February 2010 Archives
By Jaime Hiraishi on
February 26, 2010 1:47 PM
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A vast majority of students want to make a positive impact on society and are seeking new ways to leverage their expertise to help their communities throughout their academic careers. Across the country, professional students are joining and starting pro bono consulting programs and clubs as a means of immersing themselves within their local communities to create a lasting impact on worthy organizations.
Many schools are starting to take notice of this trend and are dedicating precious resources and staff to support these efforts-- a crucial step in creating sustainable programs. We've created an
online showcase of some of the top pro bono programs in professional schools across the country to share best practices, foster learning, and promote collaboration across fields and schools.
One of these programs is the
IDEAcorps™ Challenge which partners MBA students from schools like Northwestern Kellogg, Chicago Booth, Berkeley Haas School of Business, DePaul University, and Stanford GBS, with business professionals from companies like Google and Salesforce.com to solve business challenges for participating organizations. For the final two weeks of this program, students traveled to New Orleans to complete their projects and present the findings in a case competition setting. To take a deeper look at this program, or to create a Program Profile of your own program, check out our
Professional School Program Profiles.
These student consultants are not only taking part in the pro bono movement, they are also paving the way for future generations. I have no doubt many participants in university pro bono will lead the way for corporate pro bono and philanthropy, and challenge the culture of the professional world. They are truly pro bono junkies in training!
Jaime Hiraishi is a Recruitment Coordinator at the Taproot Foundation. She also leads the Taproot Foundation's efforts to promote the pro bono ethic in professional schools.
By Anne Diaz on
February 22, 2010 8:00 AM
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This month Taproot announced an exciting milestone- the completion of our 1000th Service Grant! Consider this post an interactive thank you card from all of us at Taproot Foundation!
Please take a moment to reflect on all that we have accomplished together. Join us in celebrating by posting your most memorable Taproot moment, sharing what pro bono service means to you, or thanking your fellow members of the Taproot Foundation family! You have proven that we can accomplish more by working together and sharing our talents and passions across sectors. Thank you!
Taproot Program Manager Anne Diaz shares what this milestone means to her:
As a Program Manager at Taproot Foundation, I have the great honor and privilege of overseeing our Service Grant projects from start to finish. A fellow Program Manager put it well when she recently remarked to me, "the emotional rewards at this job are amazing. We spend a lot of time at our desks, but we somehow get to witness and facilitate great change at the same time."
Over the course of the100 projects I've managed, I have witnessed amazing results. I have seen nonprofits whose work is completely transformed for the better by stellar deliverables; pro bono consultants who, inspired by their clients, change their careers by switching sectors (some even joining their client's staff, full time!); and nonprofit board members who decide to become pro bono consultants after they witness the professionalism of the Taproot teams working for their organization.
The road to 1000 projects hasn't always been smooth. Each one of our projects demands the utmost dedication and expertise from our pro bono consultants as well as professionalism and candor from our clients. There have been moments of frustration, disappointment, confusion, and hilarity. Yet these moments make the final deliverables and the overall experience that much sweeter for everyone involved.
When chosen to write this post in celebration of our 1000th project milestone, I tried to think of one moment that would encapsulate the deep gratitude I feel around each and every project we support - projects that expose the absolute best of the corporate and nonprofit worlds.
I thought about what to write as I ate lunch with a three-time Account Director who told me, "Anne, I will always be an Account Director for Taproot. This is work just too meaningful to stop." I kept thinking as I brainstormed with a pro bono consultant who had offered to help Taproot create different pro bono service options. I continued thinking as I spoke to representatives from a nonprofit and heard their deep appreciation for their team and the lessons they had learned about their infrastructure through creating a new logo.
What I realized is that this milestone can't be summed up in one moment. This milestone is the culmination of thousands of little "aha!" moments collectively proving that pro bono can be high quality, reliable, and accessible. Perhaps one of our clients summed it up best, in an email to me this morning: "This work has been an exciting and stimulating adventure!!!"
An adventure it is. Here's to the next 1000!
By Aaron Zueck on
February 19, 2010 9:05 AM
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For over a year now, Taproot Foundation has been asking its Service Grant applicants whether or not they have a written Environmental Policy, with only 26 percent answering yes. As an AmeriCorps VISTA Program Fellow here for the past 10 months, I have read many of the responses, and I am not impressed.
If nonprofits aren't making the changes within their organizations necessary to truly be society's ethical innovators, who is going to do it?
Relying on governments to make the necessary changes is painfully slow and wrought with risks and dangers, as we saw in the Copenhagen Quagmire earlier this year. And while corporations have made some small steps in the recent green revolution, they won't start acting sustainably at the necessary scale until consumers decide to make radical lifestyle changes.
While it is true that the direct economic impact of nonprofits is small, their societal impact can not be understated, especially in the United States. As has been the case here for generations, nonprofits have a key role in
showing, not just telling, what is necessary for society to move forward. It is paramount that they do more to work towards the goal of sustainability as we as a society attempt to avoid catastrophic climate change.
So how do nonprofits do more?
Drafting environmental policies, subjecting them to board and executive review, and implementing them at every level of their organization's operations is a good start. This is a systemic way for nonprofits to lead by example. Nonprofit Organizations are chronically strapped for resources, but if we can show that we are able to operate effectively and sustainably, it will be that much more difficult for our corporations and households to claim that they can't do the same.
There are some resources available to help nonprofits towards greening their operations. Check out one of
TechSoup's helpful articles. Fast Company writer Alice Korngold also mentions a few others in this
recent blog entry (in which she gives Taproot a shout out). Taproot president, Aaron Hurst, also gives some of his ideas in this
blog post and identifies some best practices in this
post.
Grant-makers also have a very important role to play. Grant-making and capacity-building institutions have the task of providing the tools and funds for nonprofits to operate sustainably. We need to transition from merely raising the issue of sustainability in nonprofits, to encouraging, supporting, and expecting the creation and implementation of effective environmental policies at nonprofits of all stripes. Without our support, this effort will flounder.
Taproot can even do more to make its current commitment a more visible part of our culture. Let's unearth our
environmental policy from the investor relations page of our website, and display it prominently (print it, frame it!) in our offices. We have various quarterly awards - a new one could be created for the "Root" (staff member) most dedicated to environmental stewardship. To this end, there are many things that every nonprofit could include in their processes with relative ease.
Every member of the nonprofit community needs to be taking deliberate, daily steps toward social progress and our future environmental well-being.
Aaron Zueck is a New York City Program Fellow at the Taproot Foundation. This summer, Aaron plans to embark on his own venture "Bikeloc"- a cross-country bike trip to learn and share stories of the Local Food Movement through potlucks.
By Kate Gazzaniga on
February 12, 2010 1:45 PM
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Corporate social responsibility plays an important role in the pro bono
movement. To discuss CSR and pro bono, here's an interview with
Kara
Hartnett Hurst.
Kara Hartnett Hurst is the East Coast Managing Director BSR, a leading
corporate responsibility organization with a global network of over 250
member companies. Kara specializes in facilitation of collaborative
industry efforts, stakeholder engagement, corporate transparency,
responsible supply chain management, and strategic CSR policy setting.
She is also a founding member of the groundbreaking Electronic Industry
Citizen Coalition. Let's start you off with a softball
to ease you in to this interview- who is the best looking guy in the
field of pro bono service?Oh- let me think about that one
(laughs). Yeah- it'd have to be my husband [Taproot President, Founder,
and Esteemed Interview-Question-Writer Aaron Hurst]. Shocking (laughs).
You co-authored the children's book "Mommy and Daddy Do It Pro Bono" with your husband this year- how did that come about?As
parents there really wasn't a way to talk to our kids about what we do.
We're not in professions that are really straight forward like doctors
or lawyers or something that you can kind of point to- firemen or
ballerinas. With both of our jobs and the fields that we're in, things
can tend to get a little bit dry and serious. I spend a lot of my time
talking about the doomsday scenario around the environment, human
rights, labor violations, and corporate misdoings- and I think with
volunteering and pro bono it can be the same. Combining all of our
interests as parents as well as career-wise, it really pointed towards
a kids' book. We also don't have any time in our lives (laughs)- so
the shorter the better!
When you were a kid, did you want CSR guru when you grew up? You mentioned not being a ballerina, but what did you want to be?(Laughs.)
You know, I always thought I would be a senator. The first job I had in
college, I worked for Senator Moynihan in the Chrysler Building here in
New York, and I loved it, but I also saw how much of that job was about
fundraising and how much of that job didn't actually entail the
substantive policy work that I was interested in. That started my-
disillusionment (laughs) with politics. I tried a couple of different
positions and decided to work more directly in policy.
A lot
of people talk about CSR, volunteering, corporate philanthropy, and pro
bono interchangeably- what do you see as the difference?The
most simplistic way that I can put it is that with CSR, it's not about
what you do with the money that you make- it's about how you make the
money in the first place. I'm less interested in how a corporation is
spending money in a community- I expect them to do that; that's great;
it's definitely something we need. I'm interested in how they made that
money. If they made all of the money they're giving away by mistreating
their workers, sourcing irresponsibly, and creating products we don't
need, that is the core issue. It's not just about giving to
organizations that work in the community.
What are some examples of breakthroughs that you've seen in the field of CSR?One
of the big breakthroughs for companies- and I see this in a number of
different corporations across the industries that we work in- is
conceptualizing corporate social responsibility not just as something
that they must do but as something that really can bring a tremendous
amount of value to the business. You can create a better bottom line by
operating responsibly. Operating responsibly can bring new thinking; it
can bring new perspectives. It's not just about saying, 'ok we're doing
what we want to do, and nobody's going to campaign against us'- it's
also about bringing in innovation.
You have started on a
number of innovative industry collaborations. Why were these
competitors willing to collaborate in this setting and around these
issues?The do it because they're much better going at it
together than they are alone. One example of collaboration is the
Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition. That group now is a group of
43 electronics companies and electronics supply chains that have
addressed environmental and labor issues together. No one company is
going to solve human rights issues in the electronics supply chain
alone no matter how good their code of conduct is, how good their
auditing is, how good their supplier relationship is- the issues are
just too big.
Companies understand that even though they may
compete against each other in the marketplace, these issues are about
leveling the playing field for workers, for communities- they're about
bettering practice overall within a supply chain where there are
multiple companies working with the same suppliers.
How has the field of CSR change in the last ten years since you got in the game?There's
been a big change in terms of the level of integration we see. In the
last economic downturn we've been experiencing, people always ask me-
have companies been cutting their CSR programs? What we've seen is that
in companies that really understand CSR and do it well, there's not a
whole function you can just lop off. It would be like me saying they
have to cut their sales function or their HR. Operating responsibly is
good for business and we've definitely seen greater levels of
integration.
So, where is the field of CSR going in the next 10 years?I
think one key is companies understanding more about aligning their
public policy positions with their citizenship agendas- those two
things can't remain as disconnected as they have been. Another issue is
around board governance- aligning sustainability with board governance,
getting boards to ask better questions about company operations.
Another is integration of CSR with enterprise risk management-
companies looking across the whole organization in terms of how they
manage risk, looking to be more global and anticipatory and
incorporating sustainability issues into risk management.
Where do you see pro bono service fitting in with CSR?Well
I think the idea that companies are getting smarter about how they run,
smarter about how they incorporate CSR into their operations, really
translates to how companies are approaching pro bono and volunteering.
People have their own agendas; they have lives outside of their work
places, however there's a tremendous need to recognize our professional
skills and understand the value those skills might have in the
nonprofit sector. Nonprofits also need professional level skills, and
they're incredibly hard to access. I think that realization is becoming
a lot more main-stream.
A lot of business professionals are
seeking to get into CSR- what are a few things all professionals can do
to be CSR change agents?Start small- start within the
company you're at and connect to the larger conversation. Start looking
what changes you can make; be a maverick internally; advocate for
change. Look to what other businesses are doing and think about how you
company can do things differently- where can you innovate to lessen
your environmental footprint? Where can the policies you advocate for
align with corporate citizenship? There's a lot of information out
there and a lot of people who have great ideas, so I would just say get
involved.
By Laura Weiss on
February 1, 2010 4:01 PM
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Innovation is a very large ten-letter word. It usually conjures
images of vast sums of money invested over lengthy periods of time
resulting in significant change in products, services, processes or
entire organizations. Anything small or incremental runs contrary to
achieving success.
Or does it?
I've recently encountered two works that promote
seemingly contrarian approaches to solving the types of problems that
can lead to lasting change. These same techniques can help offset the
"analysis paralysis" that often blocks the innovation process.
In their new book
Switch,
Chip and Dan Heath suggest that the key to solving big problems can be
found by looking at similar situations where things are actually
working well - in other words, by focusing on the bright spots. Instead
of tackling an entire system at once, the idea is to investigate
easy-to-observe elements of the system; instead of trying to fix what's
broken, try to emulate what's working instead. The authors illustrate
this point with an exploration of malnutrition in rural Vietnam.
Instead of relying on heaps of socioeconomic data about poverty and
education, for example, a research team went out into the field to
understand what was actually going on in the villages, and even made
villagers part of the investigative team. Taking this approach had
remarkable results in the discovery of dietary habits with surprising
nutritional value.
Robert Maurer's 2004 book
One Small Step Can Change Your Life discusses the concept of
kaizen,
the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. Similar to the Heath
brothers, Maurer promotes a focus on breaking a systemic issue down
into smaller pieces (specifically, "small problems") as a more
manageable way to deal with an overwhelming crisis. He suggests that
asking small questions and taking small steps can dispel fear of
failure, inspire greater creativity, and generally stave off inertia.
Maurer, a clinical psychologist at UCLA, illustrates this concept
through the successful efforts of individuals seeking to improve their
health, financial stability, or personal productivity. As with the
stories told in
Switch, these too have positive outcomes.
The
guidance offered by these two books is characteristic of design
thinking - itself a contrarian concept that showcases inspiration,
intuition, and experience as key elements of the innovation process.
The Heaths' "seeking the bright spot" is a human-centered approach to
insight gathering that is based on observing how people actually behave
in a specific context in order to design solutions with broad impact.
Maurer's "taking small steps" is suggestive of rapid prototyping where
pursuing a series of low investment experiments can increase the pace
of learning towards reaching more significant outcomes. Both of these
techniques have application to innovating in the nonprofit sector, a
sector that passionately tackles society's biggest challenges utilizing
minimal resources. Contrary to the complexity of these efforts, a focus
on small steps and bright spots can actually help lay the groundwork
for transforming our world.
Laura Weiss is the Vice
President of Service Innovation at the Taproot Foundation. The newest
member of the Taproot team, Laura comes to the Taproot Foundation after
nine years as Associate Partner and Practice Director with the
world-renowned design consultancy IDEO, where she was an advocate for
bringing a business perspective to the design process. A former
licensed architect and educator, Laura holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan
School of Management, an MArch from Yale University and a BArch with
honors from Cornell University.
