Last week at MCF’s Summit for Corporate Philanthropy I sat in on some breakout sessions with community relations pros from Minnesota’s biggest corporations, such Target, 3M, Cargill, and others. The talk around the table was about how hard it is to break through the media clutter in the Twin Cities. The irony, they said, is that a $250,000 grant to an arts or education institution in the metro area gets hardly a mention in the media, but a $250 high school scholarship or community park donation in a small town with a company manufacturing plant leads to a half-page write-up in the local weekly.
This conversation led to a light-bulb moment for the roundtable participants. Even though they were assigned to discuss external communications, the corporate communicators realized that they should focus more attention on their own coworkers. If they redefined their tens of thousands of employees as external — instead of internal — audiences, they could really leverage the power of their human resources to communicate about their company’s good works in the community.
And communicating more effectively about good works is an area on which all corporate philanthropists could concentrate more. According to the Hitachi Foundation report The State of Corporate Citizenship 2007, Time to Get Real: Closing the Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality (PDF), 65% of corporate executives say the public has a right to expect good corporate citizenship, yet only 21% of companies report to the public on how they contribute to societal and economic well-being.
Join the conversation: Is your company putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to reporting on corporate philanthropy? Are you seeking out new channels — including your employees and members of your distribution chain — to broadcast your messages?
- Wendy Wehr, MCF VP of communications and information services
