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.

This was the topic at hand during today’s breakout session, “A Seat at the UnCommon Table: Leveraging your Philanthropic Investments in Education” as part of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Conference.

Cheryl Kiser, managing director of The Lewis Initiative, Babson College and moderator of the panel opened our talk 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 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 the 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 by a group of terrific and 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:

1. Human Capital (both supporting educators and administrators, as well as making school relevant to students);
2. Information and data systems (to track, measure, and strategize);
3. Different state standards and assessment tools to tracking student performance
4. 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, etc – 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.

Ashley’s Note: This is the second of three posts I wrote as a featured blogger for The Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship’s 2010 Annual Conference. Click these links to learn more about the conference, check out the session description, and to read all the blog posts from the event.

When it comes to the crisis of Global Warming (what author and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman says should actually be called “Global Weirding”), things can get pretty overwhelming fast.

Animal extinction, water scarcity, rainforest destruction – these are all pretty heavy topics requiring big picture thinking and action.

And if world governments can’t even build consensus to take action, how can we as individuals ever expect to make a difference?

Well, I’m here to say: Don’t Get Discouraged.

Sure, many of these issues can only be solved through global coalitions that unite for a common purpose (and boy, does that sound like hard work!).

Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that even big problems can be helped through small “micro-actions”.

Take, for example, what happened just a few weeks ago at my own business school. The Boston University chapter of Net Impact organized something called “D.U.M.P. Week” (aka: Don’t Use More Plastic).

In essence, D.U.M.P. Week was about rallying the internal community to consider how their everyday choices – in this case, using plastic bottles – impact the world around them.

During each day of the promotion, members of the Net Impact board set up shop in the graduate student lounge to educate and connect with students around the topic of sustainability. Through tidbits and facts written on poster board, an informational video showing the impact that plastic has on the Earth, and fun contests and games, the chapter leaders were able to successfully and effectively get the student body engaged in sustainability in a very personal and on-the-ground way.

In addition to education, the organizers of D.U.M.P. Week asked students to consider signing a sustainability pledge that outlined a set of behaviors each student would agree to uphold. These included:

1. Power Down Computers
2. Bring Your Own Mug and Water Bottle
3. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
4. Think Before Your Print
5. Use Compact Fluorescent Bulbs
6. Turn Off the Lights
7. Take Shorter Showers
8. Carry a Reusable Shopping Bag
9. Walk More, Drive Less
10. Wash Laundry in Cold Water

In exchange for signing the pledge, each student received his or her very own reusable water bottle (not plastic!) to kick-start these new behaviors.

A Student Signs the Pledge

So why was D.U.M.P. Week so successful? In many ways, it serves as a real-life example of everything I’m learning in my marketing classes:

You can always grab people’s attention with big ideas, questions, even images. But until you tell consumers why it matters to them, you’re missing your opportunity to connect, engage and inspire action.

D.U.M.P. Week wasn’t just about scary doomsday scenarios or cold environmental terminology; it was about inspiring our community to connect, learn, and take action in easy and understandable ways.

As I waited in line to sign the pledge myself, I couldn’t help but feel excited by this small yet motivated demonstration of commitment by my fellow students (who, by the way, are still using their water bottles weeks later).

On their own, these behavior changes may seem like a drop in the bucket – but taken together they represent a collective, united plan of action that can and will have meaningful impact.

When it comes to sustainability, every bit (or micro-action) counts.

I encourage you to think about what micro-actions you could take to help move us toward a more sustainable planet.

And, if you’re looking for other examples of micro-change, check out Cindy Gallop and IfWeRanTheWorld.com. Cindy and her team (who I first learned about at The Feast) have created a crowd-sourcing platform for people to declare the actions (big and small) that they would take if they ran the world. Even better, the platform lets you share your idea with others and activate your network to get involved. Definitely worth checking out.

Anyone who knows me knows that food is a big part of my life – learning about it, talking about it, and especially eating it!

I’ve written about my interest in food in past posts, and today I came across a recent TED talk about food that I thought was worth sharing.

First, for those of you who don’t know, TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a non-profit “devoted to ideas worth sharing”.

Every year TED organizes a conference that showcases truly outstanding collections of today’s greatest thinkers, scientists, artists, activists and changemakers doing great things in the world. And the best part is that after each conference, TED posts these talks on its website so that everyone can learn and participate in the idea-sharing.

In addition to showcasing these incredibly diverse, passionate and articulate speakers - and this year’s list is no exception – TED hands out an annual TED Prize. The goal of this Prize is to grant someone’s “One Wish to Change the World”. In addition to $100,000 in seed money, the TED Prize winner gets the chance to pitch his or her wish in front of the conference’s incredible collection of attendees – with the purpose of inspiring the audience to act.

TED’s goal, then, is to harness the power of its network to inspire collaboration on some of the world’s most important and pressing problems.

The 2010 TED Prize winner is Jamie Oliver, a well-known British chef who’s launched a campaign called Jamie’s Food Revolution. Jamie’s wish is this:

I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.

To learn more about the problem that Jamie sees, and the solution he proposes, check out this video.

Congratulations Jamie, and good luck!

One of my goals for The Changebase is to use the blog as a platform for sharing the stories of companies, organizations and people working to create change in their communities. After all, there are lots of examples of great progress being made in CSR, social enterprise, and philanthropy and they should be celebrated!

This time around, I’m pleased to share the story of Christine Guardia and her work with KooDooZ.

I hope, after reading Christine’s post, you’ll be inspired to find your own “life balance of Heart, Mind, Body and Spirit”!

By Christine Guardia

We live in a world defined by change – change grabs the headlines and demands our attention.  Our access to information has been heightened with globalization and, as a result, it has further mobilized our communities for change. 

The concept of leveraging social media for social good resonates with me, because that’s what I do for a living.  I am the “cause cultivator” for KooDooZ, a “cause-based” social networking site for youth.  In this role, I cultivate non-profit and for-profit partnerships for the purpose of co-creating and co-marketing real-world events and social impact campaigns.The site’s purpose is to provide KDZ (our users, typically ages 9 through 15) with a safe place online to channel their passions into actions and strategies for social change and personal growth.  For the benefit of our non-profit and for-profit partners, KooDooZ provides event and social impact expertise, delivering collaborative real-world events (such as the Tour De Fitness) and online challenges (such as coat drives) to nurture new youth and family engagement.

Despite the fact this generation (Gen Z) is altruistic and cause-centric, their access to opportunities to “create change” has traditionally been limited.  So far, there have been unequal opportunities for civic engagement before the age of twenty.  By challenging themselves with service learning, volunteerism and personal growth opportunities, KooDooZ KDZ learn outside the boundaries of formal education.  Our technology allows them to access information and craft their own identities in unprecedented ways.

Because kids need a higher diversity of ways to engage as social entrepreneurs, KooDooZ challenges KDZ to find their life balance of Heart, Mind, Body and Spirit.  I decided to do the same; since working for KooDooZ, I have been inspired by ChicoBag to stop using plastic shopping bags and switch to reusable bags.  The “Bag Monster,” a person covered in 500 bags (the average number of plastic bags an American uses each year), made me realize I needed to make a change.  Now reusable bags are strategically placed in my car, at my office and near the front door. 

I also carry EcoUsable’s BPA-free stainless steel filtered water bottle, which further reduces my dependency on plastics.  EcoUsable provided stainless steel bottles to the Tour de Fitness (TDF  ’09) participants and also sponsored a challenge within KooDooZ asking KDZ to come up with their own images of sustainability.  The winning bottle design will be produced by EcoUsable and sold via KooDooZ.  In addition, for every bottle sold, the winner will receive $1 and KidShape, a non-profit organization that builds healthy families, will also receive $1. 

The KooDooZ website is currently in Alpha release and this spring we will be launching a pilot program for groups of kids (siblings, classmates, teammates, etc.) and the adults in their lives (parents/guardians, teachers, coaches, etc.) to be some of the first KooDooZ users and provide feedback to help shape the system.  Our goal is to partner with schools, nonprofits and/or companies that would like to help children create change. 

If you would like to utilize KooDooZ to challenge KDZ to achieve in 2010, please contact us at info@koodooz.com.
 
Christine Guardia is a graduate of the Public & Nonprofit Management Program at Boston University School of Management. In her free time, Christine enjoys spending time with her eight nieces and nephews, walking (she is currently training for an 18-mile fundraising walk this summer) and reading.

Portland, Oregon is Considered to be a Very Green City

We’ve all heard the saying, “You are what you eat.”

When it comes to green living, could we stretch that and say, “You are where you live?”

That is to say, is where you live a determinant of how you live?

Plenty of research and evidence exists to confirm that yes, the city you live in has a big impact on your lifestyle, health, and happiness.

And intuitively, this makes sense: the city or town you live in will play a big role in how well you can access nature and the outdoors, locally-produced food, public transportation, and recycling programs. All of these ideas, to me, make up a green, or more sustainable city – but if you’re curious about other initiatives that make a city green, this is a good start.

With the rise in interest and action around “living green,” I’ve noticed an uptick in people who care about the relationship between location and lifestyle. In fact, it seems like every week a new ranking of the greenest U.S. cities is published – just doing a search for “green city rankings” yielded a few of the following lists:

• Environmental Leader
• Popular Science
• SustainLane

So clearly lots of people are thinking about this idea. Additionally, two recent examples do a good job illustrating this connection between location and lifestyle.

The first one comes from a conversation I had with Dave Pedersen, a new Twitter friend of mine who works as supply chain director at Resources Global Professionals (follow Dave on Twitter). It turns out that in addition to his day job, Dave is a member of the Hermosa Beach Green Task Force. Hermosa Beach is a pretty small town in Southern California, with about 19,000 residents. With its proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the abundance of outdoor sports opportunities like surfing, Hermosa Beach is a perfect example of a town where location really does dictate lifestyle.

Hermosa Beach, CA

Recently, the Hermosa Beach City Council realized that something needed to be done about how climate change was affecting its local community. That “something” was creating a Green Task Force to advise City Council members on steps the city needs to take in order to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The Task Force has four main areas of focus:

• Waste reduction, re-use and recycling
• Sustainable private and public transportation
• Water use reduction and storm water management
• Green building including energy and related matters.

According to Dave, the big mandate given to the Task Force from the City Council is first to develop a plan to reduce emissions through the introduction of initiatives like better commuting options, additional biking/walking paths, and improved community recycling and waste reduction programs.

While this is obviously a crucial first step, Dave told me that an underlying, yet equally important goal is to engage Hermosa Beach residents in these efforts by reducing apathy and driving home that climate change is something that affects everyone (once again, the omnipresent “stakeholder engagement” issue rears its little head!).

So how are they doing this? It turns out that Hermosa Beach has signed on to something called the Cool Cities Initiative, a program created by the Sierra Club to help cities to reduce their carbon footprint through specific, achievable milestones. Probably my favorite feature of this site is that you can actually check out Hermosa Beach’s progress on these milestones – and your own city too!

Hermosa Beach is a pretty inspiring example of how a city can proactively engage its residents in its sustainability efforts. And I’m sure that there are plenty of other cities across the U.S. that are involved in similarly innovative and action-oriented programs.

Yet I have to wonder what’s going on in cities throughout the U.S. that perhaps aren’t as forward-thinking?

What role are city councils in “middle America” playing to help shape the way their residents live sustainably? A recent example comes from a trip I took to visit family in a small town about 40 miles outside of Houston, TX.

I haven’t spent much time in Texas, but even after only a weekend it was clear that strip malls, freeways, fast food, and urban sprawl dominated the scene. Even simply casual observers could have spotted the differences between this Texas suburb and a place like Hermosa Beach.

To make sure that I wasn’t making any unfair judgments, I asked my relatives about how their town encouraged certain green behaviors like recycling and water conservation. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like the local city government is doing much of anything to incent or motivate its residents to participate in these types of green behaviors.

Interestingly, on my way to the airport at the end of the weekend, the normally traffic-packed freeways were empty. I wondered aloud where everyone was, and my family said “Church”. This got me thinking: when it comes to green cities, maybe the local city government isn’t the only institution that should be encouraging and incenting these behavior changes.

Certainly the City Council in Hermosa Beach is the driving force there, but for other small towns in the U.S., perhaps there are other players who could drive change in their communities. Imagine if your local church, a huge stakeholder in many American towns, started to educate your community on the how’s and why’s of living a green life?

Knowing what we know about the realities of climate change, our overarching goal should be to create radical, sustainable change. It seems to me that this can only come when a collection of organizations – city councils, nonprofits, businesses, and religious institutions – come together to bring the green message to the masses. So maybe it’s city councils in one town, churches in another town, and NGO’s in another.

At the end of the day, does it matter where the message comes from – as long as it’s heard?

What has been your experience in your city or town – are your local community organizations talking about climate change and living green? Whose message has been most influential in getting you to think and act sustainably? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In an effort to make the content on The Changebase as user-friendly and understandable as possible, I’ve launched a new feature called “The Basics“.

Sometimes I get so caught up in the technical aspects of CSR, sustainability and other change initiatives that I lose sight of the fact that not everyone spends as much time learning about this stuff as I do (and rightfully so!).

With that in mind, after receiving some great feedback, I decided to identify ways to involve everyone in these important conversations of change – no matter their background or experience in these areas.

Which brings me to The Basics series. Check out this section for all of the foundational information you need to be informed and aware of what’s going on in change today. There are a couple of entries listed there now, and I plan to make additions on an ongoing basis.

And, as this example has proven, I really take your comments and suggestions to heart – if there’s something you don’t understand or want to learn more about, contact me and I’ll add it to my list of Basics articles. Enjoy!

-Ashley

Recently I had the chance to attend the Island Creek Oyster Festival in Duxbury, MA. While being a fan of oysters is reason enough to go, this time around I was lucky enough to score a VIP/backstage pass through my husband Dan, a budding chef (and blogger!) who was helping out the nice folks from East Coast Grill for the day.

Interestingly, the event caught my attention not just for the long “who’s who” list of local chefs participating, but also because it was billed as a sustainable, or green, event:

This year, the Island Creek Oyster Festival is attempting to go as green as possible. The Festival plans to donate all oyster shells to the New Hampshire oyster shell recycling project; chefs and beverage sponsors will use compostable plates, glassware, and utensils; and attendees will be asked to participate by lending a hand in all recycling efforts.

There were some things that this festival did really well. These included:

A table at the entrance with lots of great sustainability information for local residents…

…and details on the New England Wind Fund.

Perhaps the other most noticeable indication that this was a green event was the presence of multiple recycling containers throughout the festival grounds. At each recycling station (there must have been at least 10 stations set up), there were separate bins for oyster shells (being recycled for fertiziler – so cool!), compost, single stream recycling, and all other trash. There were a ton of volunteers at the event, and I saw them regularly swapping out full containers of recycled material with fresh, empty ones. Given the sheer size of the event (with almost 3,000 people expected) and the fact that all cups, plates, and utensils were recyclable, you can imagine that they collected quite a bit by the end of the night.

That said, there were some indications that this green event didn’t quite get everything right.

First of all, as terrific as all of those recycling bins were, the number of choices one person had to make in order to throw away his or her trash was just too overwhelming for some to grasp. Here you can see one guest trying to figure just where to put everything:

While the education aspect of this recycling experience can’t be overlooked, I do believe there are some issues with asking people to do too much. When you combine good food and drinks with long lines for oysters, you get a crowd that’s more interested in dumping their trash wherever they can, not making sure they sort things correctly. In fact, I saw numerous volunteers just standing by the bins trying to direct guests where to put their recyclables – and even that didn’t stop them from having to dumpster dive regularly to re-sort plates that had gone into the wrong bin.

Yes, education is crucially important – but I wondered what the event committee could have done to streamline this so that it was easier for everyone to participate?

Also, even though all of the materials used were recyclable, there seemed to be no coordination among chefs to get them to share plates, utensils etc. This meant that at every food station guests received a new plate, new napkin and new utensils – and from my observations it appeared very few guests used their plates more than once. What good is a plate made from recycled materials if it’s not used more than once?!

Finally, perhaps the most embarrassing green mishap of the night: Water Bottles!

All night long this table was stocked with water bottles – and with no opportunity to refill them, they were used once and tossed. Just trying to stay hydrated, I went through 3 bottles myself! For a green event planning committee that had gone so far as to recycle oyster shells, you’d think they would have considered something a bit more earth-friendly…

In all, it really was a terrific event – and it did raise money for a great cause (the Island Creek Oysters Foundation). I was personally very proud of their efforts to make this event as sustainable as they could. In the end, I think it’s a great case study of how hard it is to “do sustainable” the right way. Their intentions were good, but they just missed the mark on a few key things.

#1 Takeaway for next year’s event? Give everyone their own reusable cup!