GCRI Members Eligible for Discounted Institute for CSR Tuition

by Posted in Corporate Citizenship, Employee Engagement, Forum News, Resources, Uncategorized, Workforce Development

GCRI Members Eligible for Discounted Institute for CSR Tuition

The Institute for Corporate Social Responsibility offers CSR practitioners the opportunity to earn a Professional Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility from Johns Hopkins in just six months. This non-credit professional certificate program is an initiative of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers (GCRI’s sister organization in DC) and is offered in partnership with Advanced Academic Programs at Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Corporate Citizenship Center.

The program builds skills and presents best practices from some of the nation’s leading CSR practitioners and is completed in four two-day sessions.  Registration for the 25 slots is open and expected to sell out.  Tuition for GCRI members is $5,000 compared to the full fee of $7,500.  The 2017 session will begin in March.

This is a great opportunity to learn from and connect with the best in the business!

More information

Blue Cross & Blue Shield Engages 800 Employees in Service Day

by Posted in Employee Engagement, Member Highlights, Member News, Member Sponsored Events

14479648_10154375017090630_7993038547009327925_nBlue Cross & Blue Shield of RI Engages Over 600 Employees In Blue Across Rhode Island Service Day

On September 23, 641 Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island (BCBSRI) employees volunteered 3,255 hours to benefit 13 organizations as part of their annual Blue Across Rhode Island service day.  BCBSRI’s work on Kent County YMCA’s outdoor trails was highlighted in the Warwick Beacon, and the work of BCBSRI’s volunteers to transform a playspace at Greystone Elementary in North Providence was featured in the Valley Breeze.  Volunteer teams served both on the BCBSRI campus (packing 27,000 meals for Rhode Islanders experiencing food insecurity/hunger) and at nonprofit sites throughout the state.  Employees helped collect 557 pairs of new  footwear for homeless children, sorted thousands of diapers for families in need, created more than 100 birthday boxes for children who will celebrate a birthday in the hospital, built a therapeutic garden and applied gallons of paint to beautify the places and spaces that serve so many Rhode Islanders each year.  More info

Employee Engagement Catalyst Group September 21

by Posted in Corporate Citizenship, Employee Engagement, Events, Skills Based Volunteerism, Uncategorized

Employee Engagement Catalyst Group Conference Call September 21

Be sure to join us on September 21 at 9:00am — we’ll be hearing from Kelly Ramirez, Executive Director of Social Enterprise Greenhouse (SEG), about skills-based volunteer opportunities at SEG, as well as the launch of a unique upcoming program for community-minded companies, the Best For Rhode Island initiative.

Contact Nancy for call in information at nancy.wolanski@uwri.org.

GCRI Website Resources and Request

by Posted in Corporate Citizenship, Employee Engagement, Member Highlights, Member News, Member Sponsored Events, RFP, Uncategorized

New GCRI Website Resources

Be sure to check out the GCRI website (www.grantmakersri.org) for lots of resources, including job postings, local and national events of interest, and our GCRI event calendar.  We also have a resource page, full of links to national issue-based and practice-based resources.

Seeking New Photos and Member News

And we want to hear about your news and see photos of your great community work and grants!  GCRI members are encouraged to submit highlights about their grantmaking and community initiatives, upcoming RFP’s and grantee announcements, news and awards.  Please send them to nancy.wolanski@uwri.org so that they can be included in the GCRI newsletter and featured on the GCRI website.

Collette Employees Celebrate Founders Week with Service

by Posted in Employee Engagement, Member Highlights, Member News

Collette Employees Celebrate Founders Week with Service

For their 4th Annual Founders Week, GCRI member Collette engaged over 350 employees across various Collette locations in a number of different service projects.  230 volunteers at the Pawtucket headquarters helped to package 30,000 meals for Stop Hunger Now, a global hunger relief organization and local volunteers also worked with United Way of Rhode Island to create literacy kits for local schools, among other projects.  Be sure to check out Collette’s video!

Internal Marketing Followup

by Posted in Corporate Citizenship, Employee Engagement, Skills Based Volunteerism, Uncategorized

The May 5 GCRI session on “Internal Marketing for Sustainable Community Impact” was focused on the challenges of articulating the story and impact of corporate community initiatives internally, to organizational employees and leadership.  Here are a few resources to help you make that case:

Project ROI strives to “define and deliver financial and wider business value from corporate responsibility and sustainability…For too long a debate has raged – should companies invest in corporate responsibility (CR) and sustainability initiatives and if so, how much? Does CR detract or enhance the bottom line? Project ROI finds that CR has the potential to deliver an attractive business case. The question is not whether to engage in CR programs, but how.  Project ROI establishes the potential returns on investment CR can deliver. But it’s not enough to do CR, one must do it well. Project ROI defines a clear roadmap of essential practices for companies that want to improve the impact and value of their CR and sustainability performance.”  The report details the value of CR in three areas — Firm value, share price and risk; sales and reputation; and human resources.  Some of the key findings:

Corporate responsibility

  • Increases market value by up to 6%
  • Over a 15 year period, increases shareholder value by $1.28 billion
  • Reduces systematic risk by 4%
  • Increases revenue by up to 20%
  • Builds a reputation asset based on CR worth up to 11% of total firm value
  • Reduces company’s staff turnover by up to 50%
  • Increases employee productivity by up to 13%
  • Increases employee engagement by up to 7.5%

Download the report.

The Association of Corporate Contributions Professionals is offering a CSR & Your Employees webinar on June 16, 1-2pm.  “By engaging in philanthropic activities that can be showcased to your employees, your CSR team can have positive effects with employee retention, diversity and inclusion, along with increasing your employee engagement. Join Susan McPherson, Founder and CEO, McPherson Strategies, LLC, and ACCP in exploring how your work benefits your coworkers.”

 

Skills Based Volunteerism Opportunity with CS4RI

by Posted in Education, Employee Engagement, Skills Based Volunteerism, Uncategorized

At the June 1 GCRI session on Skills-Based Volunteerism, Octavia Abell, from the RI Office of Innovation, shared about two skills-based volunteer opportunities for IT professionals that may be of interest to members of your IT staff.  For those interested in a short-term opportunity, the Office of Innovation is planning a Computer Science Fair for December.  They are looking for sponsors, as well as volunteers to showcase the IT/CS/tech career opportunities at their company, and volunteers to help lead a statewide hour of code.

For those IT professionals open to a more intensive commitment, and the opportunity to have more long-term impact, the CS4RI program will be starting in the fall and they are looking for IT professionals to team teach a computer science course in a public school before the beginning of their work day twice a week.

TEALS Volunteer Guide 

TEALS Volunteer Application

There are two training dates available this summer:

  • July 9th, 9am – 4pm
  • July 30th, 9am – 4pm

We will share the details about the Computer Fair once they are finalized.

Skills-Based Volunteerism Followup

by Posted in Employee Engagement, Skills Based Volunteerism, Uncategorized

After a great session on skills-based and pro bono volunteerism (SBV), we hope that you’re full of thoughts and questions about expanding skills-based volunteerism work at your organization.  So here are some resources that may be helpful on your implementation journey:

  • The Initiative for Nonprofit Excellence at the Rhode Island Foundation is an excellent resource for organizations wanting to increase nonprofit board service by their leaders, as well as development of skills based volunteering initiatives for employee skill and leadership development.  If you have questions or are interested in learning more, contact Jill Pfitzenmayer at jpfitzenmayer@rifoundation.org.
  • The Nonprofit Readiness Toolkit, produced by the Kansas State Department of Education and the Corporation for National and Community Service, provides a step by step case study on what is necessary on the nonprofit partner side of things for mutually successful SBV experiences.

These resources are available on the Common Impact website:

GCRI Members Build STEM Interest in Elementary Students

by Posted in Collective Impact, Corporate Citizenship, Employee Engagement, Uncategorized

While many children took April Vacation off from learning, GCRI members Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island and Bank Newport made sure that more than 50 Rhode Island elementary students were engaged in “hands on, minds on” learning as part of GCRI’s first annual April Vacation Volunteer Initiative.

Teams of ten volunteers from Blue Cross and Bank Newport each spent a morning challenging children at South Providence Neighborhood Ministries and the Bristol Warren Child Opportunity Zone program (COZ) to use their problem solving and critical thinking skills to solve engineering challenges.  Both sessions were full of energy, excitement and experimentation, as the corporate volunteers and their young teams built gumdrop bridges and pompom launchers, all in the name of science.

If you are interested in participating in the 2017 April Vacation Volunteer Initiative, please contact GCRI.