Molson in the Community

The Toronto and Queen’s NMP students, Mark Dailey, Molson Mentors, Community Partners and a few others!

The second year of the National Mentoring Program (NMP) has started with a group of new, excited young students from across Canada.  Amir was out east last week at DalHousie to meet with the students, their Molson mentees and the charities.  I joined the U of T and Queen’s Uni. NMP’ers at the Board of Trade last Friday for a very delicious lunch (thank you for the veggie options Mary!) and a guest appearance from Mark Dailey, Citytv News Anchor.

Scott: Ready to rock – about to into Mark

Molson’s Chief Legal and Public Affairs Officer, Scott Ewart addressed the students and introduced Mark who gave the students a brief overview of his philanthropic past, present and future – truly inspiring.  His work in the community stretches over years, working with Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the Salvation Army, a spokesperson for the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation, and many more – a great inspiration to the students (and the rest of us!) who are about to embark on a community development and leadership journey.

Thank you to Mark for taking the time in his busy schedule to join Molson and the NMP.

Signing off…. @toniahammer, #theNMP

Last week, the Canadian Administrators of Volunteer Resources (CAVR) and the Professional Administrators of Volunteer Resources (PAVRO) joined together for its annual conference at the Sheraton in Hamilton, ON.  Molson was invited to join in the conversation on a panel format.

Scott Ewart, Molson’s Chief Legal and Public Affairs Officer was there along with four other panel members to discuss challenges, opportunities and issues impacting volunteerism in their sector, as well as their vision of the future of volunteerism.  Other panel members:

• Rose VanRotterdam, Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration
• Liz Weaver, Director for the Hamilton Roundtable on Poverty Reduction
• Vincenza Travale, Chair, Foundations Canada
• Ruth MacKenzie, President, Volunteer Canada

I was lucky enough to join Scott in Hamilton and listen to (and video! — below) some of the panel discussion.  One of the most interesting topics that Scott discussed was the concept of 3-dimensional philanthropy, a model of philanthropy from Mary Donohue, founder of the National Mentoring Program.  Watch the video below to learn about Molson’s  3-dimensional involvement.

[youtube cZ9BNwf_8Yc]

This question comes up all the time – how do you apply traditional marketing metrics to community investment? How can you actually measure the impact of time spent volunteering or the impact of a one-time donation to fight AIDS or a clean water drinking initiative in Africa?

Well, skeptics, there is hope. Aside from measures like employee satisfaction, positive press, and all the stuff one normally looks at (all valuable information), sites are offering cause-specific calculators that give you more drilled-down, and some might argue, more socially impactful information.

Take, for example, the Calvert Foundation. They have a “calculate your impact” tag at the top of their website, different from the much hyped Zero Footprint calculator. This one attempts to calculate the actual social return on your investment. For example, when I punch in a $5,000 donation, one-time, to a micro-lending organization in the domestic U.S., my social return on investment would finance 15.6 micro-enterprises and create 31.13 jobs – a calculation everyone understands.

A growing body of evidence suggests that a company’s role in its community can be a factor in increasing profitability, strengthening company brand and reputation, elevating employee morale and customer loyalty, increasing market knowledge, attracting and retaining employees, and encouraging product innovation, among others. These factors are already measured by a series of stringent factors, like actual amount donated per employee, amount of volunteer hours, and end results.

But as the advent of these online calculators continues to pop-up, the calculations and metrics that are applied to these initiatives will surely increase. And accordingly, so will everyone’s ability to measure their impact.