Telling a Good Employee Philanthropist Story: A Lesson from Microsoft

My colleague Katya Andresen shared this bit of inspiration amidst the doom and gloom economic news of late: Microsoft reports that 2011 was their most successful year in employee giving ever. Microsoft employees raised more than $100 million and logged more than 400,000 volunteer hours for more than 18,000 organizations globally. That’s a lot of do-gooding!

While those results are impressive and I’m inspired by the impact, what spoke most to me about this news was the way Microsoft shared the results on the employee blog.  Telling a compelling social impact story is vital.  Press releases and reports are useful ways to broadcast news, but nothing beats the human touch of a story.   Kathleen Hogan and S. Somasegar, the executive co-chairs of the 2011 Giving Campaign, crafted a thoughtful, reflective post that conveyed the results, but also showcased the creativity and passion of their coworkers (or employee philanthropists, as they call them).  You can’t help but connect to the campaign when you see pictures of employees running 5ks for a cause or pranking their coworkers to inspire action.   I encourage you to read the full post here and think about how you can add that extra human element to your cause communications.   You can read the official press release here.   NFG21311