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She's been to Sri Lanka and South Africa as a participant in Accenture Development Partnerships, a program that sends employees to work on nonprofit projects in developing countries.

As more employees see volunteer work as a way to learn new skills or move their careers forward, volunteering has become a sort of corporate benefit.

For an annual fee between $5,000 and $50,000, companies can give their employees access to a VolunteerMatch list of 55,300 nonprofits seeking help. Nonprofits join for free.

Pro Bono Standards & Valuation In partnership with the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP), Taproot Foundation has developed standards for pro bono service to professionalize the field and ensure the consistent quality of services delivered to recipient organizations

Examples of Pro Bono Service HR team audits the HR systems of a nonprofit Finance team develops managerial accounting systems for a nonprofit Property development team helps a nonprofit secure and design office space Creative team develops a nonprofit's annual report Working as part of her company's pro bono commitment to a nonprofit, a professional tax accountant provides tax consulting to needy individuals in the community

Examples of Other Skills-Based Service (Not Pro Bono) Executive serves on a nonprofit board and gives informal advice Manager coaches high school student on a business plan competition An accountant independently provides free tax services to an individual in the community who can't afford tax advice Engineer designs a technology curriculum for an after school program Working as part of her company's pro bono commitment to a nonprofit, a software designer sets up staff computers (setting up computers is not within the core description of a software designer's professional expertise)

trategy #1: Try to Get Permission

Strategy #2: Use Advertising to Test

Use advertising as a testing tool rather than a long-term stream of customers.

Bell Canada, for example, receives 9,200 requests for either philanthropic or sponsorship support each year

ell faces a major challenge in dealing with these applications, and making the difficult decisions concerning which to support and which to turn down, while striving to get good value for its sponsorship investments. Overall, she points out, the objective is "to connect to the things that matter"

Bell does not sponsor individual athletes, individuals who simply have an idea or cause they wish to promote, or business launches. If applicable, Foster points out,

1. Define the message you want to communicate and to whom If you’re launching your company, introducing a new service or making another important announcement, first ask yourself why people should care about it.

2. Write your press release(s) Now you know who your audience is and what message to bring across, it’s time to craft the actual press release. Remember, the goal of the press release is to convince journalists, bloggers and other influencers that your story is worth spreading to their following. Writing a good press release warrants an entire different article, but the most important thing to remember is to tell a story.

3. Create a list of PR contacts It’s time to create an overview of all the bloggers, journalists and influencers you want to reach. Let’s call them your PR contacts.

new business certification as an innovative way to put the province at the forefront of the work-life balance movement

uebec

d is a seal of excellence that sends th

Corporations have, not surprisingly, turned their marketing lens to the social networks, and they're running their corporate giving programs like a race for prom king.

Too often, it's the popular kid, and not the most deserving one, who wins. This type of giving poses definite ethical questions. That corporate marketing divisions are using social responsibility as a way to boost the bottom line is the least of these. The aforementioned $200,000 is actually but a part of the $5 million Chase claims to have donated

There's another advantage for Chase to hand out money this way: they're splashed all over your Facebook news feed as good-hearted bankers with whom you might just want to do business. But are these dollars solely devoted to helping charitable organizations, or are they just another way of advertising? A multi-billion dollar corporation shouldn't be allowed to write-off advertising as a charitable contribution.

A 2009 study by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education reported that 84 percent of professionals from a variety of industries said that they do not measure ROI within social media. This, tallied with my own experience, suggests there is a widespread desire to jump into social networking without all—or even some—of the answers. But not making the attempt to explore metrics is not an option for businesses with long-term vision and goals. ROI does not mean "Return on Ignorance."

The barrier to entry in social networks is much lower than in most other communications and branding channels. In many cases, establishing a presence in these networks is free. But remember the saying, "nothing in life is free?" The same holds true in social media. Your time has a price tag, and resources don't materialize without costs. At the same time, the imperative of social media is real.

owing that non-profit supporters around the world have been adopting the use of social networking in their daily lives we set out to figure out if the use of social networks had any impact on personal or peer-to-peer fundraising. The results we’re pretty amazing

e found that participants who use social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube communicate with their networks more regularly and send more messages. This resulted in increased fundraising results by up to 40%.

Twitter as a Multiplier Twitter users set higher fundraising goals and raised more money. In fact, Twitter users increased their personal fundraising goals by at least three times more and raised nearly 10 times more online than their peers who did not use Twitter.

LinkedIn is adding a new “Volunteer Experience & Causes” field to profiles, the company announced Wednesday. The section will let users highlight and showcase their unpaid or charitable work experience.

Promoting your charitable experience will help get you a job, according to a recent survey by LinkedIn. The company polled nearly 2,000 U.S. professionals and found that 41% said that when they are evaluating candidates, they consider volunteer work just as much as paid work. Of the hiring managers surveyed, 20% said they gave a job based on a candidate’s volunteer work experience.

Of the 2,000 professionals surveyed, 89% had volunteer experience but only 45% included that information on their resume.

Yet, when it comes to email management, most companies seems to adopt a somewhat broken posture: either they don’t advertise any public email or they advertise too many of them.

The right number of emails to be advertized by your company is ONE.

Fragmented communication issues were numerous and yet subtle. Here’s some anecdotal evidence: Sales team pitched a prospect with the usual 3min introductive verbatim, later to discover that the prospect was already very familiar with our technology, as the prospect was already one week into integrating with Lokad. As a result, the pitch was less than useful, and the sales team appeared clueless. (They were clueless.) Support team, not aware of the importance of a prospect, replied with a short email pointing toward our online documentation to a VIP (Very Important Prospect) who was basically asking for a direct call. Not only we missed a big opportunity to engage with a VIP, but we appeared somewhat carefree too (VIPs expect to be treated as such). A client with a technical question our billing, unsure of the proper contact, decided to separately email sales@, support@ and billing@. He got 3 distinct answers, triple effort for us, and one of them, poorly phrased, seemed to bring a different answer. We spend hours undoing the confusion afterward.

Transparency and corporate responsibility are more important than ever to consumers as they struggle with purchasing decisions in a tough econom

despite the recession, 75 percent of consumers believe social responsibility is important, and 55 percent of consumers said they would choose a product that supports a particular cause against similar products that don't

the survey found that 70 percent of consumers are willing to pay a premium for products from socially responsible companies

Cultural Fit (45%)

Scrappiness and Drive (35%)

Intelligence and Experience (15% and 5%, respectively)

GamesThatGive is one company helping brands take advantage of the social gaming boom via Facebook

GTG makes custom-branded Facebook games with charitable twist. For example, its You Play, We Give campaign for MasterCard donates as much as 10 cents to Junior Achievement Hudson Valley for every minute a person plays the game, which has more than 30,000 Likes and gets more than 80% of visits from returning visitors. On average, gamers spend 45 minutes on the game page each visit.The concept and execution are the same for GTG’s other big-name clients — Pepsi, Propel, Starbucks and Quaker. A user can play those companies’ custom-branded games on Facebook for a short amount a time until a pop-up box appears requesting that the user “like” the company in order to “double your donation.”“Not only are thousands of dollars going to charity as a result of people playing games, but large companies are successfully using branded social games to turn Facebook fans into customers,” Archer says.

TUGG Is Open Source Philanthropy Funding social innovation that supports entrepreneurship, education and life experiences for young people