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Lots of words and images come to mind when one hears the word Levi’s. After all, the iconic clothier Levi Strauss & Co. has clad millions of Americans in its flagship denim since the company’s founding, and its jeans seem to fit in just about anywhere—be it a baseball diamond, a motorcycle club or a cattle ranch. Now, the company behind Levi’s has another label to hang its hat on: award-winning philanthropist, as its charitable arm, the Levi Strauss Foundation, recently received the 2013 Impact Award for the corporate foundation category by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

As the NCRP explained when it announced the Impact Award winners, the awardees have shown effectiveness, leadership and innovation in solving some of the world’s most pressing problems. Awards are given in four categories—large private foundations, small/midsize private foundations, grantmaking public charities and corporate foundations. While the Levi Strauss Foundation was honored for its philanthropic program as a whole, the NCRP did highlight a few of its major initiatives that it deemed particularly noteworthy, including:

• Pioneers in Justice. This is a new foundation initiative that brings together next-generation leaders who are poised to shape the next wave of social justice work. According to the foundation, the goal is to enable peer learning among these leaders and equip them with new tools, strategies and ways of working to create change.

Pioneers in Justice is designed to build upon the lessons of past decades of civil/human rights organizing, advocacy and policy change while capitalizing on new technology and social media tools, Levi’s said. It represents the company’s commitment to support and invest in the next generation of nonprofit leaders in San Francisco who are poised to pave the way for stronger and more effective social justice movements.

For more information on Levi Strauss’ charitable initiatives, go to www.levistrauss.com/about/
foundations.

As businesses around the world commemorated International Corporate Philanthropy Day this past February 25, many American companies took the opportunity to launch new or expanded initiatives aimed at bolstering their community investments and getting the word out about their charitable efforts.

Like last year, ICPD coincided with the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy’s annual Board of Boards CEO Conference, which brought together chief executives from some 50 Fortune 500 companies. And as in past years, many of those executives and their respective companies celebrated ICPD with the launch of new philanthropic programs, including:

• Bloomberg. Bloomberg held events at its offices around the world aimed at helping its employees learn about the company’s philanthropic commitments and programs, including its employee matching gifts program and its dollars-for-doers programs. In recognition of ICPD and to encourage its employees to give back to worthy causes in their communities, Bloomberg also doubled its traditional match for employee donations made to approved charities during that week.

The company also hosted a special event for employees and clients with actor and philanthropist Edward Norton, who was interviewed by Bloomberg BusinessWeek editor Josh Tyrangiel. Norton is co-founder of CrowdRise, one of the fastest-growing online websites for people to raise money for causes they care about.

• Collette Vacations. In recognition of ICPD, the Collette Foundation announced new global charitable projects as well as milestones with existing partnerships. For example, the foundation launched a new project in India to support the Akshaya Patra Foundation, whose mission is to eradiate hunger and promote education. The Akshaya Patra Foundation currently distributes cooked, healthy meals daily to 1.3 million underprivileged children in 9,000 government schools. Under a new partnership, the Collette Foundation will provide funding for a year’s worth of meals to 240 children attending primary school in Amer, part of Jaipur, India.  

Also, the Collette Foundation’s Cultural Connections program announced it would sponsor some 400 students, allowing them to experience Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon in the United Kingdom. Students will travel from Nuneaton, a town about 30 miles from Shakespeare’s birthplace, to experience an award-winning workshop that calls for them to immerse themselves in period-authentic activities from Tudor-era Stratford. 

• DIRECTV. The satellite television provider partnered with DonorsChoose.org to offer $50,000 in publicly available gift matching for 24 hours on ICPD. To participate in this initiative, visitors to DonorsChoose.org on February 25 had only to enter DIRECTV at checkout to have up to $300 per person matched by DIRECTV, with the matching funds going to help fund K–12 classroom projects across the U.S.

To see what other companies did to celebrate ICPD, visit the CECP website at www.corporatephilanthropy.org.

Nonprofits looking to incorporate pro bono services into their programs have a new tool at their disposal. Developed with help from tech pioneers at Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, the Taproot Foundation’s website now offers a new platform that enables nonprofits to analyze their pro bono needs and identify a service provider that aligns with their goals.

According to Taproot, the new program platform will serve as a “one-stop shop” for nonprofits and businesses engaged in the pro bono marketplace—services that are currently valued at about $15 billion annually.

Part of the Taproot Foundation’s mission is to expand the pro bono market by increasing accessibility and professionalization of pro bono services. The foundation cites research it conducted jointly with FTI Consulting in 2011 that showed that the use of, and confidence in, pro bono service is increasing among the nation’s nonprofits, but those organizations continue to struggle to define their needs and gain access to the pro bono providers to meet those needs.

Augmenting those findings is a more recent study from 2012, conducted by Common Impact, that identified two main obstacles standing in the way of nonprofits leveraging pro bono resources: They don’t know how to put pro bono workers to good use, and they don’t have the technical resources to manage such projects.

More specifically, Common Impact found, nonprofits face the following challenges when implementing successful pro bono projects:

• Selecting a project that yields outcomes that can be managed long-term. According to the study, over 85 percent of the respondents that have used pro bono services found the support to be helpful, but less than half knew how to sustain project results without external support.
• Sustaining the results of a project when services involve unique systems or technologies. Just about 40 percent of respondents had the technical infrastructure in place to support outcomes, the report said.
• Lacking effective pro bono project management tools and resources. Over 58 percent of respondents needed stronger project planning and time management resources, Common Impact found, with just 40 percent of nonprofit staff being “somewhat familiar” with project management tools.

The new Taproot resource is meant to address some of those challenges. Located on the foundation’s website, the interactive tool allows nonprofit users to browse the 120 most common pro bono projects and learn about the scope of each project as well as the benefits, risks and skills necessary to ensure project success.

To further help nonprofits meet the needs they identify, the tool enables nonprofits to search more than 300 pro bono providers—from companies to universities to intermediaries and consulting firms—to find a good match. Then, through a partnership with social networking site LinkedIn, nonprofit leaders are given training to harness LinkedIn to make the connections they need to secure the pro bono resources they seek.

“LinkedIn is the ideal partner to help nonprofits secure high-quality pro bono resources,” said Aaron Hurst, president and founder of the Taproot Foundation. “The combination of Taproot’s experience and learning from the last dozen years and the largest network of professionals on the web will make pro bono resources accessible to thousands more nonprofits each year.”

In addition to these new online tools, Taproot has worked with Jossey-Bass to publish Powered by Pro Bono: A Nonprofit’s Guide to Scoping, Securing, Managing and Scaling Pro Bono Resources. According to Taproot, the book shares that organization’s advice for nonprofits garnered from serving 1,600 nonprofits, training 13,500 professionals and designing 20 corporate pro bono programs.

The new online platform and the book are just the latest efforts by Taproot to bolster the use of skills-based volunteerism and pro bono service in the nonprofit sector. The foundation was a driving force behind A Billion + Change, a national campaign to mobilize billions of dollars of pro bono and skills-based service by 2013—all aimed at addressing core social issues that communities face across the country and around the world. That campaign has already secured pledges of an estimated $2 billion in pro bono support from corporate partners.

Building on that success, Taproot launched a new web-based advocacy campaign, dubbed the Pro Bono Pledge, to enlist professionals to donate their talents through pro bono service and challenge their professions to adopt pro bono service as a core value.

Together, these advocacy efforts and the new tools available to nonprofit leaders will help expand the use and availability of skilled volunteers nationwide, the organization hopes.

For more information, go to www.taprootfoundation.org.