Banking on Volunteers

A corporate foundation lets employees guide its philanthropic choices

Many companies encourage their workers to volunteer. But the U.S. philanthropic arm of Credit Suisse, the Swiss investment bank, takes that philosophy one step further: It restricts most of its grants to charities that can provide meaningful volunteer opportunities for the bank’s employees.

“We think this model of supporting organizations that can truly benefit from volunteers embraces what’s unique about corporate philanthropy,” says Eric Eckholdt, executive director of the Credit Suisse Americas Foundation, in New York.

Credit Suisse has long encouraged employee volunteerism. But until a few years ago, the foundation — which gives money to charities in cities in North and South America where Credit Suisse has offices — gave priority to groups that serve young people. In 2004, the board decided that instead of selecting charities that had a particular mission, it would favor those that relied heavily on volunteers to accomplish their goals.

It changed course for two reasons, Mr. Eckholdt says. First, it concluded that it should promote the one resource a company can offer a charity that an individual donor or foundation cannot — a pool of potential volunteers.

“If we can engage [employees] with the organizations that we support, then we can have a much bigger impact than we would independently of that,” he says.

Second, volunteerism can boost morale and promote teamwork among Credit Suisse employees, who often work together on volunteer projects, he adds. “This is a way they can accomplish a business goal while also helping the community,” he says.

Volunteer-Driven Charities

The foundation awarded almost $5-million in grants in 2005, the bulk of it — $3.1-million — in New York, where the bank employs 8,000 people. Credit Suisse workers across the Americas participated in 6,000 volunteer opportunities last year, contributing 35,000 hours of time, Mr. Eckholdt says.

Most of the grant money went to charities with active volunteer programs. One beneficiary of the new approach is the New York regional office of First (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), which won $75,000 from Credit Suisse this year.

First, which works to encourage young people to pursue science and technology careers, signs up professional people to serve as mentors and help students participate in events such as regional and national robot-design competitions.

“It’s almost entirely volunteer driven,” says Randy Schaeffer, First’s regional director for New York City and New Jersey. He says two paid staff members manage all of the New York City efforts, with help from 300 to 350 volunteers.

First works with volunteers from about 18 corporations in New York. But Credit Suisse, he says, is “absolutely at the top” in terms of its financial and volunteer contributions, providing 40 to 50 mentors a year, many from the information-technology staff, as well as employees who chair a couple of the group’s planning committees.

In addition to money and people power, the foundation gives First access to its meeting rooms and teleconference facilities.

Because managing volunteers well takes time, Credit Suisse has even provided grants to some charities in New York to hire volunteer coordinators. For example, it has provided such support to City Harvest, which retrieves surplus food from places like restaurants, grocery stores, and hotels and distributes it to soup kitchens or other food programs.

Since 2004, more than 470 Credit Suisse employees have participated in the group’s Street Fleet program, which sends teams of volunteers to pick up small amounts of food and deliver it to organizations that need it — freeing up the group’s trucks and helping it save on gas costs. In fact, the bank’s 40 volunteers now make up the biggest Street Fleet team.

This year, at City Harvest’s request, Credit Suisse increased the charity’s grant from $50,000 to $90,000 to allow the group to hire someone to manage and expand its corporate-volunteer program.

“New York really lends itself to this kind of relationship with so many corporations here and such a huge problem of hunger,” says Jilly Stephens, City Harvest’s executive director.

Corporations provide about 40 percent of City Harvest’s $11.3-million in annual cash donations. But few of them link their support with volunteerism the way Credit Suisse does. Only about a fourth of the 78 companies that contributed at least $1,000 to City Harvest in 2006 also provided steady volunteers, the group says.

Sponsoring a Manager

Another Credit Suisse grant recipient, Henry Street Settlement, which provides social services and art programs in New York, has seen its corporate-volunteer program mushroom thanks to a similar grant.

Credit Suisse employees have been donating time to Henry Street for at least 10 years, putting on holiday celebrations for children in battered women’s and homeless shelters, for example, says Verona Middleton-Jeter, the charity’s chief executive officer. But under its new approach to grant making, the bank now provides $50,000 a year to the charity — out of a $150,000 grant — specifically to pay for a coordinator of volunteers, who works three days a week.

Ms. Middleton-Jeter recalls that one of her priorities when she took the top post in 2002 was to strengthen the group’s volunteer program, and she proposed to her colleagues that they find a volunteer to take charge. “They said, We’ve done that before and it doesn’t work,” she says. “A volunteer volunteer coordinator — it doesn’t work.”

So Ms. Middleton-Jeter approached Credit Suisse, which agreed to foot the bill for a part-time staff member. “Our view as we got to know them better because of our relationship was they would benefit from more consistent resources to coordinate their volunteer activities — not just with us, but with others,” Mr. Eckholdt says.

The result: Since the coordinator of volunteers was hired in 2004, 26 corporations have participated in Henry Street’s corporate volunteer program, including well-known companies like Bank of America, Liz Claiborne, and Goldman Sachs. Some of their employees put on parties at centers that serve the elderly, some paint buildings, and some give advice to job seekers. Most of the companies have signed up since the coordinator position was created, Ms. Middleton-Jeter says.

The only downside, she says: The corporate program has grown so big that the coordinator has little time to recruit other people to volunteer.

By deepening its relationship with charities that receive its grants, Credit Suisse is also occasionally able to offer help that goes well beyond volunteering and cash. For example, when one of its grant recipients — Publicolor, which organizes painting projects for inner-city students — faced violent behavior by some of its participants, Credit Suisse put the group in touch with another charity it supports, the Center for Anti-Violence Education, which offered violence-prevention courses for Publicolor students.

Tips for Corporate Donors

Mr. Eckholdt offers some suggestions for other corporations that want to tie grant making to volunteering:

• Give employees a choice; don’t insist they volunteer for the organizations that receive grants.

  “What we have to offer may not be everyone’s cup of tea,” Mr. Eckholdt says. “People shouldn’t be penalized if they’re doing something quite personal.”

  If a Credit Suisse employee volunteers at least 50 hours a year for a charity of his or her choice, the foundation awards that organization a “mini-grant” of $500.

• Develop a system for evaluating whether a charity fits the corporation’s giving philosophy. Credit Suisse drew up a scorecard that weighs six factors: (1) how well a charity engages groups of volunteers; (2) how well it engages individual volunteers; (3) whether the group has an internal champion at Credit Suisse; (4) how much publicity value the volunteer opportunities have; (5) how accessible the volunteer opportunities are; and (6) whether the charity can benefit from donations of services and other noncash gifts, such as meeting space.

  Mr. Eckholdt says the foundation gives 70 percent of the weight, however, to the first two factors.

  The scoring system, he says, “is a way to give some discipline around the mission, to make sure we’re being fair about who we’re supporting and how much we’re supporting them.”

• Be firm about which charities fit the criteria, but ease the transition for groups that no longer fit the new mission. Credit Suisse is phasing out some former grant recipients with increasingly smaller grants rather than cutting them off immediately. He says, “It’s tough because in some cases they honestly do have volunteerism, but either the form of it or the nature of it is not something we can consistently engage with them on.”

Ian Wilhelm contributed to this article.