Putting together everything it takes to make a Thanksgiving dinner can be complicated in any household. Now imagine trying to do it for 1,000 families in one place. It would be chaos.

That’s exactly what Kevin Thornberry noticed when he and his family volunteered to help prepare and distribute Thanksgiving food baskets last year at the St. Vincent de Paul Outreach Center in Cincinnati. A manager at the Toyota Production System Support Center in Greater Cincinnati, Thornberry knew just what it would take to straighten things out – an assembly line.

After identifying the problems and bottlenecks with how the food boxes were being processed, Thornberry brainstormed with his fellow employees at Toyota and then approached St. Vincent de Paul.

“From there, it was a matter of getting the SVDP volunteers to share their knowledge of the operation with us and together we created a smooth, efficient and steady flow of goods that would allow us to complete a basket every 15 seconds. That means baskets filled accurately with just the right amount of everything and fast enough to reduce wait time for the customers,” Thornberry said. Instead of putting together wheels, seats and an engine to assemble a car, the volunteers lined up canned goods, produce and frozen turkeys in just the right order and just the right amount to deliver a Thanksgiving food basket that will be enjoyed by a family in need.

“As we began planning for a 25 percent increase in families seeking assistance, what we really needed was help with the logistics for organizing the donations and then packaging them in a smooth and orderly way so they can be distributed quickly and efficiently,” said Liz Carter, executive director, Society of St. Vincent de Paul-Cincinnati. “That’s where Toyota really stepped in.”

Hideshi Yokoi, president of the Toyota Production System Support Center, pointed out that helping St. Vincent de Paul also helped the folks from Toyota. “It gives our team members experiences applying the Toyota Production System outside of the manufacturing environment and allows us to help improve our community,” he said. “Giving back in the community is also part of the Toyota Way.”

Center member Major League Baseball and Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig have named the Boston Red Sox as the inaugural recipients of the Commissioner’s Award for Philanthropic Excellence, which was created to recognize the charitable and philanthropic efforts of an MLB Club. The Red Sox will be acknowledged for their work with the “Red Sox Scholars” program, which is administered by the Red Sox Foundation and creates educational opportunities for inner-city youth. The Red Sox Foundation will receive a $10,000 grant from Major League Baseball for this recognition. Read the rest of this entry »

In early December the Boston College Center will launch the findings from our latest research study, the Profile of the Practice 2010. As you may recall, the Profile of the Practice 2008 provided a much needed snapshot of how companies are organizing their corporate citizenship teams and how corporate citizenship is managed in businesses. The 2010 edition provides updates on trends in those areas, as well as more detail on the use of corporate citizenship strategies, their content and objectives.

What stood out? Here is a sneak peak at our key findings from a survey of nearly 200 corporate citizenship practitioners.

• Most companies report having a written corporate citizenship strategy
• More companies are directing corporate citizenship cross-functionally from the executive level
• More companies are establishing senior positions for managing corporate citizenship
• Board involvement is increasing but most boards are not fully informed
• Companies are still struggling to integrate corporate citizenship with the business strategy
• The central role of employees is not supported with increased training and communication
• Addressing environmental issues, community and local economic development, and employee well-being are top goals

Our study found great progress in some areas, such as the formality of structure, cross-functional teams and new leadership positions. It also revealed a stalemate in other areas such as integration of corporate citizenship into the business and raising awareness among employees and corporate leaders.

Do our findings resonate with your experience in the field? Tune in to our webinar on December 1 to learn more about our study and get reactions from two leading corporate citizenship practitioners.

This Thursday is Veteran’s Day. Throughout the week, Microsoft will be sharing unique and inspirational stories about United States military veterans and the organizations who serve them through the Microsoft Citizenship website, the Unlimited Potential Blog and its Citizenship Facebook page. 

“As we see greater numbers of men and women returning from active duty, we know that these individuals and their families need our support, expertise and resources to help them transition successfully back to civilian life,” said Dan Bross, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Corporate Citizenship.

Through its citizenship efforts, Microsoft has a longstanding commitment to provide technology access and training to individuals and communities around the world.

In March the company launched the Elevate America veterans initiative to help prepare our country’s veterans and their spouses with the skills and resources they need to be successful in today’s workplace. As a part of this work, Microsoft has convened a coalition of public, private and nonprofit organizations around the country to contribute expertise, cash and in-kind resources to give U.S. veterans and their spouses the skills and resources they need such as career counseling, technology skills training, job placement and additional support services like childcare, transportation, and housing. On Wednesday, Microsoft will announce the nonprofit recipients around the country who will receive the cash and software grants from Microsoft to support these services.

Microsoft also has a long history of supporting the military and veteran community as an employer. The company’s Military2Microsoft program assists U.S. veterans and those serving in the National Guard and Reserve transition into the civilian workforce and find job opportunities within Microsoft. The Military2Microsoft program incorporates a variety of resources to help make the job search experience easier for military talent. This includes the recent launch of We Still Serve, a site that connects transitioning military members to Microsoft’s employee-initiated group of veterans and helps match candidates to job opportunities within the company.

We encourage you to visit the Microsoft Citizenship website each day this week to read stories, get inspired and honor the men and women who have selflessly served. MSN is helping to raise awareness of the resources provided by Microsoft and its partners. You can also follow Microsoft on Twitter @msftcitizenship.

Said Bross, “We are proud to recognize the selfless contribution of our veterans.  We hope, in a small way that we’re making a positive contribution to helping them make the transition to civilian life.”

I recently traveled to Washington D.C. to join a group of academics, business executives, foundation representatives and policymakers to work on an initiative of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that aims to increase knowledge about world affairs and advance American diplomacy and strategic communication efforts. 

This is one of several Wilson Center initiatives since 2001 designed to ramp up efforts to promote international understanding. Our charge is to create a business plan for the creation of an independent organization that will work closely with, and receive seed funding from, the U.S. government to forge collaboration and support of public diplomacy, as well as private and NGO actors around the world, through grant-making. The diverse and non-partisan working group includes expertise from such organizations as Microsoft, Yahoo, Sesame Workshop, Gallup, Brookings, Heritage, CSIS, CNAS, MIT, Harvard, Boston College, MIT, and congressional staff.

The Wilson Center meeting and my conversations with cab drivers from Pakistan, Somalia, and Ethiopia during that trip made me think about 21^st century diplomacy. How was the aspiration to come to the U.S. initiated in the minds of those individuals?  It was not from direct interaction with U.S. government diplomats, but through interactions with private enterprise.

One conversation was with “Rocky” from Pakistan. He revealed in the first minutes of our hour-long drive from the airport that he was a proud and devoted family man.  As a youngster he aspired to come to the United States so that he could earn money for his family of 12.  He was 18 when he arrived here via Germany, uneducated, and alone.  Living in a car while he worked his way up from dishwasher to line cook in a D.C. hotel, Rocky ultimately earned his GED and started coursework toward his bachelor’s degree. He married, had two children, and continues to be the primary source of financial support for his family in Pakistan, including the dowries for two of his sisters’ weddings there. 

How did he know that the U.S. was his destination? He saw the prosperity of other families who had sons working in the U.S. or the especially lucky few who were working for U.S. or European companies in Pakistan. He wanted to go to a place where you could earn money for your labor and give your children a better life. Today Rocky and his family live in extremely modest circumstances. We might consider them to be among the working poor, but they are grateful for the opportunity to earn a living, and for many other things that we take for granted in industrialized economies including accessible public education, central heat, clean water, and sanitation.  

The opportunities for individual prosperity that Rocky and the others saw being generated by global businesses, both in their homelands and on the other side of the world, project a powerful image. Certainly public diplomatic work is critical to successful international engagement, but perhaps the most effective carriers of culture are the individuals from multiple countries and cultures who work in corporations side by side, day after day. This includes almost 5.2 million Americans estimated by the state department to be living and working abroad who are not engaged officially in diplomatic or military service. 

While public diplomacy has been considered the exclusive domain of government in recent times, business plays an increasingly important role in promoting international understanding and cooperation. Whether via employees, products, advertising, global operating standards, or supply chain activities, participation in enterprise and human interactions with responsible businesses enable prosperity and create value – while promoting shared values—here at home and around the world.  In talking about the benefits to society provided by corporate citizens, we cannot discount profitability and prosperity as foundational to social and environmental gains.

As leading multinational companies turn to emerging economies in Asia and Africa as future markets and manufacturing bases, I’m hopeful that a new type of cross-sector diplomacy will provide opportunities for less disparate global prosperity and security – prerequisites for global stability from which we all benefit.  It’s possible to imagine that within a generation emigrating will not be the only path to a secure financial future for people like Rocky.

So how can we support corporations in understanding the multitudinous and nuanced cultures, contexts, and value systems that they will encounter abroad – and increasingly – encounter in our own nation simply as a result of engaging in global commerce? These are subjects that we will explore more fully in our work.  Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, or contact us if you are interested in contributing a bylined guest blog in the future.