 Photo
at right: IBM's Dave Benevides at Raleigh's Learning Together center,
where children begin to grasp the benefits of computing using KidSmart
computers donated by his company.
Learning
the
ABCs of Giving
Businesses increasingly are
focusing
their charity on education, hoping for
a dividend in a future workforce
By Lisa H. Towle
Sure,
the minds of Francisco, Jordan, Elijah and 18 other 4- and 5-year-olds
attending Scarborough Nursery, a nonprofit preschool and day care
center located in Durham’s W.D. Hill Recreation Center, are inspired
by the books, fingerpaints, toys and hermit crabs (an honored part of
the science center), found in their classroom. Still and all, the
prime objects of their attention for the past couple of years have
been two sturdy, brightly colored Young Explorer computer centers.
As with a similar facility in Raleigh, Learning Together, the
computers are here courtesy of IBM’s KidSmart Early Learning Program
— a part of the company’s groundbreaking Reinventing Education
endeavor. They are loaded with multi-media software. Programs such as
Bailey’s Book House and Millie’s Math House have helped the
youngsters conquer not only the basics of colors, shapes, letters,
numbers and sounds, but computing itself.
Any reservations the faculty and staff of Scarborough, the state’s
oldest, continuously licensed child care center, had about the
appropriateness of such high-technology in their midst has long since
disappeared. “Next year these children will enter kindergarten ready
to learn …. Technology has helped the kids master key skills in a
way that’s gentle and fun,” explains Myra Scott, executive
director of Scarborough, a United Way agency with two campuses in the
city.
Tradition has its place, it’s just not in the classroom. Or the
boardroom. A rethinking of broad-based checkbook philanthropy, already
in process, has been hastened by a weak economy and worries about
consumer confidence in light of more terrorism and the war in
Afghanistan. What’s resulted, says Dave Benevides, IBM’s regional
director of community relations and public affairs, is a model of
corporate philanthropy and citizenship that will endure. Strategic
philanthropy allows companies to focus on specific issues and then
actively help to craft solutions by lending ideas, experience, talent
and resources.
Increasingly, the issue is education. Not only is education something
that employees, stockholders, customers and community members
understand and appreciate, it’s a matter of “enlightened
self-interest,” says Richard Priory, chairman, president and CEO of
Duke Energy.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics last April, Priory, a former professor of engineering,
made the case that education is the greatest business challenge
confronting not just his company but society.
“The widening divide between desired and available skills is having
a real and unwelcome effect on our economy as a whole,” he said.
“I strongly believe that the business community has a key role to
play in improving the quality of education.”
Listed alphabetically, the following represents a small sample of the
Tar Heel state’s corporate citizens who have elected to put their
philanthropic dollars and human capital toward education. The methods
and resources may vary but, says Bill Shore, director of Community
Relations for GlaxoSmithKline, it all comes to the same end: “North
Carolina has the best reputation in the country in terms of education
improvement efforts, and it’s because of the partnerships between
business and education.”
Bank of America
Bank of America’s leaders simultaneously focus on ongoing projects
while launching new ones. Long-standing partnerships with the
state’s Smart Start program, Communities in Schools and Junior
Achievement continue; donations are made to “almost every” college
and university in the Carolinas, with particular emphasis on
need-based scholarships and teacher training; and employees may
volunteer up to two hours a week in the school of their choice,
including preschool. If they give 50 hours of such time the bank will
donate $250 to the school, while 100 hours brings $500.
However, last January the Bank of America Foundation condensed its
four focus areas to three (education remained at the top of the list)
and re-examined procedures.
“We are moving away from capital campaigns and operating support to
program support,” explains Rai Glover, senior contributions
specialist for the foundation. “It’s program support that has the
most impact on communities.”
A $50 million gift to be paid out over five years has been made to
Success by 6, a national United Way program involving local networks
of early care and education coalitions with a goal of guaranteeing
that every child enters school ready to succeed.
Another community program in which Bank of America has taken a lead is
the Ask for the Stars accountability campaign. It helped fund a series
of posters, which use eye-catching photographs and compelling
headlines to remind parents to look for the star rating of their child
care facility. Studies show that high quality child care can make the
difference between a child’s success and failure in kindergarten.
BellSouth
In September, BellSouth announced it would be funding an education
program designed to address the issue of student achievement by
emphasizing teaching. The premise, says Krista Tillman, president of
the company’s North Carolina operations, is that “the classroom
teacher is the single most important factor in a student’s education
and their achievement.”
“Everything else — the facilities, the technology, even the
curriculum choices — support the learning that occurs in the
classroom,” adds Tillman, who also serves as a co-chair of the
Governor’s Education First Commission.
Known as BEST, for BellSouth Enabling Super Teaching, the project will
provide $100,000 each to two low-performing schools in order to help
them attract and retain highly trained and motivated teachers. The
participating schools, West Charlotte High in Charlotte and South
Robeson High in Rowland, will use the money for performance
incentives; professional development; equipment, materials and
supplies; and preparation for the National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards Certification.
In addition, teachers will be able to participate in BellSouth
leadership development programs. BellSouth Pioneers and active
employees will volunteer in the schools, and the company will conduct
ongoing focus groups and meetings with teachers and administrators to
track progress and identify developing opportunities.
Duke Energy
Look no further than a new alliance with the 110,000-member National
Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) to see Duke Energy’s
principles of philanthropy in action: Align giving with corporate
goals. Look for long-term solutions. Partner with good organizations.
Because mathematics is the foundation for so many of the skills —
engineering to financial — needed by Duke Energy, “it only makes
sense to support the math teachers who prepare students to succeed,”
says Scott Carlberg, director of Corporate Community Relations for the
company.
Thus, the partnership will work to create Reflections, a web-based
professional development program for teachers of mathematics. Duke
Energy has committed to year one of the five-year project and finding
a “second-year champion.”
Building early algebraic thinking in kindergarten through eighth-grade
students is going to be the initial focus of Reflections. This will be
accomplished in part with a best practices approach: providing online
video examples of mathematics instruction, student work and
assignments related to the instruction, as well as online discussions
and lesson-study critiques. In addition, a moderated chat room about
the lesson will be conducted following each web-video segment.
NCTM, headed by a math professor from N.C. State University, plans to
establish partnerships with schools of education so that teachers can
use the new system to earn credits toward a master’s degree. The
goal is to have the program in place by next April. Duke Energy is,
among other things, supplying project managers during this development
phase. It anticipates spending in excess of $900,000 on the
initiative.
First Citizens
Education is one of First Citizens’ four focus areas. At the college
level the bank primarily has focused on private schools; however, when
it comes to K-12 the emphasis is on public education, says Noel
McLaughlin, a spokesperson for First Citizens.
There’s been ongoing support for those nonprofit institutions —
Communities in Schools, Wake Education Partnership and Junior
Achievement, for example — which champion better teaching, learning
and involvement in public schools.
First Citizens, which continues to financially support Wake County’s
Alice Aycock Poe Center for Health Education, also has made a
“significant” gift to Forsyth County’s Touched by Technology
campaign. Employees participate in Bowling for Dollars for Haywood
County Schools, work on behalf of the Wilkes County Education
Foundation, and even teach checking account management to teenagers in
Jackson County.
A survey of approximately 4,500 First Citizens employees statewide has
shown that on average they donate eight to nine hours a month to their
communities; most of this time is devoted to education. In fact, says
McLaughlin, the bank encouraged volunteering well before the state
mandated that time be allowed for such activity.
GlaxoSmithKline
Historically, the company now known as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has
supported public and private education at all levels, including
vigorous volunteering in local school systems and providing leadership
for myriad school/business/community partnerships.
The RTP-based North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation has, says its
executive director, Marilyn Foote-Hudson, been “aggressive” in
attempts to “make an impact on education in this state.” In
2000-2001, the foundation made grants worth nearly $2.6 million. The
majority of that amount went to programs and schools of higher
learning that will help expand not just scientific study but the
numbers of minorities and women in fields like chemistry, medicine,
mathematics and pharmacology as well.
At the other end of the education spectrum, and of equal concern to
GlaxoSmithKline, is closing the achievement gap that opens most
noticeably during the K-3 years. Bill Shore of GSK notes that “about
20 percent of any class has learning disabilities,” yet many times
these go undiagnosed.
This is why GSK and The Hill Center in Durham, which offers a unique
half-day program to K-12 students with learning disabilities and
attention deficit disorder, elected to capitalize on an earlier
collaboration and enter a multi-year partnership. The company gave $1
million to the center so it could expand on its successful Summer
Institute and create and implement full-fledged professional
development programs in three counties — Catawba, Durham and Pitt.
Today, school administrators, college-level instructors, classroom
teachers and special educators attend the programs to learn Hill
Center strategies and techniques that can help students not only cope,
but succeed in regular classrooms.
IBM
In the lobby of a building on IBM’s sprawling Research Triangle Park
campus is a display case so full of awards recognizing the company’s
philanthropic efforts there’s no room left for even one more. Many
of the honors, including the latest, the Governor’s Business
Partnership Award, have to do with IBM’s $45 million Reinventing
Education grant program. The Triangle area has become a showcase of
sorts for corporate community relations efforts such as this.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, has said
that the program represents “the new paradigm” for corporate
philanthropy. Actually, though, the word program may be a bit of a
misnomer for it implies singleness. While there is one aim —
“driving higher student achievement in school systems around the
world through the implementation of innovative technology solutions”
— there are actually several initiatives that are being employed to
meet it.
There’s www.hermitagemuseum.org, designed to demonstrate how
technology can bring unique works of art to people around the world.
IBM researchers received five patents for innovations featured on this
site.
There’s www.TryScience.org — a virtual museum featuring
science from more than 450 museums around the world, including
projects that can be done at home or school.
As mentioned at the beginning of this story there’s KidSmart, which
is designed to address the educational disparities caused by the
“digital divide” — the gap created by insufficient access to
technology due to low income. By the end of this year, IBM, in
collaboration with the United Way, will have donated 6,300 Young
Explorer computers to preschools both in the United States and abroad.
Plans call for the donation of an additional 15,000 more computer
centers worldwide over the next three years.
Because computers are rarely found in most day care and preschool
settings, KidSmart provides teachers with computer training and early
learning materials. To expand the early learning program beyond its
grant sites, IBM in November announced www.kidsmartearlylearning.org.
And there’s Learning Village, a Web-based communications and
instructional tool that connects administrators, teachers, students
and parents within a school system. Everything from bus schedules,
lunch menus and homework assignments, to teachers’ web pages,
learning resources and grading criteria can be found in one place with
a click of a mouse.
Charlotte was one of the first to test this program, originally known
as Wired for Learning. In the second round of Reinventing Education
grants, Durham Public Schools (DPS) received a Learning Village grant.
James Carter, the Learning Village Project Manager for DPS, has been
working to get the system in all the county’s middle schools, teach
it and then build on it. He acts, he says, as a “coach,”
encouraging teachers to push the uses of this “very powerful
tool.” One idea: designing and sharing best lessons in preparation
for the mandatory eighth-grade computer test.
The third partner in this effort is Duke University and specifically
David Ferriero. As vice provost for library affairs and university
librarian, it is up to Ferriero to first identify public places where
parents of DPS students without computers can easily access one, and
then teach them to use Learning Village. He admits that the initial
efforts met with mixed success, but he’s not discouraged.
“IBM is allowing us to try things that haven’t been tried
before,” he says. “That is exciting. But to me the real benefit of
this is exposing people who’ve never had access to technology to all
the things that have been out of their reach. What a gift.”
N.C. Association of Electric Cooperatives
Bright Ideas is the flagship of NCAEC’s seven major philanthropic
programs, all of which center around education.
When members of the cooperatives noticed that many teachers had
innovative ideas for classroom projects but could only implement them
by spending their own money, they requested that a funding source be
established. Since it began in 1994, the Bright Ideas program has
awarded $2.5 million to teachers across the state. Another way of
looking at it is that 2,800 projects have reached 570,000 students.
The grants, which are open to all subjects in grades K-12, have a
$2,000 limit and average $800-$900. NCAEC generally doesn’t fund
equipment requests. Instead, says Rick Martinez, spokesman for the
cooperatives, “innovation and creativity count, and the teachers
don’t let us down on that score. You see what a dedicated group they
are when you read their proposals.”
Progress Energy
Fairly quickly after Florida Power and CP&L merged into an entity
known as Progress Energy, the Progress Energy Foundation was formed,
philanthropic priorities were revisited, and several key decisions
were made:
 Contributions would be made
to nonprofits in support of education, economic development and the
environment;
A signature education
project — something that could be sponsored in the company’s
three-state market area, and something which would allow for a
long-term partnership — was needed;
The project must result,
company executives say, in a measurable difference.
The foundation considered a proposal submitted to Progress Energy by
the Public School Forum, which had argued for more management training
for the leaders of public schools in eastern North Carolina.
The result was the recent announcement by Gov. Mike Easley of the
formation of the Progress Energy Principals’ Institute. It will be
modeled after the Principals’ Executive Institute in South Carolina.
An intensive year-long training program in education and business
management, the institute is a public-private partnership involving
CP&L.
SAS
Tony Habit, president of the Wake Education Partnership, has witnessed
a sea change in corporate giving patterns. He offers as a prime
example SAS Institute. The largest privately held software company in
the world is, he says, “very strategic about where its dollars go
and where its leadership can have the biggest impact.”
Lucky for him, Jim Goodnight, the CEO, chairman and co-founder of SAS,
has an abiding interest in education. In 1996, he co-founded Cary
Academy, a model private preparatory day school for students in grades
6-12 that integrates technology into all facets of education. This
fall he pledged $300,000 in proceeds from a Senior PGA Tour tournament
his company sponsored to a new learning center in a public housing
community.
The Cary-based company is supporting the partnership in a number of
ways. It has, for instance, provided financial and intellectual
capital for both Project Lighthouse, an effort to increase the use of
and maximize technology in public schools, and Wake Leadership
Academy, which offers professional development for principals and
assistant principals.
Further, this year Goodnight and his wife Ann, who serves on the
partnership’s board of trustees, co-chaired the Funds for Education
campaign. It was the most successful fund-raiser in Wake Education’s
history, topping more than $1 million.
Habit believes we’re “at the front end of radical change in the
way secondary education is delivered.” Helping to drive this change
is strategic philanthropy. It is, he says, “here to stay.”
Wachovia Corp.
Not only has the $14 billion merger of First Union and Wachovia
created the nation’s fourth largest bank, it’s offered tantalizing
prospects for even greater philanthropy.
Consider what’s already in place. The bank’s nationally recognized
Education First program focuses on building literacy and critical
thinking skills among children, particularly those from at-risk
environments. Its signature initiative is Reading First, which is
devoted to developing early childhood literacy. Once a week for 30
weeks, employees from Connecticut to Florida visit 2,000 classrooms
and read high-quality books aloud to 4-, 5- and 6-year olds. The
books, provided at a discounted rate through a partnership with
Scholastic Inc., are then donated to the classrooms.
Since 1984, Wachovia has supported a competitive program to honor
outstanding principals from public schools in all regions of the
state. This is done with public recognition ceremonies and cash awards
for both personal use and use in their schools.
The Wachovia Cup and Wachovia Conference Cup awards recognize public
and private high schools that achieve the best overall interscholastic
athletics performance in the state and within conferences
respectively.
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