CSRworks 2012: Innovation through Collaboration

Last week we successfully hosted our 2nd annual CSRworks summit in our own backyard (DFW).  We invited clients, partners and industry leaders to discuss best practices and challenges for the ever-changing scope of employee engagement. 

Attendees collaborated in group sessions to tackle some of the most pressing trends in the  CSR realm, such as: skills-based volunteering, measuring impact, engaging leaders, programs that drive participation etc.  We also had the pleasure to invite and listen to outstanding speakers that provided knowledge and inspirational stories that are making a difference.  

We all walked away inspired by progressive ideas that will drive the future of CSR programs and look forward to hosting our next summit in the Bay Area!

-YourCause Team

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bigBang! Sparking Social Innovation

Social Impact. Dallas. Engagement. Civic-Mindedness. These are all words that evoke the energy and excitement around this year’s bigBang! event, a forum hosted by Dallas Social Venture Partners. They will be convening the thinkers and doers of Dallas for a day-long opportunity to catalyze positive impact.

This year, bigBang! will be a place to jump in and get hands on.  With experiences at every turn to learn about forward-thinking socially conscious businesses and nonprofit organizations, they invite you to be completely immersed in the day. 

bigBang! event details:

When:  October 19, 2012 

Where: Union Station, Dallas Texas

Time: 9:00 am

Tickets: General admission with access to all events $225.00

Registration link: http://www.dsvp.org/bigbang/information  

About Dallas Social Venture Partners  

DSVP is a artnership of professionals, social entrepreneurs and foundations who are committed to strengthening our community through the thoughtful application of collective dollars and business expertise. DSVP is comprised of 123 partners and works with a current portfolio of nine nonprofit investments to create positive social impact. For additional information, please call (214) 855-5520 or visit www.dsvp.org.

 

YourCause brings “Innovation through Collaboration” at Annual CSRworks Summit

YourCause CSRworks Summit invites clients, partners, and CSR leaders to unite and impact the future of corporate social responsibility programs.

YourCause, LLC, the innovator of CSRconnect, an all-inclusive online employee engagement platform for volunteering and giving, is set to host the second annual CSRworks Summit in Dallas, Texas on September 20, 2012.  CSRworks brings together clients, partners, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) industry leaders to collaborate and share best practices, discuss challenges, create tangible conclusions that impact employee engagement programs, and set a path for additional product developments in 2013.

The theme “Innovation through Collaboration” acknowledges the insights and solutions attendees will discuss based on their chosen session topic.  With a focus on collaborative sessions, attendees gather and learn unique effective employee engagement programs and strategies. 

Session Topics Include:                                                                             

• Successful Skills-based Volunteering
• Understanding Equivalency Determination
• Integrating Social Elements
• Personal Sustainability
• Measuring Impact
• Engaging Leaders
• Programs to Drive Participation
• Sharing Your Purpose
• Defining Disasters
• Facts and Figures

 

Attendees will also hear insightful presentations from guest speakers, Cone Communications and Network for Good, covering the business case for CSR and top employee engagement trends. 

“Hosting CSRworks in our hometown offers us the opportunity to show attendees a day in the actual life of YourCause,” said Founder & CEO, Matthew Combs.  “We want our attendees to leave with a spark of creativity and mindset to maximize efforts and engage employees.”

Attendees and supporters include existing and prospective clients, which encompasses some of the world’s largest and most prominent companies from the technical, financial, retail, and telecommunications sectors.   To learn more about YourCause CSRworks 2012, please visit http://csrconnect.yourcause.com/summit.html.  

YourCause Partners with UniversalGiving to Enhance International Vetting Options

YourCause and UniversalGiving partner to provide additional international vetting options for corporations seeking to volunteer and donate across the globe.

YourCause announces their newest partnership with UniversalGiving, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and leader in providing advanced domestic and international vetting services. YourCause will be utilizing UniversalGiving’s international vetting services to connect corporations with additional secure and valid options for transacting donations to approved nongovernmental organizations (NGO) across the globe.

The partnership supports the growing demand for increased international vetting and program expansion beyond the United States. It allows YourCause to decrease client’s international liability while increasing the international boundaries of their programs.

“We’re excited to see this partnership come to fruition,” said Matthew Combs, Founder and CEO of YourCause.  “Previous engagements with the UniversalGiving team show they are professional, thorough and responsive to the needs of our clients.” 

The partnership with UniversalGiving immediately enhances YourCause’s ability to provide clients with NGO vetting services fully customized to corporate programs and aligned with due-diligence requirements.  UniversalGiving brings to YourCause multiple options for NGO vetting services, which offer different levels of security necessary for international giving. 

UniversalGiving, recognized as one of the industry leaders in custom NGO vetting services, utilizes a multi-point vetting process to identify organizations and requirements set forth by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). By providing security measures on numerous levels (legal, brand, and employee safety) UniversalGiving is a reliable and trusted source for quality vetting and equivalency determination services.

“UniversalGiving is thrilled to be working with YourCause,” said Pamela Hawley, CEOof UniversalGiving. “Our organizations align well in that both desire to provide flexible vetting options for corporations to donate to secure and safe charities around the world.”

About Universal Giving

UniversalGiving™ is a web-based market place allowing people to give and volunteer with the top-performing projects around the world. 100% of each donation goes directly to the cause you care about. All projects are vetted with the Quality Model™ so you can trust that your money is going to a good cause. 

Looking to Expand the YourCause Team with Key Hires!

We’re looking for some amazing developers to add their talent to our tech team.  If you or anyone else knows someone who is interested, tell them to go ahead and apply at csrconnect.yourcause.com/employment.html.

Here’s a little incentive, if you refer someone to YourCause and we decide to hire them, you will be rewarded with some type of compensation (cash? air mileage? you can choose your perk!).  

However, rules do apply:

1. Candidate has to pass our technical exam during the interview process
2. Be employed for more than 3 months
3. Cannot be married to them
4. Have to be awesome

The offer stands till we hire our next .Net Application Developer.

Along with that, we have other job opportunities if your forte isn’t development.  We’re looking for Account Managers, Designers, Project Managers, etc. to come on board. Visit csrconnect.yourcause.com/employment.html and see which description fit your talents.

– YourCause Team

YourCause Enhances Existing Volunteer Platform, Adds Skills-Based Volunteering to CSRconnect

New volunteering feature allows users to establish a skill profile, and create/search volunteer opportunities with specific skills.   

YourCause announces the latest enhancements to the CSRconnect employee engagement platform: skills-based volunteer (SBV) tracking and reporting. The new feature allows users to search, find and track their skills within volunteer opportunities. In addition, more than 4,000 current non-profit admins and their organizations can create skills-based volunteer events in the platform. The addition of skills-based volunteering is the second of two major enhancements to the CSRconnect volunteer module within the last two months.

The skills-based volunteer tracking and reporting feature includes:

• Industry accepted 20 category high-level skills taxonomy

• 216 specific skills for users to add to their skills profile

• Matching volunteer events based on a user’s location and skills posted

• Logging specific skills to a user’s (or team’s) volunteer event

• Search capabilities based on users interested skills

• Posting volunteer events seeking necessary skills

• Reporting based on skills, level of expertise and participation rates

“As skills-based volunteering continues to attract more attention and relevance, we hope to play an active role in innovating and developing capabilities that best facilitate skills-based volunteering,” said Matthew Combs, Founder and CEO of YourCause. “This is the latest effort in our ongoing goal to optimize CSRconnect to improve all employee volunteerism programs.”

With the increase in demand by companies seeking to initiate SBV programs, it is a key element to improve business and employee performance, community impact, nonprofit connectivity, and overall corporate reputation.

Almost 8.1 billion hours were volunteered by Americans in 2011, according to Volunteers of America. Though, the same number of hours devoted to skills-based volunteerism can generate over 500% the value of traditional volunteerism (True Impact, LLC, 2012 Volunteerism ROI Tracker). Leveraging SBV programs is one example of how corporate volunteerism is gradually changing and uniquely addressing community impact in a new way of volunteering.

In the near future, YourCause plans to build a feature that will add pro-bono volunteering included with skills-based, offering users the ability to contribute their expertise to nonprofit organizations.

YourCause and CanadaHelps Partner to Expand Online Giving to Canadian Charities

YourCause partners with Canada’s leading online charitable donation processor to expand the giving tools of the CSRconnect employee engagement platform. 

YourCause announces a partnership with the nonprofit organization CanadaHelps, preferred donor processing solution for Canadian charities. The partnership is the latest international development of YourCause’s employee engagement solution, CSRconnect, and provides multinational companies the ability to search, find, and donate to more than 80,000 valid Canadian nonprofit organizations. The Canadian processor implements this summer and will be available to interested clients in the coming weeks.

“Making this partnership a reality required significant work between YourCause and CanadaHelps,” said Matthew Combs, Founder & CEO of YourCause. “Though all the more rewarding, we’ve arrived at an effective, exciting solution for our multinational client’s needs while continuing the mission of CanadaHelps.”

CSRconnect seamlessly integrates with the CanadaHelps system by way of an updated application programming interface (API) that transacts credit card donations to current charitable organizations vetted and approved by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). YourCause nears the completion of the necessary technical methods for capturing all local currency transaction details, calculating the associated exchange rates, and reporting on all non US dollar donations made through the system.

“We pride ourselves in strategically partnering with a company dedicated to supporting corporate employee charitable programs,” said Owen Charters, CEO of CanadaHelps. “This partnership will further giving opportunities and ultimately increase charitable donations in Canada.”

The most recent partnership with CanadaHelps adds to the growing list of companies connecting with YourCause to deliver international services and capabilities within the CSRconnect employee engagement platform. The company continues to seek new partners, both domestically and internationally, for better delivering its services and capabilities to multinational corporations of all sizes.

The company expects to fully roll out the Canadian donation capabilities, with CanadaHelps, during the summer of 2012.

About CanadaHelps

CanadaHelps is a registered charity and public foundation with a goal to make giving simple. Through CanadaHelps.org, more than $250 million in charitable donations have been facilitated since launching in 2000. Their mission is to engage Canadians in the charitable sector, providing accessible and affordable online technology to both donors and charities to promote- and ultimately increase- charitable giving in Canada.

YourCause Continues Expansion with New Office and Key Hires

YourCause, LLC announces the opening of its new office space in Carrollton, Texas to accommodate for their continued growth and mission to develop global good.

YourCause, creator of CSRconnect employee engagement platform, announces the opening of a new office in Carrollton, Texas. The new office, located at 2508 Highlander Way – Suite 210, Carrollton, TX 75006, provides the YourCause team with a more creative work environment and double the amount of square feet, which allows for continued growth. Since the beginning of 2012, total employee headcount has increased by nearly 100% and management fully expects nearly 50% continued growth over the coming 12 months.

“Employee growth directly relates to business growth,” said Matthew Combs, Founder and CEO of YourCause. “So, it’s great to see our company expand with our employees, platform, clients, culture, and now, our workspace. We look forward to the next step.”

YourCause now supports a network of more than two million total employees, more than a 100% increase from June 2011. All major functional areas within YourCause saw greater than 50% year-over-year growth, including the hours tracked within the volunteering platform, the processing of payroll deductions, donations made via credit card, associated matching gift programs, volunteer and charitable grants, and more.

As clients and revenues grow, and with the increase of total employees, YourCause increases its investment towards further technical innovation and feature development of the CSRconnect solution. The ongoing growth in importance and attention given to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is supporting YourCause’s mission to increase global good through technical and product innovation.

“Beyond the obvious benefits of a new, larger and more creative office,” said Combs, “Our most recent expansion places our employees at the forefront of what we do, and provides us with a working environment well suited to attract new talent and continued growth.”

YourCause has plans of increasing headcount throughout the remainder of this year and into next. The company is exploring new expansion opportunities both within Texas and outside the state.

CSRconnect’s New Segmentation Feature Brings Employees in Direct Contact with their Most Relevant Programs

YourCause, LLC deploys a new segmentation feature that allows employees to engage directly with their day-to-day operations and company programs in a more relevant manner.

YourCause, LLC announces the latest enhancement to their employee engagement platform, now offering clients with segmentation functionality. The new feature empowers companies to deliver programs to specific areas of business, segmented by an element in their human resource file such as geographic location, brand, business unit, employee level, or employee type. Segmentation centralizes all employee engagement activities and programs, while offering a level of independence and autonomy relevant to each user’s day-to-day operations.

The new feature is a direct result of client feedback and an ongoing interest to provide company ‘segments’ and their administrators with tools to manage and execute key giving, volunteering, disaster, and other related charitable programs. Each segment can be uniquely branded and gives administrators tools to direct message, upload creative assets, set up charity programs, and report specific to their segment.

“We are excited to launch our segmentation,” said Matthew Combs, Founder & CEO of YourCause. “We have given a lot of thought to this enhancement, taken the feedback from clients, and built a feature that will make it easier for employees located in a different county or brand to act locally, yet continue to participate in the company’s overall program.”

Segmentation is an optional feature within CSRconnect. If implemented, the feature is in the administrator’s hands and enables clients to create or change segments when desired, as well as, edit customizable features real-time within segmentation.

The segmentation capability is the first feature to deploy from a series of ‘significant functionality enhancements’ planned over the next six months for YourCause’s CSRconnect platform. YourCause partners with specific clients to design, development, and execute functionality designed to push the platform closer to the end goal of being a one-stop-shop for all employee engagement. In the pipeline, the company expects to release mobile, personal sustainability, skills based and pro bono tracking, international payroll/matching and other related enhancements.

“We stay aggressive with our feature development and continue to solidify our position as the technical, product, and operational leader for employee engagement solutions,” said Combs. “The release of our segmentation feature is a reflection of several new and exciting feature expected to go live by the end of summer.”

[Infographic] The Evolution of CSR and the Web

Check out our latest infographic supporting the evolution of CSR and the web, which also correlates with our latest CSRinsights, “How Technology Shapes CSR.” 

 Happy Giving,
The YourCause Team