- On Making Ethical Choices in Business: The recession lowered the ethical water mark so that people and business who weren’t doing the right thing became more conspicuous. The danger may be that with an improving economy inappropriate behavior may be become more difficult to discern.

- On Young Business Students Today: Boy these people are smart! Perhaps more important than this, the people I spoke with also know a lot about social issues and are deeply interested in what it means to be responsible. What will business look like when these folks become executives?

Finally, my colleague Andrea O’Reilly at Impakt sent me a great quotation this morning: “Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.” Mary Tyler Moore

Over and out.

Recognizing the growing importance of partnerships, Queen’s School of Business has introduced a new executive learning program called Building Strategic Partnerships for Social Responsibility. This 2-day interactive workshop is intended to help participants make a strong business case for non-profit partnerships in their companies, understand what it takes to foster an authentic non-profit partnership, and leverage and execute non-profit partnerships with better business outcomes.

I’ll be helping to lead this session with two professors from Queen’s who are internationally-recognized authorities on CSR, Dr Jay Handelman and Dr. Tina Dacin.

People interested in this workshop can contact Queen’s at 1-888-393-2338 or click on the link above for more information.

I see the situation as enlightened self interest on the part of Future Shop and the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). I’m sure that Future Shop’s intention to help students isn’t completely insincere, however, it’s unlikely the donation would have been made if there wasn’t an ROI for the company. For its part ,the TDSB doesn’t have adequate public funding and has turned to parents and the private sector to close the gap. However, as stated in today’s Globe and Mail, this is indeed a “slippery slope” and the degree to which it’s appropriate for the school system to provide business benefits to corporations and other private sectors funders isn’t yet clear.

Here are some questions that the players should be asking themselves and some ideas that may be instructive:

How can Future Shop (or any other corporation) support schools in way that maximizes business impact and minimizes risk to its reputation? Future Shop should work with and through a relevant educational non-profit organization that would have the responsibility to decide which schools are most in need of support, what is required, and how results will be measured. This approach would result in a credible and equitable allocation of funds that would eliminate (or at least mitigate) criticism.

What is the best way for Future Shop to promote it’s support of TDSB in a way that creates awareness (as needed for brand building) and is seen as genuine and authentic? For all intents and purposes, painting the labs with Future Shop colours is the same as putting the company’s band name on the door. In fact, this approach could be seen as more controversial because it has an flavour of duplicity. The more effective and authentic approach would be for Future Shop to have absolutely no brand presence except on the computers themselves, to do an internal presentation to parents and teachers with the participation of a non-profit partner and a TDSB representative, and to promote the contribution in local stores.

Where’s the program? As executed, there is no “program” evident in Future Shop’s donation/sponsorship. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for Future Shop to define, in conjunction with a credible non-profit organization, what “Future Leaders” means in this context and and to develop a social brand to capture and communicate the value and values of this idea. Then the company and its community partners could develop programs to bring this idea to life. Possibilities would include providing educational software with all computers, undertaking research to identify opportunities for technology to have more impact with children who are disadvantaged, and engaging Future Shop employees as in-school or community volunteers.

We’re certain to see more situations like this and I welcome your feedback and ideas.

While there’s no magic bullet to this, we’ve recently developed a new management tool to help corporations determine the value of major partnerships with community organizations. We’ll be presenting this tool along with related case studies in an “Impaktworkshop” I’ll be doing with Jon Packer, President of The Idea Workshop. Jon has a an unique insight into the challenges and opportunities that face corporations in effectively communicating their community investment programs and we’ve developed these workshops to help corporations improve the cost/benefit of their more important relationships with non-profits.

The next two workshops will take place in Toronto on September 25th and Vancouver on October 23rd.

For more information visit Impaktworkshop or contact me directly if you’re interested in knowing more about the Impakt Partnership Valuation Tool.