Cisco Employees Donate Their Skills and Their Time

Pro Bono is a fancy term for donating your unique skill set — as an engineer, program manager, salesperson, and more — to partner with nonprofit organizations and help take their impact to the next level. It’s an opportunity to sharpen leadership skills while also making a meaningful impact in your community or around the world. Over the past year, employees from Cisco Global Virtual Sales and Customer Success answered the call to “donate your skills, not just your time.”

The Knitting Factor: Tying It All Together in Celebration of Pro Bono Week

Last year we debuted a concept called The Knitting Factor, which helps explain how skills-based volunteering knits together the expertise from the corporate and nonprofit sectors to create sustainable solutions that don’t come undone when partners part ways. We also introduced three key ingredients to the success of The Knitting Factor: Panoramic Perspectives, Skill Sharing and Sticky Relationships. In celebration of Pro Bono Week, we wanted to share a quick review of how the Knitting Factor has worked in practice over the past year.

Learning From Real-life Examples: Collaborating to Design a Boys & Girls Club Playbook

Last week, we partnered with Stanford Social Innovation Review, Charles Schwab and Boys & Girls Club of America to host a webinar around creating long-term sustainable partnerships, or what we refer to as sticky relationships. As a follow up to our webinar, our Senior Consultant, Season Eckardt sat down to reflect on the role she played to deepen the impact of this partnership and help Boys & Girls Club chapters across the US operationalize a common strategic vision.

The Multiplier Effect

The term “capacity-building” tends to be thrown around quite a bit in the nonprofit sector. And as jargon, it has the unfortunate fate of being pretty obscure outside of our sector—not to mention losing its meaning when overused within the field. But at the heart of it, nonprofit capacity-building is one of the most exciting and inspirational ways to support an issue. Quite simply, it’s about achieving a multiplier effect—creating more change in the world by helping to strengthen the organizations that are tackling society’s greatest challenges. At Taproot, we are driven by a strong belief in the exponential impact that can come from supporting nonprofits in this way.

Pro Bono Perspectives Podcast: Episode 6 - Rachel Hutchisson, Blackbaud

We are thrilled to welcome Rachel Hutchisson, Vice President of Corporate Citizenship and Philanthropy at Blackbaud to Pro Bono Perspectives. In her day to day role, Rachel is responsible for global corporate social responsibility, leading the company’s 3,300 associates in efforts to serve and give professionally and personally. She is committed to the core philosophy that “good is for everyone,” championing positive change and inspiring individuals to integrate service into their development.

The Nonprofit Opportunity

What motivates nonprofits and volunteers to engage in skills-based volunteering? Nonprofits use skills-based volunteering to strengthen their infrastructure in ways that better equip them to solve our communities’ challenges. Many volunteers give their skills to help solve a challenge for an organization addressing an issue they care about or to feel connected to the community. In this SNCR 2020 article, Taproot Foundation and Team4Tech partnered to further the social sector’s understanding of the leadership development benefits of skills-based volunteering—focusing exclusively on the nonprofit’s outcomes of such initiatives.

The Global Engagement Forum: Live Convenes Leaders for Cross-Sector Collaboration

Last week, the 2018 Global Engagement Forum: Live convened leaders and experts from business, government, and nonprofit organizations to collaborate around solving specific problems within the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Hosted by PYXERA Global, the Forum convened over 300 leaders, experts, and stakeholders in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

3 Trends Shaping Today's Top CSR Programs

eBook: The top three CSR trends that are changing the way companies engage their people in purpose-driven workplace cultures. Actionable tips you can use to engage more people and create bigger impact along with examples from companies such as Levi’s, Prudential, QVC, TripAdvisor and more who are leading the way.


VIDEO | Barclays Citizenship Awards: Sabrina Boanu-Williams Works with the Thameside Prison Initiative

Through her work with the Thameside Prison Initiative, Sabrina is successfully helping prisoners gain the skills they need to find meaningful employment after release.

Common Impact Connections: A Quarterly Newsletter

Happy Fall! Common Impact is excited to head into the last few months of 2018 (can you believe it?) with new initiatives under our belt and a wealth of inspiration. Over the past eight months, we have had the opportunity to define and launch new models for scaled impact, interview everyday leaders from all backgrounds to understand how they create a meaningful impact in their communities, build our internal capacity by hiring new rock star team members and create new partnerships that enable inclusive and sustainable social progress.

Latest Campaigns

  1. License to Operate
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  2. Mary Kay Ash Foundation: Creating a Safer, Healthier World for Women
    In the U.S. and around the world, Mary Kay remains steadfast in its commitment to ending the cycle of domestic violence and finding cures for cancers...
  3. Subaru Love Promise: Environment
    Subaru works to reduce waste, safeguard resources for future generations, and preserve natural spaces – making real, meaningful commitments to these...
  4. Local Communities
    The principals of living and working in synergy with the communities in which we operate, as well as collaborating on projects that benefit those...
  5. Integrated Tools
    Cascale shares updates on its efforts to align the industry on a common language to describe sustainability performance to reduce duplication and...
  6. Cascale Events
    Cascale organizes and participates in a series of events, leveraging its position as a global convener of close to half the sector to bring together...
  7. Employee and Community Engagement
    At MilliporeSigma, we look for opportunities to use employee and community engagement to spark scientific curiosity and breakthroughs. We know that...
  8. FedEx | Volunteer Campaigns
    Giving back is part of the FedEx culture. Team members support our charitable investments and local community needs by dedicating their time where...
  9. Key Supports Affordable Housing
    KeyBank Community Development Lending and Investment helps fulfill Key’s purpose to help clients and communities thrive by financing projects that...
  10. Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games
    The vision of Paris 2024 Paris 2024 will see a new vision of Olympism in action, delivered in a unique spirit of international celebration. We will...