Giva Blog Categories : Corporate Social Responsibility

As citizens, we are expected to uphold certain responsibilities to the communities in which we live. These basic responsibilities largely connect to the notion of ethics, which presses that one's own decisions have the power to influence the entire social system. Implying that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, this concept of synergy suggests that each individual plays a role in societal outcomes.

On a larger scale, the idea of corporate social responsibility holds that big businesses work under similar expectations to maintain such a social agreement. Often amassing extensive power over the economic, legal, and political arenas, corporations are responsible to take an active role in ensuring the well being of its employees, the community, and fundamentally, society as a whole.

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For the fourth year in a row, Verizon will be holding The Verizon Innovative Challenge, a contest for students interested in creating their very own problem-solving apps. For this challenge, middle and high school students living in the U.S. will join collaborative teams, generate innovative ideas, and build concepts for mobile apps. Their ideas for these apps must attempt to solve real world issues their schools and communities face. Absolutely no coding experience is necessary to participate.

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It might be tempting to obsess over material goods. The value of the cars we drive, the homes we own, and the paychecks we receive all seem to carry exceedingly heavy weights. But according to one CSR consulting firm, rather than deriving our self worth from material possessions, we need to lend a hand to those in need to truly "find" ourselves.

Realized Worth labels this process of uncovering ourselves through service as an "epiphany."

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At Giva we search for organizations, large and small, that are doing a great job of changing the world around them for the better; and we are pleased to salute them here.

Net Impact

Twenty-two years ago, a small group of MBAs, a former Harvard Business School professor, and a handful of entrepreneurs founded an organization called Students for Responsible Business (SRB) with one goal in mind: to use business as a force for good. Today, SRB is known as Net Impact, a nonprofit organization that aims to empower a new generation of both students and professionals to use their careers to drive transformational change in the workplace and the world.

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Dan Pallotta's informative TED Talk, "The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong," illuminates how everything people have been taught about charitable giving is dysfunctional.

Whereas for-profit sectors are applauded for risk-taking, aggressive marketing, and capital and financial incentives, the nonprofit sector is "stuck" begging for money and handouts. Too many nonprofits, he argues, are rewarded for how little they spend—not for what they accomplish.

"We have two rulebooks," Pallota says. "We have one for the nonprofit sector and one for the rest of the economic world."

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In the 1960s, Americans invented the phrase "Generation Gap" to define the discrepancies in values and viewpoints among generations. This phrase originated from the counterculture, a time when political and social turmoil captured the attention of Baby Boomers. This group of generational revolutionaries varied from the conservative Traditionalists before them, and even more so from the Generation Xers and the Millennials proceeding them.

Sociologists later extensively studied these differences in attitudes, renaming the Generation Gap as "institutional age segregation." Generation gaps are often observed in the workplace: Millennials may find a Traditionalist preference for face-to-face communication boring, and a Generation Xer may find the Baby Boomer's commitment to work disturbing! In this post, acknowledging that no description perfectly describes any generation of workers, we attempt to uncover some nuanced differences arising from Generation Gaps in the workplace, and how companies can cultivate harmony and passion despite age differences.

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"Help Arby's fight to end child hunger; when kids eat, they feel stronger," reads Arby's online advertisement for its annual fundraiser.

Running from August 3 until September 13, Arby's restaurants is currently holding its 2015 National Restaurant Fundraiser, with a goal to help end childhood hunger in America. For every dollar donated by a diner at this popular restaurant chain, Arby's will donate up to ten meals to hungry children in need.

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Although ten years have passed since the category-five Hurricane Katrina claimed 1,833 lives, the New Orleans community still faces many obstacles . After billions of dollars were spent to rebuild the city, recovery has been slow and challenging. Recognizing this struggle, Lowe's has paired up with Rebuilding Together to continue revitalizing the community.

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In response to the ever-growing trend of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Harvard Business School will be hosting a program titled "Corporate Social Responsibility: Strategies to Create Business and Social Value" Oct 18-21, 2015.

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