Cause Marketing/Corporate Partnerships

A line of snack bars is trying to live up to its brand name with an initiative that offers a twist to the typical cause marketing effort.

The brand is Kind Healthy Snacks.

Kind’s approach to doing well by doing good is a campaign carrying the theme “Do the Kind Thing,” which plans to donate, in stages, $100,000 to organizations deemed worthy of assistance. The first round, totaling $40,000, is to be announced this week and will be divided among three causes.

In a seventh-floor conference room festooned with framed articles and journalism awards, Managing Editor Gordon Witkin leads the morning discussion of stories his staff is pursuing.

Their latest scoop -- on members of Congress dumping their BP stock -- "was a big success," he says. "It was in an AP story that sent it everywhere, including Yahoo and Google News."

On the front burner, a dozen staffers around the table explain, is a joint series just approved by the New York Times. A piece underway with The Washington Post is being edited. There was a "tough conference call," says international director David Kaplan, with eight London producers on a 10-segment project with the BBC.

Investigative reporting is increasingly being outsourced, and these offices off K Street serve as a boiler room for research that the big boys are less able to afford. The Center for Public Integrity is hardly a traditional news operation, but it is taking on a more prominent media role, fueled by a recent hiring spree that has added more than half a dozen journalists to its 45-person staff.

New York, New York — Looking forward to the next decade, CECP and McKinsey & Company have embarked on several months of research into the issues and potential scenarios businesses will confront in the next decade. The result, a groundbreaking new report, “Shaping the Future: Solving Social Problems through Business Strategy,” explores the evolving relationship between business and society, forecasting that societal problems will become more complex, requiring corporate leaders to rework their business, philanthropy and community strategies. The report aims to address two key questions – first, what will the next decade look like for the world, and what are the implications for corporate involvement in solving social issues? And, second, how can corporations position themselves now to maximize their profitability as well as their societal impact?

ATLANTIC CITY - Mayor Lorenzo Langford wants to put a face on some of the city's blank advertising billboards, and he is appealing to local nonprofit organizations to get it done.

Langford announced a new program Thursday to cover some of the city's bare billboards with messages from community groups to reduce the number of eyesores in the resort.

The initiative was developed by the mayor's Strategic Planning Committee, which consists of city business leaders and government officials working to improve Atlantic City and its image.

While the economy shows signs of improvement, countless nonprofits continue to strain under the weight of the recession fall-out. Today, in what has become an IMPACT Day tradition, Deloitte is providing hundreds of nonprofit leaders from across the country with valuable counsel to help them deal with common business challenges, at no cost. This day of service marks Deloitte’s 11^th Annual IMPACT Day, a celebration that symbolizes its year-round culture of service. Tens of thousands of Deloitte personnel are volunteering at 800+ projects nationwide, giving their time to nonprofits. Additionally, Deloitte is celebrating IMPACT Day by prominently showcasing its deep commitment to education. Volunteers, in conjunction with education-based nonprofits including College Summit, City Year and Junior Achievement, among others, are working directly with students at an array of events designed to support academic success and college readiness. They are leading workshops on a variety of session topics including career coaching, mentoring and navigating the college admissions process.

NEW YORK, June 9, 2010 - Chase announced today it has kicked off its Chase Community Giving Summer 2010 program on the Facebook® platform. The program will award more than $5 million to be shared among 200 charities with grants ranging from $20,000 to $250,000. Participants can begin voting for their favorite charities June 15.

The first Chase Community Giving program, held earlier this year, was the most popular corporate philanthropy crowdsourcing campaign of its type. More than 2 million users on the Facebook platform became fans of the program and helped decide which, of more than 500,000 charities, should receive a share of $5 million. More than 100 winners from 31 states were selected. Chase Community Giving is back again - and improved. The number of charities eligible to receive awards has doubled and several new tools have been introduced.

BERKELEY, Calif . - BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) , Eat a shrimp, support a Gulf of Mexico fisherman. That's the thinking behind the "Dine Out for the Gulf Coast" campaign in which restaurants across the country will be putting a little fish philanthropy on the menu.

During the event, scheduled for June 10-12, participating restaurants will be donating to the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund. Restaurants that are able to, also will feature seafood from the Gulf.

CBS 3 is once again takin the unusual step of breaking format on Thursday, June 11th to present a full day of fundraising for the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation live from the Great Hall in the station's HD Broadcast Center.

The Alex Scott Phone Bank will air in special segments from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. throughout the broadcast day.

As part of National Youth Traffic Safety Month, AT&T* is honoring the more than 28,000 individuals who have already taken AT&T’s pledge to not text and drive by contributing $250,000 to safety organizations committed to distracted driving prevention.

Contributions were given to: National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS), ConnectSafely, Enough is Enough, Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), iKeepSafe, Put on the Brakes, Inc., Stay Alive Just Drive and Teens in the Driver Seat.

Ford Foundation announced a five-year, $200 million effort to help transform the way cities, suburbs and surrounding communities grow and plan for the future, interweaving housing, transportation and land-use policy to foster greater economic growth.