News from Leading Brands

Keep up with the latest impact news from companies embracing the triple bottom line, shared via 3BL's publishing platform.

" "

Education | PNC Financial Services Group

PNC Volunteers Bring Basic Financial Knowledge to New Volunteer Opportunity

For about two years now, the PNC Center for Financial Education (CFE), an effort led by Community Development Banking, has been collaborating with community-based nonprofits to offer financial education to individuals, first-time homebuyers and small businesses.

Focus for maximum impact

Focus™ is 3BL’s premier product, a comprehensive suite of proprietary tools and expertise to optimize your impact programs with precision and purpose.

Discover Focus

Smarter impact communications

Power your message with data, insights and confidence

Find out more at 3BL.com

Environment

Ceres, WWF Expand AgWater Challenge to Drive Water Stewardship in Ag Supply Chains

Cape Town, South Africa could run out of water in a few months, literally turning off the spigot for some four million residents. If a solution to the crisis is not found, social unrest is feared. Beyond the human rights concerns, the region’s vegetable, citrus, grape and nut growers may face shortages as 40 percent of Western Cape Town’s water is currently allocated to agriculture.

Black & Veatch

Innovation & Technology

Black & Veatch Center of Excellence in Houston Drives Tunneling, Flood Control Options

Black & Veatch, a leader in the design and construction management of large-diameter, deep-tunneling projects, announced today it has created a Center of Excellence in its Houston office to deliver sustainable, cost-effective tunneled solutions.

Boeing

Environment

Researchers Use Recycled Carbon Fiber to Improve Permeable Pavement

Recycled carbon fiber composite scrap received from Boeing manufacturing facilities helps solve the environmental challenge of stormwater run-off.

Social Impact & Volunteering

Common Impact and Fidelity Investments Scale Tech Impact Week to 6 Cities Across the U.S.

Common Impact, a nonprofit that pioneered corporate skills-based volunteering is collaborating with Fidelity Investments® to launch Tech Impact Week, its 3rd annual wide-scale flash consulting event where Fidelity Investments technologists utilize their expertise to support local nonprofit organizations in building their internal capacity and acumen. This year, the initiative is one of the largest to-date, spanning across 6 regions and pairing nearly 450 Fidelity Investments volunteers and 67 nonprofits, resulting in an anticipated investment of $550,000.

MetLife Logo

Research, Reports & Publications

Common Cents Lab Report: Hacking Human Behavior to Improve Financial Health

While Common Cents Lab is a research entity, its work does so much more than create interesting research. It creates easier, more intuitive ways for people to save – which is something that most people say they want to do, but find difficult. In 2017, twenty-seven organizations worked with Common Cents Lab to design products or outreach strategies that have helped nearly 500,000 low- and moderate-income Americans thus far.

Tetra Tech logo

Events, Media & Communications

Tetra Tech Sponsors Upcoming Engineering News-Record Webinar on Building Utility Resilience for Water Extremes

As communities around the world are impacted by ongoing weather extremes, local utilities face significant challenges to plan secure infrastructure to minimize service disruptions for their customers.

Schneider Electric Logo

Supply Chain & the Circular Economy

Circular Economy 101: Waste Not, Get More

Across the globe, about 50 percent of CO2 emissions are tied to materials — goods that often produce a significant amount of physical and financial waste. The United Nations estimates that the 41.8 million tonnes (Mt) of electronic waste generated in 2014, for example, included 16 Mt of copper and 300 tonnes of gold, plus other precious metals such as palladium. This material had a combined value of $52 billion.

Philanthropy & Cause Initiatives

Companies Standing Up for Gun Control

The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have been thrust into a national debate and have made it clear that thoughts and prayers are not enough – they are demanding action from politicians, schools, the NRA and even businesses. We have seen this highly-politicized and divisive issue in the news before, but this time is different. Those students can’t be ignored. Companies are increasingly more comfortable standing up for and speaking out on hot button issues that have dominated the news over the last year.

AEG logo

Philanthropy & Cause Initiatives

LA Galaxy Host Annual Read Across America Day Celebration at StubHub Center

Yesterday, AEG’s LA Galaxy, StubHub Center and the LA Chargers hosted more than 250 second and third grade students from Towne Avenue Elementary School and Leapwood Avenue Elementary School at StubHub Center in Carson, Calif. for Read Across America Day in celebration of Dr. Seuss’ 114th birthday.

Ceres logo

Research, Reports & Publications

Companies Must Take the Higher Road Toward a Sustainable Future

In our new report, TURNING POINT: Corporate Progress on The Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability, we take a closer look at how more than 600 of the largest U.S. companies are responding to these calls and positioning themselves for success in a world increasingly shaped by unprecedented environmental and social challenges. The analysis specifically takes a closer look at the progress of more than 600 companies to meet 20 key expectations of sustainability leadership within the areas of governance, disclosure, stakeholder engagement, environmental and social performance, as outlined in the Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability.

Green Infrastructure

This 18-mile Stretch of Georgia Highway Is a Living Laboratory for Clean Energy

It’s not often that captains of industry have epiphanies about climate change. So it was remarkable when, after reading The Ecology of Commerce in 1994, carpet manufacturer Ray Anderson set out to clean up his petroleum-intensive operation and succeeded in cutting net carbon emissions by more than 80 percent.

Green Infrastructure

Cleaning the Built Environment After the Big Celebration

The city of Philadelphia’s football team won the big game for the first time ever and its long-suffering fan base celebrated the victory in kind. In February, the city held a massive parade for its football team, a turnout that some estimated teetered over 700,000 people. With this great turnout came its inevitable byproduct: trash. Lots of trash. Roughly 90 tons of trash, the most the city has ever generated for a single event and nearly double its previous record of 58 tons for a victory parade for its baseball team in 2008.

Philadelphia came prepared. The city’s Department of Streets mobilized a team of 300 workers, using 100 kinds of equipment, to follow the procession of the parade to clean up the immediate aftermath.

Taproot logo

Social Impact & Volunteering

A Decade in the Making | Taproot Foundation's Advisory Services Newsletter

Ten years ago, when Lindsay Firestone Gruber started Taproot's Advisory Services practice, the purpose was simple: to help nonprofits tackle their toughest challenges by connecting them to hard-to-reach corporate talent. A decade later, the landscape of corporate pro bono is thriving. Kim Gillman, National Director of Advisory Services, sat down with Lindsay Firestone Gruber, founder of Advisory Services and the current Chief Programs Officer, to reflect on the past decade and to explore what’s next for the field.

Environment

Unlikely Allies Are Crowdsourcing Funding and Habitat to Save the Monarch Butterfly

The Monarch Butterfly Habitat Exchange is an innovative market-based program dedicated to restoring and conserving high-quality monarch habitat on America's private working lands. It’s been dubbed an ‘Airbnb for butterflies’ because it’s the only program of its kind that can open the vast untapped potential of large-scale farms and ranches to make habitat available for monarchs at an unprecedented scale and pace.

Smithfield Foods, a global food company that is also the world’s largest hog producer and pork processor, is the first food company to participate in the program, contributing $300,000 to restore key prairie habitat for monarchs in Missouri.

Awards, Ratings & Rankings

Bloomberg Headquarters in New York Receives Highest 3 Star Fitwel Certification From Center for Active Design

Bloomberg L.P.’s headquarters at 731 Lexington Avenue has been certified by the Center for Active Design (CfAD) with a Fitwel 3 Star Rating, the system’s highest achievement level. Fitwel is the leading global health certification, evaluating evidence-based strategies in buildings that support human health. The Center for Active Design is the operator of the Fitwel Certification System and is an international not-for-profit organization that was launched in 2012 by then Mayor and founder of Bloomberg L.P. Michael Bloomberg.

Media & Communications

ERM Announces Acquisition of BrownFlynn, Ltd.

ERM, the world’s leading sustainability consultancy, has completed the acquisition of BrownFlynn Ltd (BrownFlynn). BrownFlynn is the leading U.S. corporate sustainability and governance consulting business based in Cleveland, Ohio.

Yum! Brands, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Habit Burger Grill logos

Philanthropy & Cause Initiatives

Pizza Hut: The Literacy Project – Help Start a New Chapter

Pizza Hut: The Literacy Project represents a global commitment to literacy and reading. Help start a new chapter for millions of children by enabling access to books and educational resources, empowering teachers and inspiring readers.

Research, Reports & Publications

Closing the Gender Gap in Women’s Access to Financial Products and Services Could Unlock $330 Billion in Annual Global Revenue

Closing the gender gap in women’s access to financial products and services could unlock $330 billion in global annual revenue, according to a new report released today from BNY Mellon and the United Nations Foundation. Increased market opportunities for financial services firms, along with greater financial inclusion and empowerment for women, are additional key outputs from narrowing this gap.

Las Vegas Sands Logo

Philanthropy & Cause Initiatives

Sands Cares Fresh Start Mobile Showers: Biannual Review

In July 2017, Las Vegas Sands and Clean the World responded to one of the challenges within Las Vegas’ homeless community with the Sands Cares Fresh Start Mobile Showers Powered by Clean the World, a mobile hygiene unit that visits various locations serving the homeless population to provide showers, hygiene supplies, and other resources.

Supply Chain & the Circular Economy

Innovation Platforms for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa

A project in Uganda, funded by ACIAR and run by the World Agroforestry Centre, is empowering smallholder dairy and honey farmers to control their own community development by gaining access to high-value markets.

Environment

General Mills and Its Natural & Organic Brands Join Annie’s in Forging Ahead on Climate Action

We are very excited to see the Climate Collaborative community growing today with General Mills and its nine Natural and Organic (N&O) brands making new climate commitments. With these new commitments, the entire General Mills N&O product line is now represented in the Collaborative.

Alongside this announcement, General Mills is also coming on board as a Climate Collaborative donor at the highest Catalyst level, which means they’ll be helping fund vital programming and events as we look to the project’s second year.

It is incredibly exciting to have such a large company see the value in the collaborative platform we’ve created—and to see them expand the strong record of climate performance from Annie’s and EPIC out to all of their other natural products brands.

WWF Logo

Environment

Artist Zio Ziegler and WWF Debut Tiger T-shirt on World Wildlife Day

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is proud to collaborate with artist Zio Ziegler on an exclusive new tiger-inspired t-shirt design aimed at raising awareness and support of WWF’s global conservation efforts to protect tigers and other wildlife and wild places.

LOGO

Research, Reports & Publications

Next Steps to Improving Measurement

CECP has been known for measurement since its founding, with our dataset starting back in 2001 and Giving in Numbers almost to its 15th anniversary. While our companies’ questions drive CECP’s work more than anything, across our team we also keep a pulse on new product offerings or studies to find opportunities to play match-maker between a company challenge and another organization’s solution (if not ours).

Research, Reports & Publications

Barclays Releases 2017 ESG Report: Positioned for Growth, Sharing and Success

We continue to enhance non-financial reporting across our disclosures, with increased information on material topics, non-financial performance measures and both regulatory and voluntary disclosures on gender pay, modern slavery and climate change.

Green Infrastructure

Consumers Energy Presents Energy Efficiency Incentive Check to Gerald R. Ford International Airport

The Gerald R. Ford International Airport is being recognized for having one of the best and most energy-efficient airports in the region. Consumers Energy presented a rebate check for $151,631 to the Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GFIA) today, as part of the company’s energy efficiency program which is saving the airport energy and money.

Latest Campaigns

  1. License to Operate
    Corporate governance, risk management, operational integrity, and regulatory compliance are demanding challenges that companies face in today’s ever...

  2. Sustainable Products and Innovation
    Ongoing research into innovative solutions enables CNH’s brands to manufacture products that respect the environment while satisfying customers’...

  3. Corporate Social Responsibility
    Gilead Sciences Corporate Social Responsibility

  4. Corporate Social Responsibility
    Whirlpool Corporation has several CSR partners including United Way, Habitat for Humanity International, Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Consulada...

  5. People: Belonging
    We have committed to making the next ten years the best yet for Bacardi, and part of that journey includes creating a unified global community of...

  6. Diversity & Inclusion
    Kimberly-Clark: Diversity & Inclusion

  7. Enriching Women's Lives
    60 years ago, Mary Kay Ash created an unparalleled opportunity for women to define their own successes and control their own futures. Her vision of...

  8. Drive for MPC
    At Marathon Petroleum, our professional truck drivers share one common vision: no accidents, no injuries, and no harm to the environment. We’re proud...

  9. KeyBank's Community Investment
    In states where Key has a presence, there are approximately 1.7 million low- to moderate-income (LMI) households. Many LMI individuals don’t have bank...

  10. Social Impact at Mastercard
    At Mastercard, we’re powering economies and empowering people, building a sustainable economy where everyone prospers.

  11. KeyBank's Community Investment
    In states where Key has a presence, there are approximately 1.7 million low- to moderate-income (LMI) households. Many LMI individuals don’t have bank...

  12. Responsible Investing
    Responsible Investing

  13. Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games
    Vision of Milano Cortina 2026 The Winter Olympic Games Milano Cortina 2026 is the first Olympic winter Games planned and organised under Olympic...

  14. Leading ESG & Sustainability Stewardship
    The new CNH continues on its longstanding path of excellence in sustainability, which is recognized by the foremost authorities.

  15. License to Operate
    Corporate governance, risk management, operational integrity, and regulatory compliance are demanding challenges that companies face in today’s ever...