Just Another Advocacy Day?
Sara Appleyard Adams
Head of Communications and Marketing
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy
February 7, 2012-- When we already have a day recognizing everything under the sun from Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day to Penguin Awareness Day, why did CECP choose in 2004 to create International Corporate Philanthropy Day (ICPD)?
For us, it comes down to strength in numbers. Our members are carrying out projects all year long that make a tremendous impact on the communities around them. But ICPD provides a platform to collect all these stories and share them with the world on a special day. Companies use ICPD as the day to announce new projects and the milestones they have met. It provides the corporate giving community with a day to focus attention on its success and momentum. ICDP lets everyone know that excellence and innovation in corporate giving is not happening in isolation; it is a wide-spread activity undertaken by numerous corporations, which is reaching all segments of the community and all corners of the world.
A Tale of Two Companies
Charles H. Moore
Executive Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy
February 24, 2011-- As a fervent believer in the power of corporations to advance progress on societal issues, I read with great interest the sharp critique of Google DotOrg’s philanthropic track record that Stephanie Strom of The New York Times co-authored with Miguel Helft in late January of this year. That piece enumerated the implementation challenges faced by the DotOrg business unit of Google in its quest to flex the company’s creativity and innovation toward solutions to climate change, global poverty, and global pandemics, among other pressing issues. Those challenges ranged from a reported lack of executive leadership, difficulty integrating philanthropic staff into cross functional teams within the firm, and frustration with the long timeframe required for achieving change on societal issues. As someone who has worked directly with the CEOs of leading companies on their philanthropic endeavors for the past ten years, I felt some sympathy for Google as I made my way through the timeline of disappointments (Google is not a member company): I know from experience that selecting the right societal issues on which to focus is deceptively hard for companies, and implementing the best of intentions related to those issues is much harder still.
