| When catastrophic floods hit
Bangladesh, TNT’s emergency-response team was ready. The logistics giant, with
headquarters in Amsterdam, has 50 people on standby to intervene anywhere in the
world at 48 hours' notice. This is part of a five-year-old partnership with the
World Food Program (WFP), the UN’s agency that fights hunger. The team has
attended to some two dozen emergencies, including the Asian tsunami in 2004.
"We’re just faster," says Ludo Oelrich, the director of TNT’s "Moving the World"
program. Emergency help is not TNT’s only offering. Volunteers do stints around the world on sec-ondment to WFP and staff are encouraged to raise money for the program (they generated enro2.5m last year). There is knowledge transfer, too: TNT recently improved the school-food supply chain in Liberia, increasing WFP’s efficiency by 15-20%, and plans to do the same in Congo. Why does TNT do these things? "People feel this is a company that does more than take care of the bottom line," says Mr. Oelrich. "It’s providing a soul to TNT." In a 2006 staff survey, 68% said the pro-bono activities made them prouder to work at the company. It also helps with recruitment: three out of four graduates who apply for jobs mention the WFP connection. Last year the company came top in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. TNT’s experience illustrates several trends in corporate philanthropy. First, collaboration is in, especially with NC, Os. Companies try to pick partners with some relevance to their business. For.TNT, the food program is a good fit because hunger is in part a logistical problem. Standard Chartered, a bank, is working with the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee on microfinance and with other NGOs on a campaign to help 10m blind people. Coca-Cola has identified water conservation as critical to its future as the world’s largest drinks company. Last June it announced an ambitious collaboration with WWF, a global environmental organization, to conserve seven major freshwater fiver basins. It is also working with Greenpeace to eliminate carbon emissions from coolers and vending machines. The co-operation is strictly non-financial, but marks a change in outlook. "Ten years ago you couldn’t get CocaCola and Greenpeace in the same room," says Neville Isdell, its CEO. Second, what used to be local community work is increasingly becoming global community work. In the mid-1990s nearly all IBM’s philanthropic spending was in America; now 60% is outside. Part of this involves a corporate version of the peace corps: young staff get one-month assignments in the developing world to work on worthy projects. The idea is not only to make a difference on the ground, but also to develop managers who understand how the wider world works. Third, once a formal program is in place, it becomes hard to stop. Indeed, it tends to grow, not least because employees are keen. In 1996 KPMG allowed its staff in Britain to spend two hours a month of their paid-for time on work for the community. Crucially for an accountancy firm, the work was given a time code. After a while it came to be seen as a business benefit. The program has expanded to half a day a month and now adds up to 40,000 donated hours a year. And increasingly it is not only inputs that are being measured but outputs as well. Salesforce.com, a software firm, tries to measure the impact of its volunteer programs, which involved 85% of its employees last year. All this has meant that straightforward cash donations have become less important. At IBM, in 1993 cash accounted for as much as 95% of total philanthropic giving; now it makes up only about 35%. But cash still matters. When Hank Paulson, now America’s treasury secretary, was boss of Goldman Sachs, he was persuaded to raise the amount that the firm chipped in to boost employees' charitable donations. Now it is starting a philanthropy fund aiming for $1 billion to which the partners will be encouraged to contribute a share of their pay. No doubt that is good for the bank’s soul. |