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Many companies striving to be good corporate citizens today face an internal tug of war between giving attention to community initiatives that address social problems and the growing demand to make environmental issues paramount.
2010 Conference: Leveraging your philanthropic investments in education
By Ashley Jablow, Guest Blogger
Like any donor, corporate philanthropy departments today want to know that their investments in their community have an impact. It’s not about altruism (although giving back does feel good); instead, it’s about driving long-term, lasting change.
Cheryl Kiser, managing director of Babson College’s Lewis Initiative, opened the panel with the recent discovery of a worrying trend:
For over 25 years, corporate philanthropy professionals had indicated that their #1 funding and volunteer priority was education. In the last two years, however, Cheryl noticed in surveys of the field that in general corporate philanthropy departments were suffering from what she called the “3 F’s”: They were Frustrated, they felt Fatigued, and they worried that they had Failed in their attempts to truly invest in educational systems and drive progress.
The purpose of this session, then, was to leverage what Cheryl called “The Uncommon Table” – in essence a platform in which participants could go beyond the static idea-sharing common within homogenous sectors or industries and instead participate in “uncommon conversations with unusual suspects.” After all, she reasoned, “no one company can go it alone.”
To do this, Cheryl was joined a group of highly knowledgeable panelists:
- Linda A. Pittenger, consultant, Council of Chief State School Officers
- Lydia M. Logan, executive director, Institute for a Competitive Workforce
- Suzanne Immerman, special assistant to the secretary/director of Philanthropic Engagement, U.S. Department of Education
Together, Cheryl and the panelists opened themselves up to questions from the audience in what was an informal and informative discussion on the state of the U.S. education system and how corporate funders can get involved. A few takeaways are worth sharing:
One attendee asked a question that seemed to resonate throughout the room: “If we’re supposed to help fix American education, shouldn’t we know (and agree on) what’s broken?” While all panelists had opinions on just what’s wrong, Suzanne from the Department of Education boiled it down to four problem areas:
- Human Capital (both supporting educators and administrators, as well as making school relevant to students);
- Information and data systems (to track, measure, and strategize);
- Different state standards and assessment tools to tracking student performance
- Low performing schools that consistently underperform without being reformed.
Interestingly, one panelist suggested that in order to tackle these problems, business should look at its core competencies and the areas in which it has the most credibility. Many of the areas in which business excels – management training, information systems, data analysis – are the areas that schools need the most help with. Given this, Lydia encouraged the audience to consider how their corporate investments in education were aligned with these four areas – if they’re not aligned, she suggested, companies would do well to refocus.
Other relevant conversation points included how companies can drive innovation through partnerships and grant proposals with the Department of Education (who, by the way, is putting an incredible amount of stimulus funding innovation and reform in education), as well as what other countries are doing to support their educational systems as they grow, develop, and eventually surpass the U.S. in the rankings.
In all, the session provided a thoughtful look at the multiple, challenging issues that corporate funders and schools face as they partner to effect change in our educational system. Hopefully this will be the start of more informal “Uncommon Tables” throughout the U.S. as attendees go back to their home offices and share what they learned.
