{"id":14634,"date":"2014-12-08T10:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14634"},"modified":"2014-12-08T10:00:08","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T15:00:08","slug":"civic-50-companies-civically-engaged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14634","title":{"rendered":"the Civic 50: companies that are civically engaged"},"content":{"rendered":"

Points of Light has released its list of 50 companies that are most civically engaged, the Civic50<\/a>. The idea is to move beyond hours of voluntary service by employees to consider: 1. other forms of investment (such as cash, or\u00a0paid time by skilled employees who are assigned\u00a0to public projects); 2. the integration of a company’s philanthropic efforts with its\u00a0main business strategies; 3. its policies\u00a0and incentives for community engagement; and 4. its impact, meaning whether and how the company assesses\u00a0the effects\u00a0of its civic engagement on communities.<\/p>\n

I was one of many advisers and believe that this is a worthy effort.\u00a0One question is whether the\u00a0net<\/em> impact of these companies is positive. A hypothetical firm might put significant investments into (say) reducing obesity in its community while also massively polluting, or removing investment from a deindustrialized city, or manufacturing harmful products. One response would be to put the positives and the negatives together into a single index. I have come to think\u00a0it is better to make the “civic” activities\u00a0a separate category so that we can see which companies are doing that well. We can then weigh their civic engagement along with\u00a0our judgment of their\u00a0effects in other domains.<\/p>\n

A related question is how to think about policy work.\u00a0The Civic50 celebrates the fact that Aetna “worked with legislators to help pass a more meaningful mental-health parity law that allows for better coordination of coverage for physical and mental health care services” and that FedEx\u00a0FedEx “has also played a leadership role in advancing a social issue into which it has keen insight \u2013 pedestrian safety.”\u00a0Here\u00a0again, I think it’s useful to identify efforts that the firms regard as purely public-spirited so that citizens and consumers can weigh them along with (or against) other lobbying efforts that might be more controversial or downright harmful. One is also entitled to assess the ostensibly public-spirited\u00a0advocacy efforts critically. Maybe FedEx’s work on pedestrian safety was\u00a0helpful; maybe it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

The main\u00a0question\u00a0I would like to add to the assessment of corporate civic engagement is whether\u00a0a\u00a0company consults with, and is held accountable by,\u00a0representatives of\u00a0the communities that it engages. I welcome the step from counting service hours to measuring impact, but the next step is to share\u00a0the responsibility for deciding\u00a0what counts as beneficial means and ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Points of Light has released its list of 50 companies that are most civically engaged, the Civic50. The idea is to move beyond hours of voluntary service by employees to consider: 1. other forms of investment (such as cash, or\u00a0paid time by skilled employees who are assigned\u00a0to public projects); 2. the integration of a company’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14634"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14643,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14634\/revisions\/14643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}