Recently in Pro Bono Practices Category
By Aaron Hurst on
April 24, 2008 12:24 PM
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The more I
understand pro bono services and their potential for social impact, the more I
fall in love with Chicago's
Civic Consulting Alliance. They have created a really powerful model in Chicago that needs to be
replicated in every city as well as at the state and federal level.
The Civic
Consulting Alliance is a partnership between the City of Chicago and CEOs of the top companies in the
city. Every year they identify key issues facing the city and then engage
the companies in pro bono projects to address the issue. Rather than
having pro bono be about a million acts of kindness, Civic Consulting Alliance
has harnessed pro bono to make tangible and important changes in the city.
Here are
some examples of pro bono projects facilitated by CCA from their site:
- CCA helped the Department identify key goals that
indicate environmental progress, and developed an environmental scorecard for
the City based on these. The priorities outlined in the scorecard were used to
realign DOE projects and priorities, and then were used to align the
environmental efforts of all City Departments.
- Each year, about 3 million tons of waste are generated
in Chicago and
sent to area landfills. In collaboration with the Department of Environment and
Mayor's office, CCA and its partners are developing a strategy for reducing and
recycling waste from each of the core materials in the Chicago's waste stream. These recommendations
are now the center of the City's waste reduction initiative.
- Five-hundred-thousand riders a day depend on the
Chicago L, yet years of deferred maintenance now require billions in repairs.
Faced with such a large, yet required, investment, CTA asked, "If you
could build any rapid transit system in the world, what would it be?"
Along with its partners, CCA identified the requirements, characteristics, and
costs of "the rail of the future." This research led to numerous
planning efforts to reflect the result in current projects.
- Working with line and management personnel, CCA and
McKinsey and Company is applying lean transformation techniques to help improve
the effectiveness and efficiency of bus maintenance across all of CTA.
You can
read about their projects with the City of Chicago at: http://www.ccachicago.org/our-work/index.html
By Aaron Hurst on
March 31, 2008 12:19 PM
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Like early corporate philanthropy,
pro bono services offered by the leading consulting firms often appear to be
more opportunistic than strategic. They are driven by requests and
partner interests. As a result, it is hard to evaluate their collective
impact or to tell a compelling story about the pro bono work being done across
the country.
In the last 10 years, corporate
philanthropy programs have professionalized their efforts to be more focused on
intentional impact. They have identified key issues that are aligned with
their interests and have started making larger grants that look to connect them
deeply with the issue and to position the company as a leader.
These companies have further
professionalized these efforts by becoming active members of broader foundation
coalitions. If they are strategically investing in education, they
are partnering with other foundations across the country making similar
investments to increase the effectiveness of their efforts (and those of their
peers).
As consulting firms increase
their investment in pro bono in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars it
is time for us to follow the lead of strategic corporate philanthropy. To
increase impact, these firms should be at the foundation tables that are building
collective strategies for approaching core issues like education and the
environment. This would not only help to focus the pro bono investments of
professional services firms, but could perhaps more importantly bring a fresh
perspective to these groups of grantmakers.
How do we get associations like the
ones below to invite firms to the table to talk about pro bono as a form of
grantmaking?
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Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (http://www.geofunders.org/home.aspx)
- Council
on Foundations (http://www.cof.org/)
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Grantmakers for Education (http://www.edfunders.org/)
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Grantmakers for Children, Youth and Families (http://www.gcyf.org/)
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Grantmakers in Aging (http://www.giaging.org/)
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Environmental Grantmakers Association (http://www.ega.org/)
By Aaron Hurst on
February 18, 2008 11:00 AM
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At the Pro Bono Summit last week, the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP) announced that it is investing in the measurement of pro bono work. CECP does one of the largest annual surveys of corporate philanthropy with the intent to benchmark success and identify trends in the field. Their 170 company members complete the survey each year.
In the past, this survey enabled professional services firms to include pro bono work in their total giving number (defining it as a cash equivalent). It was, however, lumped in with other in kind donations and therefore was not tracked accurately.
This year, CECP is creating a distinct line item for pro bono for professional services firms AND is enabling other companies to add pro bono work to their total giving number. This is a significant validation of the value of pro bono to the community but also represents an understanding of the investment required for companies to offer quality pro bono programs.
In the next few years, we will for the first time start to reward in house pro bono programs and understand trends in the field.
By Aaron Hurst on
December 5, 2007 1:17 PM
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As an undergrad at the University of Michigan, I took a great course in organizational behavior that focused on team building and team performance. It had a significant impact on the design of our pro bono program.
It was in that class that I was introduced to the concept of "social loafing." The idea is that on many teams there are members who don't carry their weight, which builds resentment and risks the success of the endeavor.
This has been a widely studied phenomenon and there are now understood ways to build teams to minimize the likelihood of loafing (love that word). We have adopted many of these practices, but the one that stands out to me is the practice of creating clearly differentiated roles.
If you have a team where multiple people can accomplish the same tasks, it is common for one of these people to loaf, as they know that the slack can be picked up by another member of the team. On the other hand, if each role is distinct and requires skills that are unique to that individual, all team members know that if they don't play their part, the project will not get done.
For example, in building a website, the HTML developer knows that he or she is the only one who can build the site. The copywriter can't do it. The marketing manager can't do it. The graphic designer can't do it. There is clear responsibility, accountability and sense of purpose (and therefore reward). Similarly, the graphic designer is the only one who can do the design.
That is as elegant a differentiation in roles as you can get. Even on that team, roles like copywriter and marketing manager can lead to social loafing as others think they can also do marketing and writing. So, if the copywriter is not performing, other members of the team may step in and hack some copy, and therefore let the writer off the hook.
So, in pro bono work, where generous volunteers are trying to fit service into their busy schedules, the likelihood of loafing is very high. As you are managing and staffing pro bono projects, take time to think about how to scope and staff the project to create clearly differentiated roles that will increase the odds of a successful project.
For more on social loafing and how to minimize its impact, check out this resource:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Social_Loafing
By Aaron Hurst on
November 9, 2007 9:15 AM
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We consistently get requests from foundations to figure out how to engage business professionals in financial management work for nonprofits. They clearly see a need, but I am struggling to figure out how to make it work in a reliable and scalable way.
Nonprofit accounting is pretty different from corporate accounting. It is more than just the fact that "P&L" and "Balance Sheet" are not terms used by nonprofits. The whole process of placing and releasing restrictions on dollars adds a lot of complexity to the process. Then there is the fun of government grants. It took me about 2 years to get my head around it -- and I am sure I am still missing a few pieces.
There is also a tendency for corporate folks to make recommendations that align with their experience (make the books more like a company's books) which is not always the right answer. For example, business professionals often want to push nonprofits to adopt earned income (e.g., fee for service or goods) programs. More often than not, this is not a good idea.
Where do you think the nonprofit sector could effectively use financial management resources? Do you have any stories of successful projects?
Let me know at PBJ@taprootfoundation.org.
By Aaron Hurst on
October 19, 2007 4:26 PM
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The Communication Arts website offers an article on design for the public good, including a great gallery of public design. The examples range from a poster for a film festival to beautiful brochure for Doctors without Borders. You can click oneach and read about the project and designer.
http://www.commarts.com/CA/feadesign/pg04/
It is easy to be distracted by the gallery, but be sure to read the article too. It does a nice job of giving a balanced view of the pros and cons to doing pro bono work as a designer.
By Aaron Hurst on
October 12, 2007 11:06 AM
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McCall Design Group, the retail design firm responsible for just about every Gap, Victoria's Secret, and Bath & Body Works, just completed a pro bono space plan for Goodwill in San Francisco. They opened the new store on October 4th with much fanfare. The new store has a more efficient layout than their usual stores and might be the best designed thrift shop in the country. Not only is it a smart space, McCall helped to really integrate the brand into the experience, right down to the note cards announcing the opening.
McCall has just signed on to do Goodwill's 18th area store, a 16,000 sf space in Redwood City. They're excited and Goodwill is ecstatic. They're also collaborating on the design of a new breed of Goodwill off-shoots called "William Good," which will be a one-off, boutique clothing store that is essentially a pilot program.
By Aaron Hurst on
October 9, 2007 12:41 PM
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A number of graduate schools (e.g., engineering, design, business, etc.) are starting to engage their students in pro bono projects as part of their curriculum. This is a wonderful way to build the pro bono ethic in professionals early in their careers, and the students clearly gain a lot from the real world experience.
My fear is that these students may be getting a lot more out of the experience than their nonprofit clients. It has always been one of my core beliefs that nonprofit pro bono clients should be treated as paying clients and not as guinea pigs or second-class customers. When students do projects for nonprofits are they able to add real value or are they just wasting the time of a resource-strapped nonprofit?
What has your experience been providing or receiving pro bono services from graduate students? Send me an email at PBJ@taprootfoundation.org.
By Aaron Hurst on
September 25, 2007 11:17 AM
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September 19, 2007 9:18 AM
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The Taproot Foundation is currently working to expand the Human Resources practice area, so I have been doing a lot of research on the subject. In the course of my research, I have noticed that many of the industry leaders, the big hitters in HR, are not doing pro bono. Compared to other categories of professional services firms, there is significantly less formal pro bono work in the HR field. This came as a big surprise to me because I would think that such a people-centric profession would be really into pro bono, and the philosophy of HR seems consistent with the tenets of the pro bono movement.
In HR there is an emphasis on people as commodities and methods to best leverage the skills and talents of these commodities to help an organization reach its strategic goals. In Pro Bono there, too, is an emphasis on people as valuable commodities, and it is by leveraging the skills and talents of people that pro bono improves society. The end goal of HR may be narrower, but the thinking is similar. It seems natural, therefore, to expect that many members of the HR profession would want to join the pro bono movement. I can only continue to puzzle as to why the pro bono ethic is not a bigger part of the institution of HR.
I wonder how HR professionals feel about this and whether they would like to see the firms they work for doing more pro bono.
