Tara Grecosenior vice president
Tara has experience on both sides of the equation, having worked in corporate CR and nonprofit communications & marketing. She focuses on trends and innovations in community engagement, strategic philanthropy, volunteerism, cause marketing, and CR/nonprofit communications.
Andrea ShatzmanA senior associate in APCO’s Washington, D.C. office, Andrea works on a broad range of CR issues. She’s particularly interested in the evolution of CR over time and how businesses can capitalize on their strengths to make unique contributions to society.
Robin DelisoRobin is a senior associate who works in APCO’s corporate responsibility practice and is interested in the blurring lines between consumer and influencer expectations of companies. She looks at how companies use CR to engage audiences in innovative ways, especially re: social media, and started her career in nonprofit communications strategy.
Leela StakeLeela is a senior associate who helps businesses innovate, collaborate and communicate to be more successful. She’s based in San Francisco, has worked in six Asian countries and is interested in the relationship between long-term business success and community prosperity.
Julie JackA vice president in APCO's New York office, Julie works on corporate responsibility with a focus on business strategy and emerging issues and trends. Her currents interests and work focus on sustainable agriculture and supply chain management, the integration of CR and financial communications, and CR in the consumer goods space.
Rachel ThompsonRachel is the global corporate responsibility practice manager for APCO. She has worked on global trade and CR in government and business. Her interests include the role (and limits) of CR in making globalization more sustainable; evidence and measurement issues; and the relationship between CR and preventing trade protectionism.
James RobinsonJames is a vice president who brings ten years of experience working on CR strategy and communications in New York, Beijing, and Jakarta. He looks at how CR is employed as part of broader business strategy and has a particular interest in the evolving role of technology and innovation in managing social and environmental issues.
Kitty PotterKitty is an associate director and leads APCO's CR practice in the Asia-Pacific region. Her current work and interests include the development of multi-stakeholder initiatives addressing corruption in supply chains, sustainability performance ratings, and engagement with private sector in climate change adaption.
Ellen MignoniEllen is a senior vice president and helped build APCO’s global corporate responsibility practice. She works primarily with APCO’s corporate clients on business alignment and corporate responsibility, stakeholder engagement and partnership development, and communication and outreach.
Applying Moneyball Logic to Managing a Corporate Volunteer Program
Spring training is right around the corner, so I thought it would be appropriate to dig into an analogy thrown out by Taproot’s Aaron Hurst at the 2011 BSR conference in San Francisco.
Aaron compared the recent innovations in corporate volunteer practices to Moneyball. If you’ve read the book or seen the movie, you know the story: Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane revolutionized MLB roster management by employing a new approach to analyzing a player’s value. The “data nerds” have created a system that is more efficient and less risky, leading to improved performance for a franchise on the field and the balance sheet.
I agree with Aaron — there are a lot of similarities. The “old school” line of thinking had volunteer managers solely focused on episodic “hands on” activities such as cleaning the park, charity walks and food drives. The data used to analyze value for these experiences is almost exclusively centered around “outputs” (e.g. hours of service, pounds of food, dollars raised — stats akin to batting average and RBIs). This information is useful, but does not allow a company to paint a complete picture of the true value of that service.
There was no one Billy Beane figure in corporate volunteerism, but rather a collective desire to be able to define ROI better. Over the last several years companies in every industry have been experimenting with metrics, dashboards and logic models to better define the bottom line value of volunteerism. These tools allow companies to assess the opportunity and the investment with respect to the IMPACT it will make—because that’s a better indicator of success. And impact can be defined in several contexts simultaneously — on employees/company culture, in the communities where we operate, on our stakeholders, on our reputation and in the operation of our core business. We’ve moved from batting average to “on base percentage”—because whether you hit or walk, what matters is getting on base.
Now, the norm is to think about “outcomes” from service — what change has been affected as a result of the intervention of our employees? And, volunteer managers have expanded their definition of service to include a full spectrum of engagement opportunities: pro bono expertise, skills-based service, email and online engagements, and long-term ongoing projects.
By using the right analysis tools and focusing on the right data points, companies are getting more ROI from volunteerism programs. It’s a system any sabermetrics geek could love!
Catogories Technology and CR, Volunteerism & Service and tagged Aaron Hurst, Billy Beane, MLB, Moneyball, Taproot, Volunteerism
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