CSR Certificate Program – 2 Day Fall Offering by Rutgers Institute for Ethical Leadership and Governance & Accountability Institute

New York, NY (August 29, 2016) – Rutgers Institute for Ethical Leadership and Governance & Accountability Institute are partnering to offer the Fall 2016 CSR Certificate Program. The two-day sessions will be held on September 28 and 29 at the campus of the Business School of Rutgers University in downtown Newark, New Jersey.

Early bird pricing is in effect through August 31, 2016. To register for the course, go to:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/csr-certificate-program-sept-28-29-tickets-26809141865

The Program Offering 

The September program will feature two tracks for participants: (1) the Corporate CSR Executive Track, and, (2) the Nonprofit and Philanthropy CSR Track. Plenary sessions and keynote speakers will bring participants in the two tracks together for group sessions during the two-days. Topics include:

  • “The Ethics of CSR”
  • “Industry-Specific Metrics and Measurements”;
  • “CSR Trends — Locally, Nationally, Global”;
  • “CSR Through the Investor Lens”;
  • “Materiality – Identify & Focus on Strategic ESG Issues”.

The two-day, “deep dive” into CSR and related fields of philanthropy including corporate foundation work, corporate sustainability, risk management, and ethics. The partnering organizations notes: “Executives in both for-profit and not-for-profit fields and their teams need to develop the skill sets, networks, and ever-increasing expertise to achieve their CSR goals, and deliver value to their organization. This certificate program will be presented over two-days with an outstanding faculty of speakers who are experts in their fields.”

Confirmed faculty and guest presenters include:

  • Erika Karp, CEO of Cornerstone Capital Group (formerly head of research for UBS);
  • Mary O’Malley, Vice President of Corporate Governance, Prudential Financial, Inc;
  • Ellen Lambert, President of PSEG Foundation and Chief Diversity Officer;
  • Wanda Lopuch, Chair of the Board at The Global Sourcing Council (GSC);
  • Georg Kell, Founding Director of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), and now Vice Chairman, Arabesque Partners.

Location

The two-day course will be held at 15 Washington Place, in Newark New Jersey, easily reached by train from Newark’s Penn Station (with frequent service from New York City and Philadelphia). The business school urban campus is convenient to Newark International Airport, and numerous nearby hotels. Participants will have Wi-Fi access. Refreshments and food will be supplied throughout the course.

Early bird pricing is in effect through August 31, 2016. To register for the course, go to:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/csr-certificate-program-sept-28-29-tickets-26809141865

 

ABOUT GOVERNANCE & ACCOUNTABILITY INSTITUTE, INC. 

Governance & Accountability Institute is a New York City-based research, consulting and educational services company working with corporate sector and investment community clients. Typical engagements include preparation of sustainability, CSR and citizenship reports; peer benchmarking; customized ESG research (environmental, social and governance performance); investor relations; corporate communications; and third party engagements. The company is the exclusive Data Partner for the Global Reporting Initiative (GI) for the USA, UK and the Republic of Ireland.

 

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR ETHICAL LEADERSHIP

The Rutgers Institute for Ethical Leadership works with the business sector, the public sector, not-for-profits and other organizations in the social sector, and within Rutgers University, to provide leaders and future leaders with education and training, and critical thinking tools, needed to make ethical decisions. Program offerings include Ethical Leadership Conferences; Cultural and Ethnic Arts Executive Leadership; Collaborative Action Newark; Speakers Series; and certificate programs in a number of areas, including most recently, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The Institute’s mission is to strengthen ethical leadership to enhance civil society. Judy Young, MBA, is the Executive Director of the Institute.

For more information, contact:
Louis D. Coppola, Executive Vice President, Governance & Accountability Institute, Inc.
Tel 646.430.8230 ext 14, Email lcoppola@ga-institute.com
Web www.ga-institute.com

Jessica Johnson, Senior Program Coordinator, Rutgers Institute for Ethical Leadership
Tel 973.353.1135, Email jjohnson@business.rutgers.edu
Web www.business.rutgers.edu/iel

EARLY BIRDS SAVE 15% — REGISTER NOW G&A Institute & Rutgers IEL CSR Certificate 2 –Track Program “Building a Best-in-Class CSR Department” (September 28-29, 2016)

Knowledge-Gained-Meme-EARLY-BIRDThe Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School Newark and Governance & Accountability Institute are joining forces again on a two-day Certificate program in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

The theme is “Building a Best-in-Class CSR Department.”  The program will be on September 28 and 29, 2016 at the Rutgers Business School campus in downtown Newark, New Jersey.  Participants will have a choice of two tracks — one for corporate responsibility topics and the other for not-for-profit / social sector organization topics, with plenary sessions to share knowledge and experience with all participants.

Early Bird Registration is open!
Registrants save 15% through August 31st.
Click here to register & save now!

Two Tracks:

  • Corporate CSR Executive Track
  • Nonprofit and Philanthropy CSR Track

Topics include:

  • The Ethics of Corporate Responsibility
  • Industry Specific Metrics and Measurements
  • Sustainable Development Goals
  • CSR Trends – Locally, Nationally and Internationally
  • CSR Through the Investor Lens
  • Materiality – Identify & Focus on Strategic ESG Issues

An outstanding group of keynoters, panel moderators and speakers is lining up for the program.  To date, among those confirmed as faculty are outstanding corporate sector responsibility leaders Mary O’Malley, Vice President of Corporate Governance, Prudential Financial, Inc; Ellen Lambert, President of PESG Foundation and Chief Diversity Officer one of the nation’s leading energy providers.

In the not-for-profit sector, Wanda Lopuch, Chair of the Board at The Global Sourcing Council (GSC); and Georg Kell, Founding Director and long-time leader of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), and now Vice Chairman, Arabesque Partners, are confirmed presenters.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW!

For more information contact Louis D. Coppola, EVP of G&A Institute, at lcoppola@ga-institute.com

The 21st Century Company — What Can We Expect?

HBoerner at 21stCenturyComapny2016 2When my partner Lou Coppola and I were discussing concepts for a conference with Chris Skroupa and the Skytop Strategies team last year, we talked about the fascination that we all seem to “have with decades and centuries.” And even “Millennia” — we are now in the Third as the calendar changed from “1900s” to “2000s.”  And of course we talked our fascination with “looking ahead” to divine the future.

HBoerner at 21stCenturyComapny2016 3The musings led to the wonderful event that we had in May 2016 at Baruch College / CUNY, our gracious hosts for the “21st Century Company” conference. I’d like to share my opening comments for that conference with you.

HBoerner at 21stCenturyComapny2016

In “decades” we talk about the Roaring 20’s, the 1960′s social and cultural revolution, In centuries we think about traditions of the Victorian Age — taking up most of the 1800s.

Time magazine publisher Henry Luce dubbed the 20th, “The American Century.” And it was, in so many dimensions: economic, cultural, militarily, industrially, financially, and so on.

Remember the discussion about when exactly the 21st Century would begin – in year 2000 or 2001? And how the world’s IT network was about to melt down because we had only two digits for dates in old software? An estimated $100 Billion dollars were invested in “Y2K” programs by business 1995-2001.

Y2K was a good example of progress made in the new century based on technology and scientific advances in the prior century. We saw that throughout the 20th Century — tinkerers building on 19th and 18th and even 17th Century advances.

“Tinkerers” create by leveraging the old for the new — and that’s how we advance in our society — how we create value – create new industries — create new wealth for the many. (And, of course, for the fortunate few, the 1%, as well.)

In the 1760s – the 18th Century – Scotsman James Watt tinkered with steam power.
He experimented with stethoscope tubing and tin cans — building on advances earlier in the century.

Watt’s tinkering led to harnessing the power of steam In the 19th Century, tinkerers put the steam engine on a wagon, and pulled carriages behind. The vehicles were “in train,” so they called it “a train” pulled by the steam-powered locomotive. Many of us got here this morning “by train.”

Soon railroads were everywhere, carrying people and freight. The great American prairies of the Midwest and Southwest stretches of flat land (like Oklahoma and Texas) were settled and a mighty agriculture empire arose mid-continent.

The farmland output — the harvested crops — would concentrate in factories and the nation would have packaged foods – think of cereals – as well as abundant pork, beef, buffalo and other meat products.

A tinkerer in the 19th Century – Samuel Morse – put electric stimulation through wires to convey messages. He gave us the telegraph. Recently some observers called the telegraph the “Victorian Internet.” At this point in my presentation at Baruch I held up glass standoff — it’s silicon in nature. The standoff should be familiar to you — you will see it atop the crossbar along railroad tracks; it insulated the telegraphy and later telephone wires.

Silicon was fundamental to 20th Century electronic technology. In the last century there would be a valley named for Silicon because of the importance of the simple “sand” element. Silicon is found in radios, cameras, phones, computers.

The telegraph concept’s success led us on to telephony, radio broadcasts, television, and the global Internet with its wondrous World Wide Web (www.”whatever” you like).  Tinkerer Tim Berners-Lee created the Web – and made it available to all of us with no strings attached.

At the end of the 19th and into the 20th Century, tinkerer Thomas Edison brought forth amazing devices – spawning giant industries! Think of the electric utilities – built on the genius of Edison.

He experimented with 6,000 plant materials to find a light bulb filament that worked and would last for the consumer. Carbonized bamboo was one solution. If you drive around the City of Fort Myers, Florida, you’ll see bamboo plants here and there. And the Edison and (Henry] Ford Winter Estates features family gardens and a research lab. When Thomas Edison bought his property he found bamboo growing there and experimented with that plant for his light bulb filaments. Henry Ford played around with plants to grow a domestic source of rubber (latex) for his auto’s tires. Such in the fascination with the wonders of nature for tinkerers!

Edison’s great insight was that a central generating system — the dynamo – with wires running to homes and business would create a new category of business services.

At the time of his death in 1931 the still expanding electric utility business was a $75 billion business in current dollars!

His tinkering gave us moving pictures (“movies”), the phonograph and other machines that would change our business and personal lives.

Remember James Watt of Scotland and the primitive steam engine? Steam power was soon everywhere — powering railroads, providing power for factories and globe-roaming steam ships, telegraph, electric power to change night-to-day – all marvelous inventions in the 19th Century.

So: How to build on that in the 20th?

Enter tinkerer Henry Ford. He worked in an Edison electric plant in Detroit. He tinkered and developed practical “automobiles” and put Americans on the road and changed our way of life.

Ford built on the legacy and foundation of the prior centuries. On earlier advances in metals, rubber, instrumentation, wiring, steel making.

Henry Ford’s Model T was everywhere. He also revolutionized the workplace, bringing the work to the worker on the assembly line.

His workers had the opportunity to earn $5 per day – two times what other industrial workers earned. This was an important 20th Century economic insight – that way they could buy the cars they made!

Sometimes progress comes slowly.

Here’s a fascinating story: Car and Driver magazine staged “The Race of the Century, Ford Model T vs. Tesla Model S” last year. This was a contest pitting a 1915 “T” Ford against a 2013 Tesla. Guess who won? The route was Detroit to Shoreham, Long Island, just under 700 miles.

The restored Model T had to take all non-expressway roads while the Tesla zoomed along at 68 mph on the interstates. But down time for re charging meant the actual speed over the route was in the 30s for the Tesla.

That was less than the 100-year old Model T — it hit 40′s regularly and even 68 MPH doing down hills. The Ford had numerous pit stops and its battery actually blew up from overuse. The drivers had the windshield down – imagine driving all that distance with wind in your face and no cover (roof) or surrounding windows as you zipped along.

Battery charging stations had to be set up with volunteers along the route for the Tesla Access to 100-AMP service was needed for the Tesla – thank you, Thomas Edison for electric power everywhere!

The Tesla won by a very slim margin.

The final destination was the Tesla memorial, honoring Nikola Tesla, the competitor to Thomas Edison, who built a giant electrical testing tower in Shoreham, New York. (Organizers are trying to create a museum there to honor Tesla and his experiments.)

We can look to 21xt Century “tinkerer” advances in battery power and rapid recharging stations — that will address these immediate challenges.

Tinkerer Henry Ford, meet tinkerer-extraordinaire  Elon Musk!

Tinkerers innovate – new products, new services, new technologies, new approaches – on the foundations of prior advances.

The move from tinkerer’s garage to giant publicly-traded enterprise can be rapid – look at Apple, in relatively quick time attaining the largest market cap in history.

There are challenges: As the innovative product or service grows, how is the venture to be managed? Financed? What will the relationship of company and society be? Relationship of investor and board and management?

For a time, owners – tinkerer owners-cum-capitalists John Rockefeller,  Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford — were virtual rulers. The growth of the capital markets shifted power to the provider of capital.

“Management,” a 20th Century term, over time became more important than “owner.”

Here we are in second decade of the 21st Century – typically, the large corporation is globalized, automated, complex, a dominant force in our society.

The tinker-owners are replaced by professional managers and the enterprise owned by “atomized” owners — their holdings are 1% or less of the total (and hence, “like atoms” in the words of authors Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means in the 1930s in their work, “The Modern Corporation and Private Property“).

What will be the defining characteristics of the 21st Century company in terms of Company and society relations? Organizations will be flatter — less layers of management, more dispersed responsibility, less command-and-control in the 20th Century sense. There’ll be more automation, more technology replacing people. (More robots / less human hands on control knobs, levers or control sticks of machinery.) More machine-talking-to-machine. that’s happening in industrial settings now, with numerous devices sending data to central databases for analysis and sharing to lead to better best practices at dispersed industrial locations.

In this 21st Century we are in an era of great expectations – stockholders (the atomized owner interests) and stakeholders (the new keys to success for the large enterprise) expect the 21st Century company management to be more sustainable, socially responsible, “good citizens.” Open and transparent. Accountable to stakeholders.

Companies today are in so many ways are viewed to be “citizens” of the nation and world – what does that mean? What are “good corporate citizens?” How will we be defining “corporate citizenship?” Stay Tuned!

We explored all of that and more in our Skytop-Governance & Accountability Institute co-presented conference at Baruch College.

There’s more information at: https://skytopstrategies.com/21st-century-company/

Join Us for Our Second CSR Certificate Program with The Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School Newark Titled “Good to Great — Building a Best-in-Class CSR Department” (September 28-29, 2016)

Here’s news to share for those working in corporate social responsibility, and professionals who seek career opportunities in the field.  And for social sector professionals who want to advance in their careers having the benefit of greater knowledge of corporate social responsibility.

The Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School Newark and Governance & Accountability Institute announce their second program in the two-day learning and knowledge-sharing curriculum leading to a Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

The theme is “Good to Great — Building a Best-in-Class CSR Department.”  This session builds on the success of the introductory program held in May 2016.

The Fall program will be on September 28 and 29, 2016 at the Rutgers Business School campus in downtown Newark, New Jersey.  Registration opened this week for the two-day course.

An outstanding group of keynoters, panel moderators and speakers is lining up for the program.  Participants will have a choice of two tracks — one for corporate responsibility topics and the other for not-for-profit / social sector organization topics, with plenary sessions to share knowledge and experience with all participants.

To date, among those confirmed as faculty are outstanding corporate sector responsibility leaders Mary O’Malley, Vice President of Corporate Governance,Prudential Financial, IncEllen Lambert, President of PESG Foundation and Chief Diversity Officer one of the nation’s leading energy providers.

In the not-for-profit sector, Wanda Lopuch, Chair of the Board at The Global Sourcing Council (GSC); and Georg Kell, Founding Director and long-time leader of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), and now Vice Chairman,Arabesque Partners, are confirmed presenters.

The topics to be covered in the two-day program in the corporate track and select plenary sessions are:

  • CSR Executive Panel — CSR Executives from sustainability leadership organizations will share their knowledge and experience with program participants.
  • CSR Practitioner Panel — Multiple members of the same CSR team share their experiences with cases presented of CSR-focused teamwork inside the enterprise.
  • Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — How these are integrated with corporate strategies and how the not-for-profit / social sector could align missions with SDGs.
  • CSR / Sustainability Reporting Standards — Learning more about the globally-accepted reporting and disclosure standards increasingly used by major corporations.
  • ESG Research — New trends in environmental, social & governance analysis and third party research recommendations to investors.
  • CSR Through the Investor Lens — How today’s investors are embracing the CSR approaches as they seek “Alpha” returns for their portfolios.

We’ll be sharing news of the program in following newsletters. For more information contact Louis D. Coppola, EVP of G&A Institute, at lcoppola@ga-institute.com

For Additional Details & To Register, Go To:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/csr-certificate-program-tickets-26809141865

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge—This One’s Personal

Guest Commentary by Lois Yurow

On the first night of a class about CSR, one of my professors expressed some skepticism about the ALS ice bucket challenge. (He wasn’t the only skeptic; see here and here, for example.) It was September 2014, and you couldn’t look at your computer or phone without seeing your friends, your co-workers, your governor, or your favorite actors and musicians drenching themselves in cold water for a cause.

I very much wanted the professor to be wrong. I lost my mother, Bette (shown below, at my wedding), to ALS in 2003, and knew full well there was a dearth of information about what causes the disease and how to slow it down, much less how to wipe it out.

The ice bucket challenge had a fundraising component, of course. The idea (if you weren’t paying attention two years ago) was to post a video of yourself dumping a bucket of ice water on your head, and then challenge specific people to either do the same thing or “buy” their way out of the dare by making a donation to the ALS Association.

Many people dumped the water and made a donation, ultimately raising $115 million for the ALS Association in a span of eight weeks and another $105 million for other ALS-related organizations.

Some fun facts about the challenge:

  • ALSA received donations from over 3 million sources (individuals, companies, etc.) between June and August 2014.
  • Roughly 2.4 million ice bucket videos were shared on Facebook, and 2.33 million were shared on YouTube.
  • Over 28 million people posted an ice bucket video or liked or commented on a video.
  • Visits to the Wikipedia page about ALS increased by more than 100 times.

When the challenge petered out, the shocked and gratified ALSA issued a press release to announce that the Association would convene stakeholders — including patients and their families and leaders of the Association’s local chapters — to develop a “cohesive plan” for using the money.

The ice bucket challenge certainly generated some big money donations (I’m looking at you, Leo DiCaprio and David Spade), but the average was under $50. Since we’ve had a whole lot of other things — like ISIS, a presidential campaign, and tensions between police and minority communities — to worry about in the interim, the ALSA might have left it at a promise to develop a plan and few people would have noticed. So I was impressed when I saw this press release, which explicitly (six times!) ties a research breakthrough to the money raised from the ice bucket challenge. It caused me to look back at the Association’s communications over the past two years.

The ALSA’s annual report for the fiscal year that ended in January 2015 was jubilant, and promised: “We are committed to strategically spending ALS Ice Bucket Challenge contributions over time in order to maximize the impact of your commitment to find the cure for ALS once and for all.” (The report for the fiscal year that ended in January 2016 is not yet available, but financial statements for the year are posted.) The 2015 report acknowledges that the ALSA did not originate the challenge, but eagerly adopted it:

The Association was able to grow our following on Facebook from 30,000 to more than 300,000 after the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Unique visitors to our website went from an average of 20,000 per day to up to 4.5 million at the height of the challenge.

Our strategy very early on was to operate with the utmost transparency, providing a daily accounting of dollars raised through the challenge. This helped fuel the ice bucket story, resulting in even more donations not just to The ALS Association but to other ALS charities worldwide.

The challenge raised awareness in addition to money. For example, participation in ALSA’s annual Walks to Defeat ALS (held in every state) increased by between 30% and 100% in the fall of 2014.

Today, this is the first thing you see when you go to alsa.org:

Yurow-Blog-image-1

The “learn more” button takes you to page that emphasizes the “every drop adds up” theme—the idea that small acts (and donations) can join to produce great results. There is a short video and, of course, a hashtag: #everydropaddsup. There is an infographic showing the history of the ice bucket challenge (did you know Homer Simpson participated?) and how what began as one family’s quirky idea became “the world’s most significant social media phenomenon.” There are links to stories—of researchers, fundraisers, advocates, and patient families—each ending with an appropriate tagline: “Every [bucket][mile][discovery][cent] adds up.”

The ALSA website also has a page and hashtag (#ChallengeALS) that encourages people who want to go beyond the ice bucket challenge to participate (say, by joining a fundraising walk or a local ALSA chapter), advocate (learn about legislation and lobby for change), and donate.

But about the money: We want to know what they did with the money.

This infographic shows how the $115 million was used and what it has accomplished so far. A second, interactive, infographic shows the spending another way, giving specific details about the money used for research (67%), patient services (20%), education and advocacy (9%), fundraising (2%), and administration (2%).

Yurow-Blog-image-2I’d say ALSA has certainly been transparent. (Important: the credible Charity Navigator agrees.) Even better from a communications perspective, the organization:

  • recognized a successful organic phenomenon,
  • stepped up quickly to support it,
  • gave it institutional backing to prolong the excitement (#everydropaddsup),
  • highlighted a tangible success (the recent press release), and
  • expanded its scope (#ChallengeALS).

I wish my mom could have been here to see it.

Lois YurowGuest Commentator Lois Yurow is founder and president of Investor Communications Services, LLC, where she specializes in converting complex legal, business, and financial documents into plain English.  Mutual Fund Regulation and Compliance Handbook, a book she co-authored and updates annually, is published by Thomson West.  Lois, who is pursuing a Master’s degree in Communication and Information Studies, writes and speaks frequently about plain English, disclosure, and other securities law matters.  Before forming Investor Communications Services, Lois practiced corporate and securities law, first in Chicago and then in New Jersey.  Email: lois@securitieseditor.com 

Copyright (c) 2016 by Lois Yurow – All Rights Reserved