Story first appeared in USA Today.
When Judith Cruz started as executive director of the Treasure Coast Food Bank in Fort Pierce, Fla., in 2009, the food bank was helping serve more than 42,000 meals a week.
But with many residents of southeastern Florida struggling to put food on the table because of the economic downturn, she knew the food bank could — and had — to do more.
Cruz says what she needed most was someone's expertise in logistics to know how they could deliver more meals each week with their existing resources. She knew they weren't properly storing and distributing their product from their warehouse to their food pantry partners, but she didn't know how to fix it.
She thought she knew someone who did.
She called Wal-Mart, a company that's known for logistics expertise. They initially thought she was calling to ask for money. She said, 'No. I want your management team, if possible.' They said she could have anything she wants.
And with that — almost like a whirlwind — members from Wal-Mart's distribution team descended on the food bank, helping it improve its warehousing processes to increase storage and more quickly sort food. The company also helped develop new truck routes to allow more food deliveries per week.
Thanks to this support, the food bank was able to increase the number of food pantry partners it works with to 200 from 140. And now it is serving more than 100,000 meals a week, more than twice the amount in 2009, Cruz says.
For the second year, The Chronicle of Philanthropy and USA TODAY have surveyed the 300 largest U.S. corporations to find out how much money they give to charity and to which causes. In 2010, 117 companies answered the survey, and the Chronicle analyzed tax data for other companies for a total of 180. Wal-Mart topped the list of corporate cash contributors at more than $319 million. Corporate cash giving rose 13% to $4.9 billion, vs. a decrease in 2009 of 7.5% because of lingering effects of the recession.
Companies also gave in-kind donations of products and services to various causes. Those donations rose by 22.5% last year.
Leading CEOs say they are interested in the deep connection between society obstacles and business obstacles, that they are intertwined.
A different approach
As companies gained traction after the recession, they focused charitable giving on more than cash or services. Many companies applied the same business practices that put them back in the black to their charitable efforts, not only addressing major societal problems, such as hunger, but achieving bottom-line results as well. It's a corporate-giving trend that, according to giving experts, is here to stay.
Wal-Mart's Leslie Dach, executive vice president of corporate affairs who also oversees the foundation's charitable work, calls this the "360-degree approach."
In terms of their giving efforts, the combination of philanthropy and the power of business have really been important and impactful. It's making them a stronger business, and (company efforts to fight) hunger is a perfect example.
In 2010, Wal-Mart kicked off a five-year, $2 billion pledge to fight hunger in the U.S., which includes 1.7 billion pounds of food donations and $250 million in philanthropic support.
Dach believes the only way they successfully deliver on these commitments is by engaging all parts of the business, whether it's their associates who are volunteering their time to local food banks or the heads of each division who are weighing in on the strategy, or their foundation's checks to their charity partners. Wal-Mart is not alone when it comes to taking this strategic approach to giving.
From education to the environment to hunger, many of the nation's largest companies are combining their dollars and their business muscle to take on some of the country's, and world's, most challenging problems. For instance:
•Earlier this year, Abbott Laboratories and its philanthropic foundation announced a commitment of more than $6.5 million in funding and expertise to a partnership with Partners In Health (PIH) to empower Haitians to address the longstanding problem of severe malnutrition in Haiti with locally sourced, high-quality, nutritious food products.
•Bank of America continued its commitment to the health and well-being of communities last year by providing $200 million in philanthropic giving, despite the challenging economic times, and providing more than $1 billion in loans and investment to more than 120 community development financial institutions.
•In 2010, the Coca-Cola Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Coca-Cola, awarded grants totaling $19 million to community organizations across the U.S. and Canada with the goal of building sustainable communities through water conservation, community recycling, active healthy living and education.
•Goldman Sachs received the CECP's annual excellence award in corporate philanthropy for the "10,000 Women" initiative, a five-year, $100 million program that provides 10,000 underserved women in developing and emerging markets with business and management education and company mentors.
•Google, which participated in our survey for the first time, made headlines recently for its latest venture into the world of philanthropy: Google Ideas. Described as a think-and-do tank, the venture will focus on finding solutions to some of the world's most challenging problems using an obvious core competency for the company: technology. This comes in addition to its foundation commitments of more than $100 million in cash and in-kind donations to non-profits and crises such as the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
•With an ongoing $1 billion commitment to address the education crisis in the U.S., Target selected 42 additional schools to receive new libraries in May, which is part of Target's library and school makeover program that leverages the company's design and construction expertise, along with the products and services of local and national vendors, to transform elementary school libraries nationwide.
While these companies may be putting millions, even billions, of dollars toward addressing major societal problems, can they expect to have an impact?
Not only can they, says cause-marketing expert Carol Cone, many companies already are.
She thinks the turning point for many companies came after Hurricane Katrina, where a company like Wal-Mart was one of the first responders. They knew it was going to be a hard situation, so they had their trucks lined up — ready to help — because logistics are their expertise.
Companies are taking their giving efforts more seriously than ever before, as a strategic part of their business, because they see the impact these efforts are having.
How do companies break through?
By linking giving efforts as close to their business interests as possible, says Cone, companies are moving from merely having a reputation for doing well to actually doing it in a sustainable way. It's not about “pink-washing” or “green-washing” any longer, where a label is slapped on a product. When it comes to their social engagement, the question now for companies is, 'How do you break through? How do you go beyond saying that you're making a difference to actually making a difference?' There are a number of ways to go about it, but a company must first be willing to go deep and narrow into an issue, and then be willing to put enough true assets, one's employees, against it.
It's a simple enough idea for businesses to link their bottom-line interests to their giving, but when it comes to execution, that's a different question.
In a recent poll conducted by the CECP, 91% of CEO respondents said they face a variety of difficulties, including: identifying social issues that link to their competitive business advantage, scaling the strategy across the company, and measuring the societal and business performance of these initiatives. What research has found is that while there is more momentum around this idea, there is a paucity of action. For senior-level executives, the vision part is easy. Implementation is the challenge, says CECP's Coady.
Coady's organization recently teamed with corporate advisory firm Accenture to release "Business at Its Best," a report that identified best practices across industries to help companies close the gap between vision and execution.
This strategy goes beyond check-writing or donating pro bono services. Companies need to think hard about the societal issue that they as a company can have a part in tackling, says David Abood, managing director of Accenture's sustainability practice. To do this, companies should ask themselves: What core capabilities does a company have? And then, how can we use that to make a difference that will not only create new business value but measurable impact on society? It requires a different way of thinking for most companies when it comes to how much time and money should go into their giving initiatives.
Despite these challenges, Wal-Mart's charity partners are glad it's willing to put in the extra time and effort.
Cruz says she knows Wal-Mart sometimes gets a bad rap, but they have been their knight in shining armor and that they couldn't have made these gains without them. It would have cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding they don't have for the management expertise they received.
