.

Also underway are the 2012 NRG Games, a five-week competition that challenges students to reduce their residence halls’ electricity consumption.

“This kind of event reflects BC’s long term commitment to encourage personal responsibility for energy use and conservation among students, faculty and staff,” said Energy Manager John MacDonald, “and also highlights Facilities Services’ continued goal of reducing the growing energy and electrical costs that impact the cost of overall operations.”

When it comes to energy and the environment we’re proud to say we don’t just walk the talk at Boston College – we march it!

The key to this successful innovation, according to Joseph Suarez, Executive Advisor, Community Partnerships & Philanthropy, is to trade on Booz Allen’s intellectual capital and to do what they do naturally as consultants – identify problem areas and then leverage intellectual capacity to address those challenges. Suarez calls intellectual capital the “sweet spot of Booz Allen.”

JOSEPH SUAREZ

Suarez reports that a critical ingredient is to “not have the hubris of thinking that we know all the answers.”  Booz Allen partners with nonprofit organizations to make this speaker series a success. Partners such as the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation and the Catalogue for Philanthropy – Greater Washington “have their boots on the ground and know firsthand the challenges and needs facing the nonprofit sector.” Nonprofit partners provide invaluable feedback and insight, Suarez notes.

The speaker series targets a special niche of small to mid-size nonprofit organizations with budgets generally less than $3 million that provide vital services to the community such as homeless shelters, local meals and crisis centers. Booz Allen provides these essential nonprofits with professional development training, fundraising, and marketing techniques that can be implemented within their organization. The Booz Allen conference series offers expertise in areas such as forming effective boards, marketing strategies, fundraising techniques, and volunteering that will help them be more successful in their fundraising and marketing efforts – as well as weather the current economic challenges.

Booz Allen reports that leveraging its natural resources within the company and the assets that the employees bring is far more impactful than “just writing a check.” There is also an opportunity for Booz Allen employees to become personally involved as “skills-based volunteers.” A nonprofit that is in the Booz Allen Cares system can post skills-based volunteer opportunities in the employee engagement system to be matched with a volunteer. Recently, two analysts with expertise in business investments were paired with a nonprofit that needed expert advice on their office and residential housing locations.

Suarez says that “we know from participant feedback that we are creating a change and having an impact on the nonprofit organizations that attend our programs.” In fact, the feedback from nonprofits, according to Suarez, “is incredibly positive and with many coming back and telling us how they used the information they learned to increase their fundraising performance or engage board members.” There is visible evidence of the program’s success on area nonprofits as they leave the program with valuable tools to be more financially resourceful. Over the years there has been an increase in attendance at the speaker series and an increase in board members joining area nonprofits.

Another sign of measurable success is the lack of difficulty in getting top flight speakers because this program has become so well known. “Nonprofit experts request to speak at these seminars,” says Suarez. Booz Allen and the working committee screen its speakers to ensure each lecturer can provide real and practical examples that those attending can take back and test within their organization. Based on the success of this program in the Washington, D.C. metro area, Booz Allen hopes to eventually expand this program to other metropolitan areas.

Booz Allen’s willingness to tap into its “sweet spot” has generated sweet success for Washington, D.C. nonprofits.

Center member UPS was in the news spotlight this week as NPR Marketplace highlighted the company’s environmental efforts and introduced listeners to Chief Sustainability Officer Scott Wicker in a story titled “Brown goes green”.

The piece looks at how Wicker is working to – among other things – increase fuel efficiency at UPS through better driving and introducing hundreds of new hybrid electric vehicles to the fleet. NPR’s Eve Troeh reports on how Wicker came to his new role and where he and UPS are headed.

“He worked his way up through the engineering department. That’s where UPS has always handled environmental compliance. But Wicker’s new job goes well beyond just following the law. In making the new CSO position, the company’s asked him to push boundaries, pollute less and get greener without losing money.”

The story also touches on how corporate sustainability officer is a new role that many companies are still figuring out and that involves more than saving the company money. Troeh reports that now that “sustainability is embedded in company structure” at UPS, figuring out what standards the company must meet and what goals UPS should reach for are part of the corporate mission.

We’re wishing Wicker and UPS success as they continue working to demonstrate what Brown can do for you and the environment.

Mass Mutual immediately solicited volunteers from its employee base to help with the disaster recovery and cleanup. They also provided interpreters to assist local non-English speaking families in completing applications for aid. Although the Community Rebuilding Fair was originally an opportunity for MassMutual to offer LifeBridge^SM, its free life insurance program to the public, the fair soon took on a life of its own.

The Community Rebuilding Fair grew into something very substantial that could significantly help the residents of their community on many levels. Fair participants were able to meet with legal, insurance, financial, housing, zoning, career, and construction and sustainability experts to ask questions and obtain assistance. A parenting coach was even provided to help answer any lingering questions children may have had about the disaster.

To coordinate this major undertaking, Mass Mutual first partnered with the United Way of Pioneer Valley to identify local agencies that were already offering assistance to affected families. Using a list of 10 agencies provided by the United Way, MassMutual sent emails inviting them to an informal meeting at its home office headquarters. The City of Springfield Office of Housing also participated. According to Tom Fiske, Program Specialist, “a spirit of collaboration and synergy was formed” at the meeting and “we took on more of a coordinating role.” As a result, MassMutual developed a press release and project plan and solicited feedback from the group. Ultimately, 30 agencies and city departments participated in this highly effective Community Rebuilding Fair.

The success of this collaboration was due in large part to the efforts of many MassMutual employees and departments. In addition to the entire Community Responsibility team, associates from other departments created fliers and promotional materials and promoted the event through their social media platform. Other departments at MassMutual  helped with the necessary but less glamorous “nuts and bolts” such as setting up the chairs and tables and overseeing the staging and sound systems that were brought in specifically for the fair.

MassMutual Chairman, President & CEO Roger Crandall also offered remarks and presented a $1.6 million contribution in recognition of MassMutual’s 160^th anniversary this year to assist in the rebuilding effort. MassMutual’s commitment to the Community Rebuilding Fair was apparent at every level.

Feedback from participating agencies was extremely positive. Many agencies reported back to MassMutual that they were pleased with the number of attendees who stopped by their booths and mentioned that it was a great networking opportunity between the agencies. Moreover, Fiske noted, information sharing among agencies allowed new resources to be provided to their respective constituents.

Since 1995, the Center for Corporate Citizenship has surveyed community involvement practitioners about their companies’ community involvement, their internal support, programming resources and policies, and critical social issues that draw corporate attention.  The findings are detailed in the Center’s Community Involvement Index. This year, 490 companies participated in the survey.

Some key findings include:

• 86 percent of companies have a specific community involvement strategy, and among those who do, 67 percent link their community involvement strategy to a broader corporate citizenship strategy.
• 59 percent of companies are organized to manage community involvement with strategy and direction that is set centrally but executed locally.
• The majority of respondents’ companies formally measure the output of their philanthropic efforts (59 percent), volunteer programs (60 percent), and overall community involvement strategy (53 percent), but less than a third measure the outcomes of any of those investments.
• Education was by far the issue most frequently cited (75 percent) by respondents as a critical issue for their community involvement.

More member resources from the CI Index

To further expand on the knowledge provided by the Community Involvement Index, Center members are invited to participate in online Member Community discussions related to the topics covered by the survey, such as the best way to get senior management involved. These discussions will be ongoing so members together can build on what they learn from our research.

In addition to the information contained in the report, Center members have access to our archived webinar, “Taking stock of how community initiatives compare”.  This webinar highlights key findings with two member speakers:  Bridget G. Hurd, director, Community Responsibility, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan; and Joyce Witte, community investment adviser, EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc.

Member Services can upon request create customized reports on specific areas of interest or industries from the data in the report. More print copies of the report are available to members on request to help you provide an informed perspective at all levels and in all departments within your company on community involvement. The survey reveals that the wide majority of respondents find senior management involvement contributes to the success of community involvement programs.

The Community Involvement Index is one of four biennial signature research surveys conducted by the Center for Corporate Citizenship. The other three surveys are: The State of Corporate Citizenship, The Profile of the Practice, and The Profile of the Profession.

• Get grounded in principals of good corporate citizenship
• Learn from what other firms are doing to create well integrated and strategic approaches to corporate citizenship management
• Leave with management tools that will help you better assess the stakeholders and issues that are material to your business
• Connect – and share insights and learning – with managers from other companies who are wrestling with similar corporate citizenship management challenges
• Improve your ability to secure buy-in and engagement from executives and others inside the company who are critical to your success

Visit our website now to learn more about how the Institute on Corporate Citizenship can make you more effective in your role. Register by Dec. 21 for a special rate at the Conrad Miami hotel where the Institute is being held.

The Institute on Corporate Citizenship is one step toward earning a Certificate in Corporate Community Involvement Management. For more information on the Institute or our certificate program, email Karen O’Malley or call 517-552-1553.

The conference host was Womenetics, a fledgling but fast growing media platform providing women with “an ongoing and expanding source of the essential tools and knowledge necessary to boost business success.” Its 40,000-plus online members are an impressive list of influential women leaders and advocates representing a panoply of business, government, and community sectors around the world.  These are women who know that a Millennium Goal has nothing to do with Han Solo’s starship, and that CGI is more than an animation technology popularized by Pixar.  A panel earlier in the day’s conference, “Globalization and the Business of Women: The Path to Prosperity and Peace” was illustrative of the heady mission and membership of Womenetics, featuring the president of Feminomics, Inc., the founder of Women Without Borders, and moderated by a senior adviser to the Clinton Global Initiative (natch).

This being my first personal interaction with women of Womenetics (JMV’s ambassador Naomi Tutu had represented us earlier this year at their Atlanta conference), I paid close attention to the tenor, tone, and topics addressed by my preceding (fellow?) panelists. Loads of empirical – and unexpectedly unemotional – evidence was shared on the proven benefits of empowering women in developed nations, and through investing in women of underdeveloped ones.  “It is so obvious,” said Astrid Pregal of Feminetics, Inc.  “All of the data is there . . . we just need to start using it.”

Indeed, as access to data and dialogue has evolved rote “global’ recognition of land masses and maps to more thought-filled socioeconomic sensibilities, so too has the dialogue on women’s issues evolved.  Yesterday’s Gloria Steinem is today’s Muhammad Yunus. The groovy disco lyrics of Gloria Gaynor’s  1978 hit “I Will Survive” have become buttoned-up prose in the United Nation’s 2015 Millennium Development Goal for Gender Equality (natch again . . . ).  Even corporate support, including our own Join My Village initiative, represents a broadening of commercial stakeholders beyond the conspicuous (Tupperware) to the cool (Nike).

In addition to increasing our collective consciousness, these evolutions have also increased individual empathy, which is an inarguable measure of progress. When others learn to walk a mile in the sandals of a marginalized woman, the pump of action is surely primed. Yet none of the esteemed members and attendees at last week’s Womenetics conference are busy designing MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banners to hang on this issue’s figurative aircraft carrier.  In fact, the identification of empirical cost-benefit analyses, and the acknowledgement of heightened global awareness seems to be causing even more anxiety for advocates in rooms like this today than it did for similar groups in assuredly smaller rooms yesterday. But why?

Perhaps because we’ve created too much empathy without enough ease.

New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote of the false sense of accomplishment that unaccompanied empathy can provide, stating “These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them.”

We have become a more sympathetic, but remain an ultimately selfish, sort.

Brooks attributes this action chasm to a weakened moral state, but I have a more pedestrian hypothesis:  we have empathy, but we also have errands. For while I, as a father of four daughters, eagerly embrace the spiritual and socioeconomic connection between my 12-year-old Alice and another 12-year-old Alice halfway around the world, I’m only responsible for getting one to volleyball practice halfway across town. I don’t need more empathy – I’m an empathy engine.  I need ease.

Which brings us back to Betty’s Big Red cookbook and its relevance to last week’s room of nonculinary change makers. Over the past 90 years Betty Crocker has done less to convince the world that a home-cooked meal prepared with love is a good thing, instead doing much more to help us act on that universal, yet often unrealized, conviction. Similarly, Join My Village is designed to do less in developing new approaches to alleviate poverty through the empowerment of women, and more to invite action in its shared theory for change.

This empathy-to-action ethos should sound familiar to fans and followers of General Mills, as it also underlies the success of Box Tops for Education and Save Lids to Save Lives; initiatives actively engaging millions of consumer citizens in seemingly intractable social conditions through increased measures of ease, not just empathy.

Or, as Betty might say, 2 parts ease to 1 part empathy.

Amid the financial struggles, the executive body of the European Union, the European Commission, recently published a new policy on corporate social responsibility that recognizes the role that CSR or corporate citizenship can play in an economic recovery. In explaining why the commission is presenting a new strategy now, the introduction to the commission’s report reads: “The economic crisis and its social consequences have to some extent damaged consumer confidence and levels of trust in business. They have focused public attention on the social and ethical performance of enterprises. By renewing efforts to promote CSR now, the Commission aims to create conditions favorable to sustainable growth, responsible business behavior and durable employment generation in the medium and long term.”

As part of the strategy, the commission offers a new definition of CSR as “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society.” It contends that complying with legal and regulatory requirements  is a prerequisite for meeting that responsibility and that to do so fully requires companies to “have in place a process to integrate social, environmental, ethical, human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations and core strategy in close collaboration with their stakeholders, with the aim of: maximizing the creation of shared value for their owners/shareholders and for their other stakeholders and society at large; and identifying, preventing and mitigating their possible adverse impacts.”

The commission goes on to present an action agenda for 2011-2014 that covers eight areas:

• Enhancing the visibility of CSR and disseminating good practices
• Improving and tracking levels of trust in business
• Improving self- and co-regulation processes
• Enhancing market reward for CSR
• Improving company disclosure of social and environmental information
• Further integrating CSR into education, training and research
• Emphasizing the importance of national and sub-national CSR policies
• Better aligning European and global approaches to CSR

No doubt Europe’s economic crisis is reverberating in all corners of the globe. It will be interesting to see how a renewed and unified approach on the responsibilities of business in Europe will influence the practice of corporate citizenship in the United States and elsewhere.

What we call the Global Leadership Corps is being designed as a leadership development program that aligns with our People-Service-Profit philosophy. It is also a much-desired outlet for the giving spirit for which FedEx is known throughout the world. By combining business motivations with employee expertise, we can have a greater impact for recipient organizations and communities. After individuals complete three months of pre-work, the Global Leadership Corps (GLC) will send teams from our operating companies on a month-long international assignment to work on business projects for a local entity. The program will give our people an opportunity to work with diverse cultures, experience next-generation ways of doing business, and practice virtual and global teaming. It also will introduce them to how local government and customs can affect business.

The value to FedEx is far-reaching. We engage in projects that develop high potential employees for increased responsibilities in a global workforce, enhancing leadership, technical and personal skills, and strengthen the communities in which we live and work. Engaging employees in this way contributes to an increase in discretionary effort and collaboration and the attraction and retention of key talent. Next year, approximately 20 more employees will participate in an all-FedEx pilot program with the intent of a full-scale, global launch to follow.

For me, there were many “ah-ha” and challenging moments. I can still recall the glamour of it all – ant parades through my room, a lack of air conditioning, stomach bugs that visited for days.   Ahh, and the camaraderie that comes from cramming four North Americans and a driver into a VW-sized car for a month of commuting to and from the client’s site. The climate, the food and routines at home you take for granted are thoroughly disrupted. The experience was rewarding – viscerally, emotionally and intellectually – in the most unexpected ways. Our client was mission- and volunteer-driven. Imagine what type of leader you would be if your greatest asset could decide daily whether work was rewarding enough to show up or not!

For the volunteers who joined me in this experience, it was also enriching.  “As a team member in a company that operates in more than 220 countries and territories, the opportunity to live and work outside the U.S. profoundly impacted my understanding of how the world works.”  That’s Shane O’Connor, my partner in gustatory adventures and long walks around the city, as well as the group’s head cheerleader. Sid Sawhney, our super-easygoing and veteran traveler/photographer noted:  “Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible. This one quote that I read during an office visit in Sao Paulo summarizes why we should continue investing in programs like these.”

At FedEx, we are committed to being a great place to work, a thoughtful steward of the environment and a caring citizen in the communities where we live and work.  We are passionate about sustainably connecting people and places and improving the quality of life around the world.  FedEx just had its sixth annual FedEx Cares week of volunteering, where thousands of team members served in communities around the globe. Enabling team members to take an even greater step in volunteering by moving from a local day of volunteering to a solid chunk of time in a developing country really leveraging their skills is just amazing. I love to see us make real, meaningful impacts through these projects and beyond, as team members bring their personal growth back home to the workplace.

International corporate volunteer experiences like this have a ripple effect, deepening the capacity of not only social mission organizations, but of businesses as well. According to CDC Development Solutions’ 2011 Benchmarking Study on ICV programs, the number of companies sending volunteers abroad tripled in the past five years. In 2006, just 280 employees were sent into four countries, as compared to 2011, when nearly 2,000 have travelled into 58. We see a real value in providing these types of experiences, both from a business perspective and one of social impact.

Tyco and Action Against Hunger are combining their individual strengths to create a more sustainable and effective solution to clean water access that neither could have accomplished individually. “The initiative, the first global corporate partnership for ACF International, employs an innovative model of collaboration designed to enhance our capacity while scaling up the reach and impact of our clean water programs,” said Nan Dale, Action Against Hunger’s CEO. She continues to challenge the corporate sector saying “we hope Tyco International’s visionary commitment to the Clean Water Access Initiative will inspire other corporations to join the NGO sector in tackling hunger and water issues.”

In 2010 Tyco had formed a Water Philanthropy Council which began the process of developing a CSR program that would involve the capabilities of the Tyco Flow Control Business. Little did that council know that these desires would be called into action so quickly when the Haiti earthquake struck. The Tyco Water Philanthropy Council saw this as an immediate priority demanding Tyco’s support and searched for an NGO partner with the resources and expertise to mobilize a quick and effective response.  Action Against Hunger/ACF was already working on the ground in coordinated programs with other major NGOs, and because of their impeccable track record and mission alignment with Tyco, the partnership began.  With funding from Tyco and Tyco Flow Control, ACF established a series of emergency water stations around Port-au-Prince to provide critical access to clean water.

Tyco International has dedicated more than $2 million during this three-year partnership for direct funding for targeted water projects as well as in-kind product and service support. Three core components of this partnership are:

• Action Against Hunger can request Tyco funding in response to natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. This will enable Action Against Hunger to work quickly and effectively to address humanitarian relief needs by providing clean water and other supplies to people in affected areas.
• Tyco will help directly fund ongoing Action Against Hunger projects that provide access to clean water in different areas of the world. Tyco will begin work in Indonesia’s NTT Province, where low access to clean water is a major contributing factor to poor health and malnutrition.
• Tyco will donate products and expertise in support of Action Against Hunger water programs.

“This partnership will help advance ACF’s mission to help needy communities gain access to sustainable clean water and sanitation,” said Patrick Decker, president of Tyco Flow Control. “In addition to our financial support, we will contribute products and the technical expertise of our people working in the water industry to support ACF teams working around the world.” Currently Tyco water and civil engineers based in Australia are consulting and collaborating with the Action Against Hunger program staff in Indonesia on the first community-based development project. The joint effort is managed by a steering committee representing both organizations.

For more information about the Clean Water Access Initiative visit www.actionagainsthunger.org.

For more information about Tyco International visit www.tycoflowcontrol.com/cleanwater.