Metrics of the High Purpose Company

Metrics of the High Purpose Company

Christine Arena challenged us to take another look at our companies and the types of metrics that we can use to measure corporate social responsibility. Let's refocus the lens back on the volunteer manager and CSR professional. Share your questions, your thoughts and your suggestions to take us all to the next level of strong metrics. Some questions to get us started are below....

What burning questions did this webinar bring up for you? How can you apply the concept of a high purpose company to your work?

How are you tracking your volunteer program?
What tips and tricks do you have for using EVS to report statistics to your volunteers and your boss?

Submitted by Amercy on 3 October 2007 - 4:42pm.

Thanks everyone for coming today. And thank you, Christine. Great presentation and plenty to think about. Most of us spend significant time thinking about how to make business leaders believe in the relevance of community engagement. Christine challenges us to spend more time thinking about how to make community engagement more relevant to our company's core business. "The Cause should represent the Core," she said. This is why I brought up the idea of the chiasmus at the beginning of the call. May West said, humorously, "it's not how many men you have in your life, but how much life you have in your men." A chiasmus for us might be: "it's not about infusing your business with social programs, but about infusing social programs with your business."

Submitted by neil on 8 October 2007 - 5:25pm.

Associates Feel Good When Their Employer Cares – I am the Volunteerism Chair for AAA Mid-Atlantic. In a presentation I gave on “Volunteerism as a Marketing Tool” to our internal marketing team, I had a slide about how Volunteerism impacts our organization’s workforce. I noted that people want to work for companies that care. To that end, when recruiting, we should not hesitate to tell candidates about our Volunteerism programs and we should freely share details about the charities we support and why. Regarding recruiting/retention, think about how much money can be saved if we demonstrate a strong corporate social responsibility. Importantly, we keep the good people, the people who fit with our culture, and we attract their friends and family as potential candidates. This saves on advertising, training, start-up time, etc.

Submitted by Jennifer on 8 October 2007 - 7:16pm.

Neil brings up two great volunteer program benefits for the HR function - recruiting and retention within a company. During the webinar, Christine also hinted at the importance of volunteerism in building a culture of responsibility. Are better employees the silver bullet, the best business outcome of volunteerism programs?

Submitted by samantha on 9 October 2007 - 12:38am.

PG&E believes that creating a synergy between corporate giving and volunteerism is the best way to showcase our commitment to the community. A perfect example of this would be our relationship with Habitat for Humanity International. PG&E has entered into $1.2 million partnership with Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI) to install solar electric systems on every Habitat-built home throughout PG&E's northern and central California service territory in 2007. The first such partnership of its kind is part of PG&E's commitment to provide affordable, renewable energy in the communities it serves. Along with this charitable gift PG&E provides over 2,000 hours of volunteer labor to Habitat chapters throughout Northern and Central California. This relationship allows PG&E to support the community with dollars and with volunteers.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.