Volunteering & Community

Whirlpool Corporation employees in Cleveland recently worked to spread holiday cheer to U.S. military personnel and veterans by participating in "Holidays for Heroes," an initiative of the American Red Cross.

I come from a family of educators, but I am not one myself.

When I started as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the AT&T Aspire Accelerator focused on ed-tech, I had a small case of imposter syndrome. Sure, I’d worked in technology for my entire career, but what about the “ed” part of ed-tech? What did I know about education? How could I be taken seriously?

When Wayne Hirschmann – Supervisor, Field Service, Technical Support, and Troy Erickson – Service Application Specialist, boarded the Kohler plane bound for Puerto Rico, they didn't know where they would be staying, exactly what they would be doing or when they would be coming home.

Being a kind and generous person in today’s global society can sometimes prove to be a challenge. It seems every day we’re being asked to donate to organizations that support heart-wrenching causes, ranging from helping abused animals to sick children to wounded veterans and victims of natural disasters.

It’s been a week since #GivingTuesday 2017 and we’re still overwhelmed by the incredible participation of companies and people around the world who, together, raised a staggering $264.6 million in the movement's sixth year. At Benevity, almost 200 of our enterprise clients got involved, with their employees logging 45,000 volunteer hours and donating $13 million (including employer matching) to nearly 11,000 charities around the world.

“At VMware, we believe that each person has something unique to contribute. Thus, everyone can be a Citizen Philanthropist,” says Jessamine Chin, director of the VMware Foundation. “With those unique contributions, each person has the ability to effect positive change in the world.”

Boots On The Ground at Sanofi Pasteur – As the first of a two-part program focused on helping local Head Start families in need, hundreds of Sanofi Pasteur employees donated snow boots, hats, gloves, and other wintertime essentials to approximately 225 Monroe county Head Start children.

Whirlpool Corporation employees in Greenville, OH donated more than $21,000 to local food pantries.

As Mary Snapp, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Philanthropies, wrote on the Official Microsoft Blog last month, “Learning to think critically through coding is the single most important step students can take to prepare themselves to fully participate in, and benefit from, the digital economy.”

Canada's leading corporations widely recognize the business opportunity in putting their brands and resources behind worthy causes, and many plan to increase their community investments, according to a new study issued by Imagine Canada and LBG (London Benchmarking Group) Canada. The 2017 Corporate Community Investment Leadership study expects corporate giving will advance in 2018, driven by economic growth, heightened appreciation of community investment, customer expectations and high rates of employee interest.