Corporate Relations & Engagement

The employee perks at Google are legendary, and they’ve always included an over-the-top holiday gift for every employee. In the past, the company has surprised its 70,000 employees with Nexus phones, Android smartwatches and Chromebooks. This year, employees speculated they might get Google’s new Pixel phones or a Google Home unit, the company’s competitor to…

When a longstanding grant-maker sunsets, what happens to its signature programs? Can a final round of grants sustain them by transferring the work elsewhere? The Hitachi Foundation, closing up shop by the end of the year, hopes so. Following a three-year planning process around the shut-down, it’s going out with a bang: $11 million grants…

Patagonia, the high-end outdoor clothing retailer, is donating its entire Black Friday sales to grassroots environmental organizations around the world. The retailer reported a "record-breaking" $10 million in Black Friday sales—about five times higher than expected—and said it will give every penny to nonprofits fighting "to protect our air, water and soil for future generations.…

Patagonia plans to donate 100 percent of its sales on Black Friday, Nov. 25, to the environment. The company will donate that money to small grassroots organizations that fight for clean water, air and soil. It will work with One Percent For The Planet, an environmental non-profit network, to get the funds to the grassroots organization.…

Nov. 15 was Philanthropy Day—a day to celebrate the act of giving and to think of the needs of others. All too often, we think of business as a zero-sum game, but that’s actually far from the truth. Sure, a company’s main duties are to its shareholders, but no business should exist at all if…

There are many ways to donate to charity, but doing so via escrow funds is a new one: A mergers and acquisitions (M&A) services firm called SRS Acquiom has partnered with a charity group called Pledge 1% to launch EscrowUP, a charity program for dealmakers. It works like so: Every M&A deal includes an escrow…

Earlier this year, Sean Parker—Napster founder, Facebook funder and serial disruptor—launched his latest and most ambitious project to change the world. With his own $250 million gift, he created the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, to well, hack cancer. That may sound like a worthy, if ridiculously naive, aim from a tech billionaire. But this…

One million high school students across the U.S. who lack internet access will receive a tablet, laptop or smartphone on loan from Sprint to help them complete homework assignments, the network announced on Tuesday. The devices will serve as part of a pilot program Sprint has created to help close the gap on internet inequality.…

Companies and nonprofits that manage employee giving and volunteering programs are quite adept at the processes and practices that keep these programs humming. Yet they often struggle to find and tell stories that show how the generosity of employees is making a difference. Effective storytelling is a key ingredient of your marketing and communications efforts.…

We were sitting in a room discussing how to approach various businesses and corporations in the community. The director of development and several major gift officers (MGOs) were having quite a debate about the subject with the prevailing argument being that we needed to lead with a compelling need the business would be interested in...