Corporate Giving - Back to the Communities

This year, over 1,700 employees signed up to volunteer on local projects around the nation for the 5th annual Schwab Volunteer day (Formerly called FERSTT Aide Day for Fairness, Empathy, Responsiveness, Striving, Teamwork and Trust).

That’s over 10% of the entire Schwab employee workforce - all out doing something in the local communities.

San Francisco, alone, reportedly took about a thousand employees (Schwab is SF-based). Taking over the AT&T park for opening speeches and breakfast, the mass event itself dragged out SF city mayor, Gavin Newsom, to give his appreciation speech (a little drunk-sounding, probably from the City Hall event the night before). Nonetheless, it had been a great way to give back to the local communities.

Not counting the monetary compensation Schwab has on its payroll for the time taken off, the impact of the work done by these many pairs of hands for each organisation accounts for weeks of normal volunteer effort and savings. Publicity-wise, there isn’t exactly too much considering many groups were confined to local vicinities in small areas. Business surely isn’t main attraction here on these chosen organisations. These aren’t affluent golf tournaments where potential clients congregate at. Perhaps tax-savings helps from the monetary donations the firm puts in for each helps in offset costs in some ways.

Total estimate of the aide-day, probably $500k to $1mil. including employee compensation, event costs and the monetary donations. Rough estimate. Could be a lot more or less.

Kudos for organising and giving back regardless. Organising anything of the likes, does take lots of effort.

Side thought: 10% of the workforce is a scary number to think of in terms of client-impact. But most participants aren’t direct client-facing employees.