Author Archives: Andrea Shatzman

Reporting from BSR 2012: Part 2

As you know, last week was the 2012 BSR Conference. Picking up where Robin’s post left off, here are two themes I noticed from the sessions I attended and one cool case study.
Posted on Monday, October 29th, 2012 By Andrea Shatzman
Catogories  Communicating CR | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cause: The Next Frontier for Regulation

We’ve been calling 2012 the year of regulation – with new guidelines and regulation cropping up for all manner of CR issues. And government involvement is now slowly creeping over to cause marketing. It’s the season of all things pink, and we are well into the era of backlash against the “pinking of America.” Yesterday, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued best practices to promote transparency in cause marketing. This was the culmination of a year-long review of corporate pink ribbon campaigns.
Posted on Friday, October 19th, 2012 By Andrea Shatzman
Catogories  Cause Marketing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Christmas for Giving Number Nerds

‘Tis the season for giving number nerds. The Chronicle of Philanthropy just published its corporate giving list, and the 2012 edition of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy’s Giving in Numbers is due out shortly. We get asked a lot about “typical” giving level or “typical” giving programs for a company. In this, the “other” season of giving, we thought we’d take a look at the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s top 10 biggest givers and see what was typical for them. Note that the below numbers are for those companies that reported to the Chronicle only. And this is only measured by the sheer dollar amount of giving – not giving relative to revenue or profit.
Posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2012 By Andrea Shatzman
Catogories  Philanthropy | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Shared Value and the Bottom of the Pyramid

There was an interesting post last week on the HBR Blog Network. It posited that many companies focused on the bottom of the economic pyramid have failed because they’ve ascribed to a philosophy, based on C.K. Prahalad’s work, that they needed to “aim for low prices, low profit margins, and high sales volumes.” The author takes issue with this, saying companies are well – squeamish – about making anything but a low profit margin when selling to poor populations.
Posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2012 By Andrea Shatzman
Catogories  Business Alignment/Integration | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Food, Glorious Responsible Food

Last week on Earth Day, Whole Foods officially stopped selling red-rated wild-caught fish in its seafood departments. Big stuff right? No longer does steering clear of over-fished fish seem so fringe. Though, let’s be fair. It’s Whole Foods. The petri dish of all sustainability experiments. But wait – Whole Foods isn’t the only one. BJ’s Wholesale Club last month announced they would only carry seafood from sustainable suppliers…and BJ’s isn’t Whole Foods. The seafood counter is looking pretty bright! But this briny little tale didn’t prepare me for Burger King’s announcement just a few days later. Burger King made a commitment that all of its eggs and pork will come from cage-free chickens and pigs by 2017. Yeah – Burger King. Feeling a little Chipotle heat, perhaps?
Posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 By Andrea Shatzman
Catogories  Environment | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Untapped Healing Power of Bandages

My piano teacher growing up had a great saying whenever I was missing the simple beauty of a piece: “Don’t be a complicated cookie,” he’d say. I think this has imbued me with a lifelong appreciation of simple but brilliant ideas. I stumbled upon a GREAT one earlier this month. For people who need a bone marrow transplant, the chances of finding a donor that’s a match are frighteningly small. The trick to solving this problem, of course, is increasing the pool in the donor registry. Getting millions of people to march into a hospital somewhere to give a blood sample – that’s not easy.
Posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 By Andrea Shatzman
Catogories  Business Alignment/Integration Cause Marketing Health | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

SharedPurpose Academy Awards 2012

Happy Oscar season, SP readers! We thought we could have a little film-related CR fun this week leading up to the red carpet. While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is busy choosing the best films of the year, some of our SP bloggers will be naming their pick for best CR film. This year’s Oscar nominees sadly presented slim CR pickings, so to make the competition more interesting, we’ve opened the field up to past years’ films as well.
Posted on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012 By Andrea Shatzman
Catogories  Business Alignment/Integration Communicating CR | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Year of Shared Value Policy?

Sometimes my mom sends me things. Mostly forwarded emails with jokes or pictures (which, mom, if you’re reading, I always read all the way to the end…). When I go visit my parents in Philly, which I did over the holidays, I get the print form of some of these little tidbits. Laying in the little pile for me this time was an article about the benefit corporation legislation pending in Pennsylvania. It seemed like a fitting end to 2011 and good foreshadowing for 2012.
Posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 By Andrea Shatzman
Catogories  What's Next for CR | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Secret to America’s Success

We spend a lot of time talking and thinking about the business benefits of employee volunteerism. What we’ve spent less time talking about is the benefit of prospective employee volunteerism. In this age of high unemployment in the United States, this is something we need to spend more time looking at. LinkedIn got the value of showcasing volunteer experience to potential employers and recently added functionality that lets users add their community engagement to their profiles. This week, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former Senator Bob Graham eloquently made the connection in an op-ed in USA Today: Jobs and civics go hand in hand.
Posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 By Andrea Shatzman
Catogories  Community Engagement Volunteerism & Service | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blog Action Day 2011 – What’s on the Menu?

Happy Blog Action Day 2011, SP readers! Coincidentally, today is also World Food Day. So what better topic for Blog Action Day than food. Take a look around the internet today and you’ll see thousands of posts related to food. Surely you can pick up a few recipe tips, but today bloggers are using their platforms to talk about some of the biggest food-related issues of our day: sustainable agriculture, food insecurity, nutrition, obesity, food safety, and dozens of other subjects.
Posted on Sunday, October 16th, 2011 By Andrea Shatzman
Catogories  Community Engagement What's Next for CR | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment