltmann points out. "What they liked even more than [follow-up] e-learning was this personal interaction. They get a lot of training material, and they have the money to buy material, but to have this personal relationship with world-class coaches and trainers was a new experience for them."
The program developed for REPSSI is such a success Novartis will launch a partnership with a business school in Cape Town, South Africa, by the end of this year. Executive speakers from across the company will speak to the students, who also will have an opportunity to work at Novartis offices as interns. Widening the scope of its volunteerism puts the company ahead of the curve. Taylor says more employees are asking for opportunities to get involved with causes they care about. "People are asking to contribute," she says, "so if corporations offer opportunities for their employees to volunteer, the appetite is there already."
Waltmann says he's optimistic about more companies getting involved in partnerships between training and nonprofits. "I think there is a lot of willingness in the learning world to support these initiatives," he says. "But you have to find the right organization [to support], where learning really can contribute to success."
Sidebar: Quick Tips
Organizing employees to finish regular work tasks may seem like enough of a challenge, but before you give up on the idea of putting together volunteer groups, you might want to consider the following approaches:
• Put together a company-sponsored charitable foundation that spearheads volunteer efforts for you, and is given an added push from the support of your CEO and top executives.
• Encourage individual departments to choose charities that are meaningful to them, and their core competencies. If their job responsibilities include selling meals to consumers, for instance, it makes sense for them to contribute nutrition expertise to young people in need of guidance.
• Let company leaders know volunteering to serve on the board of a favorite charity is counted as a plus toward their progression in the organization, or at the very least, that it's a way for them to reinforce your corporate values.
• Find out if any of your employees have charities they are heavily involved in on their own, or maybe even started themselves, and let them know they can use the company as a resource for rounding up volunteers.
• In addition to charities in your company's backyard, take a global perspective, looking for ways to contribute to nonprofits in developing nations.
• If you've recruited your own training department to volunteer expertise in creating educating material, don't forget to solicit the learning vendors you work with. After all, those you partner with for business can just as effectively partner with you for the greater good.
For more information about the charities spotlighted in this article, visit:
http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/commitment/foundation.aspx
www.e-learningforkids.org
www.repssi.org
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