Collaboration Strategies that Address Community
Issues
Three Chicago philanthropy leaders discussed successful
strategies to maximize impact at a panel discussion hosted by the
City Club of Chicago on Monday.
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Joshua Hale, president and CEO of the Big
Shoulders Fund; John Canning, Jr., co-founder of Madison Dearborn
Partners; Steve Solomon, vice president of corporate relations for
Exelon and president of the Exelon Foundation; and Liz Thompson,
president of The Cleveland Avenue Foundation for Education (Photo:
Business Wire)
Steve Solomon, Vice President of Corporate Relations for Exelon
and President, Exelon Foundation; Liz Thompson, President of The
Cleveland Avenue Foundation for Education and John Canning Jr.,
co-Founder of Madison Dearborn Partners shared their perspectives
at a forum moderated by Joshua Hale, President and CEO of the Big
Shoulders Fund in Chicago.
Collaboration with impact…What can corporations help
solve?
Solomon noted that 12 years ago, Exelon started looking at
philanthropy differently. “We said, what are the needs of the
community, what can we help solve, and who can we bring together to
solve that? At the time, Chicago high school graduation rates were
only 54%.”
Exelon met with leadership at United Way of Metropolitan
Chicago, and discussed how they could work together to improve high
school graduation rates and make sure students were moving from one
grade to the next. Exelon created a collaborative partnership with
United Way and six social service non-profits agencies in
communities where dropout rates were high and attendance rates were
low.
Solomon said since the program started, 27,000 students have
participated, and 92% of the core seniors have graduated from high
school.
“Partnering with the social service agencies, schools and
parents, we – and our people – are able to make a difference,”
Solomon said. “We teach these kids lifelong lessons, like how to
write a resume with the help of our HR team, and we hire some of
those students to work as summer interns, as do the social service
agencies we work with.
“When I think about philanthropy and what works well, it’s that
collaboration – we can do so much more when we bring more people
into the process,” Solomon said.
On lessons learned…look for the win-win-win
“We are always looking for the win-win-win,” Solomon said. “How
do you make it a win for the organization you’re funding, how do
you make it a win for the people who are the clients or the
recipients of those funds and how do you make it a win for our
employees?”
“We’re fortunate that last year, Exelon employees gave back
171,000 hours of service,” Solomon said. “Our CEO Chris Crane and
in fact, our corporate culture is focused on giving back; it’s just
a part of who we are as a company.”
Employee engagement delivers high impact results
Solomon highlighted employee engagement –and through National
Volunteer Week, which became National Volunteer Month at Exelon –
the company took on 335 projects, and 4,000 employees were working
in the communities we serve. It creates awareness of how important
that community organization is to the local neighborhood. “What’s
great about this is we’ll plant a garden on the south side of
Chicago, and we would learn during the course of the day that about
half of the volunteers were from that community,” Solomon said.
Solomon noted that Exelon’s people are focused on giving and the
company is committed to making it easy for them, via an app or
other social media platforms.
“We just wrapped up our employee giving campaign -$8.1 million
contributed by our employees, with more than half of all Exelon
employees participating,” Solomon said.
In support of #GivingTuesday, volunteers from Exelon – the
parent company of ComEd – have expanded their efforts beyond this
year’s designated day of giving by performing dozens of service
projects in Chicago throughout the month of November.
In addition to employee volunteer efforts, Exelon is matching
employee donations of $100 or more dollar for dollar, and
contributing another $100 to their charities of choice. Last year,
employees donated more than $500,000 before the company match and
gave nearly 10,000 hours of community service for
#GivingTuesday.
Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC) is a Fortune 100 energy company
with the largest number of utility customers in the U.S. Exelon
does business in 48 states, the District of Columbia and Canada and
had 2016 revenue of $31.4 billion. Exelon’s six utilities deliver
electricity and natural gas to approximately 10 million customers
in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, New
Jersey and Pennsylvania through its Atlantic City Electric, BGE,
ComEd, Delmarva Power, PECO and Pepco subsidiaries. Exelon is one
of the largest competitive U.S. power generators, with more than
35,500 megawatts of nuclear, gas, wind, solar and hydroelectric
generating capacity comprising one of the nation’s cleanest and
lowest-cost power generation fleets. The company’s Constellation
business unit provides energy products and services to
approximately 2.2 million residential, public sector and business
customers, including more than two-thirds of the Fortune 100.
Follow Exelon on Twitter @Exelon.
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ExelonRobin Gray202-637-0317robin.levy@exeloncorp.com
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