How to Build a Culture of Caring

This Giving Tuesday, we're compiling (and unlocking!) a series of content assets designed to support corporate giving programs and the folks who manage them. Typically, many of the following resources would be "gated" behind a membership wall; only the employees of our 500+ member companies would have access to them. But in the spirit of #GivingTuesday, we're opening up important conversations and cutting-edge research, so everyone in the field can benefit.

The resources below represent a small sample of what our Center provides. We have MUCH more to offer, in terms of corporate giving programs and other areas of corporate social responsibility. If you and your team want limitless access to our reports, regulatory updates, research support, program promotion, professional networking, team training, and everything else... learn more about BCCCC membership here.

Hear about Major Companies' Corporate Giving Programs

Here at the Center, we host a series of events for members and non-members. Our live webinars are open to everyone, and usually feature one or two guest speakers who address a specific topic in corporate social responsibility. Recordings of each webinar are available in our CSR webinars archive to members only.

On this Giving Tuesday, we're unlocking access to a recently recorded webinar titled, "Combatting Bias in Grantmaking." Take advantage of this limited-time opportunity and watch this important session, featuring Center staff along with grantmaking experts from Umpqua Bank and T. Rowe Price. You'll hear how corporate grant makers can ensure their policies and procedures address unconscious bias. Examples and resources included!

Our Center also hosts Member Meetups, which are designed to be more casual and interactive online events, offering a safe space for CSR professionals to ask questions and share their experiences. For this reason, meetups are not recorded and are only accessible to BCCCC members. (Sorry, even on Giving Tuesday, we can't open the doors to everyone on this.)

If your company is a BCCCC member and you're interested in joining, our next Meetup will address an increasingly vital facet of corporate giving programs: pro bono work and skills-based volunteering. Because we're seeing that giving time is often as valuable as giving money.

Research & Data on Corporate Giving Programs

Every month BCCCC publishes a series of "Research Briefs," summarizing peer-reviewed studies on different facets of corporate social responsibility. Center staff vet and curate key findings, so our members can leverage the latest research when building a business case for their programs or working to structure campaigns more strategically. Typically, our Research Briefs are reserved for members only, but we've unlocked these three examples on the theme of corporate giving programs:

Asking donors to get creative increases donations

Researchers tested several donation scenarios encouraging varying degrees of creativity. For example, some participants were invited to color an elephant in 10 different colors (vs. only gray), or decorate a cookie with their own design (vs. copying a template) before being asked for a donation. Subsequent donation behavior—i.e., the likelihood of donation and the amount donated—to a nonprofit, was analyzed. Interested to see what researchers found? Keep reading here...

Donors are more likely to give money vs. volunteer their time when...

To explore how a greater number of donors might be induced to give money, researchers conducted a series of seven studies with nearly 2,800 participants, who were presented with a variety of hypothetical and incentive-based scenarios involving charitable causes (e.g., ending hunger), donation amounts, action types (e.g., volunteering time versus donating money), degrees of volunteer/donor control (how time/money will be used), and message framings (“I give my charitable dollars” vs. “I spend my charitable dollars”). Interested to see which conditions yielded the best results? Keep reading here...

Framing the donation: purchase intent & cause marketing campaigns

To examine the role of donation frames in causing marketing initiatives, researchers surveyed 1,820 research participants in four different purchase environments. Researchers investigated the role of two distinct donation frames—minimum donation frames (e.g. “at least $X will be donated this year”) and maximum donation frames (e.g. “the company will donate up to $X by the end of the year”) across high and low donation amounts to understand how these features influenced consumers intent to purchase. Interested to see how you can maximize consumer goodwill? Keep reading here...

Learn Best Practices in Corporate Giving

COURSE | CORPORATE GIVING: MAXIMIZING EFFECTIVENESS

Is your corporate giving strategy delivering all of the business and social value it could? Enroll in this course (online or as part of our next in-person learning/networking event) and learn how to assess where your philanthropic investments can have the most positive impact—both in the company and in the community.  

You'll also learn how to:

• Design your giving strategy to align with company business priorities.
• Address common corporate giving challenges (e.g.  regulations, compliance, and international giving.)
• Determine the right portfolio mix for your company.
• Align your employee giving and volunteer programs with your overall giving.
• Stay abreast of the latest trends, including collective impact, cause-marketing, and crowd-sourcing.
• Select and evaluate partners who will accelerate achievement of your impact goals.
• Measure the outcomes and impacts of your philanthropic investments.

Why BCCCC for Executive Education in Corporate Giving & Related Topics?

Whether you started your career in corporate giving or you took a more circuitous path, your work can always benefit from executive education that is focused on this evolving discipline. Our Center is uniquely equipped to offer CSR and ESG coursework. We are housed within the Carroll School of Management, at Boston College, which underscores our emphasis on rigorous, research-based education. But we're also a member-based group, with hundreds of corporate giving practitioners informing and enriching our curriculum all the time. Professionals who participate in our CSR courses or certificate programs enjoy the best of both worlds: a tradition of quality instruction and the business world's most relevant, innovative ideas on giving.

Discover the Best Tools for Tracking & Managing Corporate Giving Programs

Is your community involvement team looking for a CSR platform to help manage and track all the social impact work that’s happening across your company? Are you rethinking the corporate giving software or employee engagement technology you have in place now? Wondering if there’s a tool that can encompass everything? We have the data you need.

In the 2022 Community Involvement Technology Vendor Report you will find comparative data (self-reported, from the vendors themselves) on CSR software for managing:

• Employee giving
• Employee volunteering
• Dollars for Doers programs
• Grants and corporate giving
• Community involvement reporting
• And much more... 

PLEASE NOTE: This report is accessible to members only.

Member Quote on Corporate Giving Programs

“At Liberty Mutual, we are committed to advancing security for those who need it most—and that commitment has never been stronger. Over the past several years, we've dramatically increased the scope of our philanthropy, using our resources to expand the impact our community partners can have on people's lives.”

-David H. Long, chairman and chief executive officer, Liberty Mutual Insurance

Read the full story behind this quote; it's available in the Corporate Citizen Magazine.

Finally, don't miss this opportunity to connect with hundreds of corporate giving professionals...

THE 2023 INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP CONFERENCE | APRIL 30 - MAY 2, 2023 | MINNEAPOLIS, MN

Register today, while there's still time to lock in the best rate!